When you’re low on inspiration, architect Louis I. Kahn famously told his students, you should have a chat with your material: “You say to a brick, ‘What do you want, brick?’ And brick says to you, ‘I ...

In 1971 Louis Kahn, an American architect, was giving a masterclass at the University of Pennsylvania. In the course of a passage about how architects are always informed by their materials, he ...