Louis Kahn's Tectonic Poetics: The University of Pennsylvania Medical Research Laboratories and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Abstract

Based on his exploration of the "desire to be" in architecture, and the design principle of "served and servant spaces," Louis Kahn used the composition of structural elements to reveal the quality of a space and address the issue of where to place the laboratory's large number of mechanical ducts, pipes and conduits. The University of Pennsylvania Medical Research Laboratories and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are two of Kahn's most celebrated buildings. They give ample expression to his poetic tectonic thinking, as well as the spatial, technological, and aesthetic innovations he pioneered for laboratory design. This paper analyzes the spatial composition and structural system of these two laboratory buildings, as well as the way in which the mechanical services were integrated into the structure. Textual research, analysis of diagrams, and the composition of three-dimensional illustrations were used to investigate how, in the process of giving shape to a space, Kahn made full use of the unique qualities of his materials to give expression to the concept of rational architecture. This paper then goes on to investigate the unique features of Kahn's tactic of incorporating the mechanical services into the structure of these two labs. The results indicate that complying with the structural order was Kahn's main strategy for integrating the mechanical ducts pipes and conduits into the space.