Things in their best order: technical aspects of the Salk Institute and their role in its design

摘要

This paper explores the integration of engineering, function and space in the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at La Jolla, California, USA, by Louis Kahn (1959-1967). While traditional interpretation has focused on the Salk's courtyard as a space of uncanny emotional power, this study suggests that the power of this space derives in part from the intensity of Kahn's attention to systems, materials and methods. Using drawings and project correspondence from the Louis I. Kahn archives at the University of Pennsylvania, the paper suggests an alternative understanding of Kahn's work as empirical, evolutionary, and based as much in the prose of engineering as in the claimed poetics of architecture.