Salk Institute / Louis Kahn

 Architects
Louis Kahn

 Location
10010 N Torrey Pines Rd, San Diego, CA 92037, United States

 Architect
Louis Kahn

 Client
Jonas Salk

 Project Year
1965

 Photographs
Liao Yusheng

In 1959, Jonas Salk, the man who had discovered the vaccine for polio, approached Louis I.
Kahn with a project. The city of La Jolla, California had provided him with a picturesque site
along the Pacific coast, where Salk intended to found and build a biological research center.
Salk, whose vaccine had already had a profound impact on the prevention of the disease, was
adamant that the design for this new facility should explore the implications of the sciences for
humanity. He also had a broader, if no less profound, directive for his chosen architect: to
“create a facility worthy of a visit by Picasso.” The result was the Salk Institute, a facility lauded
for both its functionality and its striking aesthetics – and the manner in which each supports the
other.[1,2]

Along with these lofty instructions, Salk laid down a series of more practical requirements.
Laboratory spaces in the new facility would have to be open, spacious, and easily updated as
new discoveries and technologies advanced the course of scientific research. The entire
structure was to be simple and durable, requiring minimal maintenance. At the same time, it was
to be bright and welcoming – an inspiring environment for the researchers who would work
there.[3]

Kahn’s scheme for the Institute is spatially orchestrated in a similar way to a monastery: a
secluded intellectual community. Three zones were to stand apart, all facing the ocean to the
west: the Meeting House, the Village, and the laboratories. The Meeting House was to be a
large community and conference venue, while the Village was to have provided living quarters;
each part of the complex would then have been separated from its parallel neighbors by a water
garden. Ultimately, the Meeting House and Village were cut from the project, and only the
laboratories were built.[4]

The laboratories of the Salk Institute, first conceived as a pair of towers separated by a garden,
evolved into two elongated blocks mirroring each other across a paved plaza. The central court
is lined by a series of detached towers whose diagonal protrusions allow for windows facing
westward onto the ocean. These towers are connected to the rectangular laboratory blocks by
small bridges, providing passage across the rifts of the two sunken courts which allow natural
light to permeate into the research spaces below. Kahn included these courts not only as light
wells, but as references to the cloisters of the monastery of St. Francis of Assisi – an example
for which Salk had previously expressed his admiration.[5,6]

Many of the design decisions Kahn implemented in the Salk Institute derived from lessons
learned during his work on the Richards Medical Research Laboratories at the University of
Pennsylvania. Issues with crowding at the Richards Laboratories led to the more open,
unobstructed layout at Salk. It was also in Pennsylvania that Kahn first developed the notion of
separating research spaces from utilities infrastructure on different floors, an innovation which
would be applied more comprehensively in his later project. The alternation of laboratory and
infrastructural levels allows for building maintenance to occur without disrupting the research
taking place above or below.[7]

Per Salk’s instructions, Kahn also designed the laboratories to be easily upgraded. Support
beams are restricted to the edges of each lab, allowing for greater flexibility in reconfiguring the
equipment and spaces within. Mechanical systems are not sealed away behind concrete, but
behind block walls which can be moved out of the way during maintenance and renovations.
Laboratory windows are held in place by screws, allowing them to be temporarily removed so
that large equipment can be moved in and out of the building without requiring any of the
structure to be demolished.The building is able to “guess tomorrow,” Salk suggested in 1967.[8]
The laboratories are, by design, spaces of shared enterprise and spontaneous collaboration;
those seeking privacy must cross the bridges into one of the ten towers which line the central
square. The towers contain small studies, with their west-facing windows directing views toward
the square and the Pacific Ocean beyond.[9] The western ends of both laboratory wings are
also devoted to office space, the result being that both the offices and studies are afforded
views of the sea.[10]

Between the rhythmically-spaced study towers is a nearly featureless expanse of off-white

travertine stone. Kahn initially planned to fill the space with a garden, but was convinced by
architect Luis Barragán to leave the space as a void.[11] A thin channel of water bisects the
plaza, drawing one’s eye toward the blue horizon. The unfinished concrete which forms the
walls of the Institute is nearly identical in color to the travertine in the square, lending the space
a primitive and almost sublime monumentality that hints at ancient Roman forebears without
direct stylistic reference. (The comparison is suggested, however, by Kahn’s specification of
pozzolanic concrete – the same type used in Roman construction.) Inset teak paneling identifies
the locations of study and office windows, providing the only material relief from the monolithic
concrete and stone used throughout the Institute.[12]

In the five decades that have passed since the Salk Institute opened its doors in 1965, the
external appearance of Kahn’s masterwork remains largely unaltered. The concrete and stone
have withstood the seaside elements almost entirely unscathed, while a recent preservation
effort by the Getty Foundation sought to repair the teak paneling while preserving 70% of the
original material. Salk and Kahn’s foresight in the design of the laboratories has also allowed the
Institute to remain a functioning facility for advanced research, one which has played host to half
a dozen Nobel laureates since its founding. With its flexible design and masterful interplay of
material and space, the Salk Institute is likely to retain its significance as both a research center
and an architectural wonder far into the future.[13]