Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Lawrence Technological University

December 10, 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. "Perched above the roiling surf in La Jolla, California, a San Diego resort community, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies occupies its rocky cliff like a modern-day citadel. Completed in 1965 by the innovative American architect Louis I. Kahn, the nonprofit research center (specializing in genetics, neuroscience, and molecular and plant biology) interweaves private and public spaces with a strikingly formal, inward-looking plan that echoes the format of a medieval cloister. Composed of strong-willed yet sensuous materials—travertine and reinforced concrete—it possesses a hushed dignity that encourages contemplation ... According to lore, when Jonas Salk, the physician who developed the polio vaccine, visited Kahn in 1959 merely to solicit his advice on hiring an architect, he was so impressed by their conversation about fusing art and science that he looked no further. Together the men would create a modern monument with a subtle handmade quality, evidenced by traces of graining left by the plywood forms that shaped the concrete, a textural leitmotif of Kahn’s radical but elegant oeuvre, from the Yale University Art Gallery (1953) to the Phillips Exeter Academy Library (1972) to the Kimbell Art Museum (1972),"--Louis I. Kahn's Salk Institute Remains a Modernist Beacon, by Karen Stein.

reinforced concrete

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