ORGANIZATION
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
The research institute Salk founded in 1960 with Louis Kahn — a building whose empty travertine courtyard and ocean horizon were designed as an architectural argument for Epoch B consciousness.
The Salk Institute, completed in 1965 on a bluff overlooking the Pacific in La Jolla, California, is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century architecture. Its twin rows of concrete and teak study towers flank a vast travertine courtyard with nothing in it but a narrow channel of water running toward the Pacific horizon. Salk insisted on this emptiness against Kahn's original plans, which included gardens, trees, and plantings. Salk wanted scientists emerging from their focused laboratory work to encounter a space offering nothing except the opportunity to think without direction — to stand in open air, see the horizon, and be reminded that their work existed within a context infinitely larger than any experiment. The architecture was not decoration. It was an Epoch B intervention — an attempt to create environmental conditions that would favor wisdom, contemplation, and the long view over the competitive anxiety that characterized most research institutions.
