Salk Institute

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies occupies a campus in La Jolla, San Diego, California, designed by the architect Louis Kahn, whose laboratory building was constructed beginning in 1962, first occupied in 1963, and completed in 1965. Kahn's design consists of two parallel laboratory blocks framing a central travertine-paved plaza with a single channel of water running down its center toward a view of the Pacific Ocean, though of Kahn's original plan for three separate clusters of laboratories, meeting spaces and residences, only the laboratory block was ever built. Working with the structural engineer August Komendant, Kahn achieved column-free laboratory floors using pre-stressed concrete Vierendeel trusses spanning about 62 feet, and the poured-concrete walls were mixed with volcanic-ash pozzolana to produce their warm, pinkish tone; Kahn also fitted blackboards along the exterior walkways to encourage impromptu scientific discussion among researchers. The American Institute of Architects gave the building its Twenty-five Year Award in 1992, an honor given to only one building each year, and the original structures were designated a historic landmark in 1991.