Page 2 of 2
La Jolla, California
Even though I know there’s hope in every morning song, you have to find that melody alone
There are a lot of reasons to go to La Jolla, even on a short trip to San Diego. It has a terrific beach, the Scripps Aquarium is quite nice and, just by itself, the Caramelized Tahitian Vanilla Bean French Toast with Grilled Pineapple at the Shorehouse Kitchen is reason enough alone to justify the whole damn trip to California in the first place. Still, if you’re a student of architecture (and by that, I don’t mean if you’re literally going to architecture school right now), there’s one reason alone why a visit to La Jolla and Torrey Pines Road feels like the most important place in the world.
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is located on Torrey Pines Road and consists (primarily) of two concrete buildings designed by legendary architect Louis Kahn, two concrete buildings loved by architects and generally not loved by everyone else. You can see it on site and in person- in every group there is someone lying on the plaza or practically hugging the concrete walls trying to take the perfect picture, while the rest of the group just stands there checking their phones, wondering when the hell they’re going to get to the beach, or to the Scripps Aquarium, or when they’re going to get that Caramelized Tahitian Vanilla Bean French Toast with Grilled Pineapple at the Shorehouse Kitchen they were promised.
Way, way back in 1998 on my first trip to San Diego, I went to the zoo and to the other zoo and to here. It was a pilgrimage just like a visit to Fallingwater or the Pantheon or the Farnsworth House. Something you just have to see in person to understand exactly why you needed to go there so badly in the first place.
Louis Kahn is a hero in architecture- not because he had three wives at the same time, or because firm was always in debt or because he died (unclaimed) in the world’s worst place (the men’s room at New York Penn Station). He is a hero because he was always true to his work.. His completed buildings are clean, simple, pure and not as easy to place in a category as you might think. The buildings at the Salk are two mirrored buildings that carefully separate offices (with the wood veneer and ocean views) from the labs (all concrete and utilitarian). In between is a simple plaza that looks out over the horizon to the Pacific with a single slot fountain right down the middle. In person its a beautiful, soulful composition that someone who had no idea who Louis Kahn was might mistake for a concrete bunker with a good view.
There are two ways to visit the Salk, a guided tour or an self guided tour. The guided tour doesn’t get you inside any of the buildings, but it does carefully take you though the courtyard, under the covered areas and around all of the labs so that you can start to truly understand the building. And both the guided tours and self guided tours allow you to linger afterwards, to find a bench or that perfect view and then wait for that other person with a camera to finally get the hell out of your way.
The buildings are incredibly complex, even though at first you start to think of them as simple and symmetrical. At every turn and every angle there seems to be something new to see- a new rhythm or pattern or shadow or detail.
At last, the classic view of the plaza, although maybe not exactly the classic view of the plaza you’re used to from all of those architectural history lectures. From here, the slot fountain looks much wider than it is, although it still empties into the open horizon and straight on to the Pacific beyond.
