Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Lawrence Technological University

December 16, 2015

Kahn, Louis Isidore

Stevens, James (photograph)

American

Single Built Works

September, 2014

California (state)

La Jolla (neighborhood)

Modern (style or period)

office buildings

research laboratories

Salk, Jonas, 1914-1995

Exterior view of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, designed by Louis Kahn and completed in 1966. "Louis Kahn's Salk Institute for Biological Studies on the Pacific coast near La Jolla aspires within its own spirit to an order achieved through clarity, definition, and consistency of application. It stands as a testament to Kahn's word, 'Order is. ' Two parallel laboratories, each an uninterrupted 65- foot wide and 245-feet long and encircled by a perimeter corridor, flank a central court. The support elements to these totally flexible spaces are placed in a peripheral relationship to this corridor. They are the studies and offices for scientist, fractured in profile and vertical in rhythm, which line this central court, connected by bridges to the perimeter corridor and receiving views of the ocean by virtue of exterior walls angles toward it. The idea of simple and strong; the served space of laboratories where research is performed, the serving space of offices where thought initiates....Clearly, in the institute at La Jolla, a new level of realization and accomplishment is evident for this ides....The institute manifests beauty of mind and act; of the resolution and articulation of the major elements of the building...being what it wants to and needs to be, to the precise detail and execution of beautiful concrete surfaces. Even the component of structure derives from the need to enclose specific spaces, specifically and pertinently, rather than offer a general envelope within which specific space might then be designated. The central court, as a typical Kahn-like space of shimmering blue water, a band pointing toward the ocean epitomizing what human endeavor can accomplish at one scale with geometric clarity and authoritative but modest deliberation, to give to the scaleless sweep of the ocean, here the Pacific, a poignant gesture,"—from Paul Heyer. American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth Century. p195.

reinforced concrete

teak (wood)

jpeg

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