The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California (1959–1965) was to be a campus composed of three clusters: meeting and conference areas, living quarters, and laboratories. Only the laboratory cluster, consisting of two parallel blocks enclosing a water garden, was built. The two laboratory blocks frame a long view of the
Pacific Ocean, accentuated by a thin linear fountain that seems to reach for the horizon. The campus was designed by Louis Kahn. Salk had sought a beautiful campus in order to draw the best researchers in the world. The original buildings of the Salk Institute were designated a historical landmark in 1991. The entire site was deemed eligible by the California Historical Resources Commission in 2006 for listing in the US
National Register of Historic Places. It is "arguably the defining work" of Kahn.
Design Jack MacAllister,
FAIA, of the Kahn office, was the supervising architect and a design influence on the building that consists of two symmetric wings with a water stream flowing towards the ocean in the middle
travertine-paved central plaza that separates the two. In the beginning the buildings were made up of different types of
concrete mixes of different color. In the basement of the complex, there are different colored water walls because Kahn was experimenting with the mixtures. The buildings themselves have been designed to promote collaboration, and thus there are no walls separating laboratories on any of the floors. The lighting fixtures on the roof slide along rails thus reflecting the collaborative and open philosophy of the Salk Institute's science. After two years of design work, and after the design had been approved and meetings with building contractors had begun, Kahn and the Salk Institute abruptly decided to reduce the number of laboratory buildings from four narrow ones to two wider ones and to increase the number of floors per building from two to three.
August Komendant re-engineered the structure and produced a new set of drawings with a speed that professor Leslie described as "legendary". Inside the laboratories, the ducts and vents are reinforced by concrete
Vierendeel trusses supported by post-tensioned columns. The authorities at the time were very cautious due to the fact that they felt these trusses would not be able to hold in case of an earthquake, but in a
tour de force of structural design, Komendant was able to achieve twice the ductility that a steel frame offered. and the Razavi Newman Center for Bioinformatics. A library that houses current periodicals, some books and computers is located on the 3rd level of the west end of the North building. The Conrad T. Prebys auditorium and the Trustees' Room are located in the basement of the east buildings of the institute.
Concrete According to A. Perez, the concrete was made with volcanic ash relying on the basis of ancient Roman concrete making techniques, and as a result gives off a warm, pinkish glow. This "
pozzolanic" concrete was then only vibrated as needed structurally, leaving a lightly textured wall face. The basement also houses the transgenic core. Each laboratory block has five study towers, with each tower containing four offices, except for those near the entrance to the court, which only contain two. A diagonal wall allows each of the thirty-six scientists using the studies to have a view of the Pacific, and every study is fitted with a combination of operable sliding and fixed glass panels in teak wood frames. Originally the design also included living quarters and a conference building, but they were never built.
Structural system In keeping with his design and the philosophy of "served and servant spaces," and as the vast requirement for mechanical spaces were extensive, Kahn decided to create a separate service floor for them above each of the laboratories to make it easier to reconfigure individual laboratories in the future without disrupting neighboring spaces. He also designed each laboratory floor to be entirely free of internal support columns, making laboratory configuration easier. Komendant engineered the
Vierendeel trusses that make this arrangement possible. These
pre-stressed concrete trusses are about long, spanning the full width of each floor and extending from the bottom of each service floor to the top. They are supported by steel cables embedded in the concrete in a curve similar to that of cables supporting a
suspension bridge. Their rectangular openings, which are high in the center and at the ends, allow maintenance workers to move easily through the thicket of pipes and ducts on the service floors. The trusses impose strictly vertical loads on their support columns, to which they are attached not rigidly but with a system of slip plates and tension cables to permit small movements during moderate earthquakes.
Unbuilt areas The meeting and conference areas and the living quarters were formally designated by Kahn as the Meeting Place and Living Place, respectively. He continued to make drawings of these spaces even after their cancellation following a shortage in construction funding. Kahn's stressed importance of the Meeting Place and Living Place to the entirety of the campus plan was in accordance to the
Urban Reidentification Grid concepts proposed by British architects
Peter and Alison Smithson nearly a decade before, in which interconnectivity between communal activities and their respective spaces took priority. Aesthetically, the unbuilt areas combined cuboidal and cylindrical forms, distinguishing them from the laboratory cluster. The U-shaped road that was part of the original plan was built and exists to this day, but its ends that would have connected the Meeting Place and Living Place to the central laboratories are left bare or occupied by a parking lot. ==Scientific activities==