No Trespassing - Salk Institute

From my perch I looked down. The game was over. I had loitered excitedly around the site for an hour, marveling how Louis Kahn organized his open plan flexible labs, brought natural daylight down to the lowest floors, and angled private offices clad in teak to overlook the plaza and ocean in raw concrete frame structures. 

I was on the top floor of the complex looking down at the iconic plaza. Despite the seriousness of my infraction, it was a funny site to behold. I could spot the 2 guards coming after me from afar. I remembered during the design process, Kahn thought of planting trees between his two rows of laboratories, but he followed Luis Barragán’s advice who told him, “I would put not a single tree in this area. I would make a plaza. If you make a plaza, you will have another facade to the sky.” As a result of this treeless plaza design, I could see the Salk security officers in their dorky bright turquoise T-shirt and khaki pant uniforms coming after me against the spare white bright travertine plaza.

Barragan's sketch sent to friend Louis Kahn

When I arrived on site earlier in the morning, I was surprised and disappointed to find “No Trespassing” signs posted at the entry gates. Perhaps, the Salk Institute is tired of architects like me roaming the grounds, or activist vegetarians protesting the animal laboratories on site… but something pulled me into the site. Maybe it was the sight of an injured talking ground squirrel limping away. Perhaps it was the symmetrical serrated arrangement of concrete building frames with a channel of water flowing in the travertine plaza towards the horizon. The experience of the space felt like a procession… towards the point where the ocean meets the sky. The Mayans have their jungle temples, and the Romans have their Colosseums, but the Americans have their modern temples in the form of Louis Kahn’s laboratory buildings. The guards felt sorry for me and told me to vacate the premises.

When Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine was gifted 27 acres of land by San Diego overlooking the Pacific Ocean, he partnered with fellow Russian Jew émigré, Louis Kahn to create an environment where researchers collaborate and explore scientific principles. Salk wanted to “create a facility worthy of a visit by Picasso.”

In my forbidden visit to the Salk Institute, I saw ancient lessons of Rome embedded within the geometry and form of the concrete walls. Kahn had gone to Rome mid-career and came back re-energized, inspired, and focused. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been (working harder than when I had a job) obsessively drawing, re-drawing, poring through models and research papers to figure out the Colosseum to deduce the essence of Roman architecture to explain Rome’s architecture influence on Kahn.