Founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine, this research institute sits on a mesa in La Jolla above the Pacific. Its laboratories, designed by Louis Kahn and built between 1962 and 1965, are often called his defining work.
Salk wanted a beautiful campus that would draw the best scientists in the world. Kahn planned three clusters of buildings, but only the laboratories were built: two mirror-image wings of concrete facing each other across a plaza paved in travertine. A thin channel of water runs down the middle of the plaza toward the ocean, seeming to reach for the horizon.
To encourage collaboration, the laboratory floors have no walls dividing them. Kahn even placed blackboards along the walkways so scientists could sketch ideas together. The original buildings were designated a historical landmark in 1991.
Comments