Kimbell Art Museum

The Kimbell Art Museum is an art museum in Fort Worth, Texas, designed by Louis Kahn and completed in 1972. The building is composed of sixteen parallel vaults, each a post-tensioned concrete cycloid shell about 100 feet long, 20 feet wide and 20 feet high, supported only at their four corners so the gallery floor beneath is left largely open. Along the apex of each vault a narrow skylight admits natural light onto a perforated aluminum reflector, which scatters it across the underside of the vault so the galleries are lit by indirect daylight while direct sun is kept off the art. The museum's handling of concrete, travertine and light has made it one of the most studied buildings of the later twentieth century.