by Heather Livingston

AIA Gold Medalist Louis I. Kahn’s Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Conn., was selected by the Institute Honor Awards for Architecture Jury on November 19 to receive the 2005 Twenty-five Year Award, honoring structures of enduring significance that were completed 25 to 35 years ago. Begun in 1973, one year before Kahn’s death, and opened to the public in 1977, the Yale Center for British Art is among Kahn’s finest structures.

When the center received an AIA Honor Award in 1978, the jury noted, “This building is a gentle urbane masterpiece. It offers a quiet foil to its more demonstrative neighbors and, from the interior, frames and augments them. The small specialty shops tucked into its façade give vitality and continuity to the pedestrian character of the street. The interior spaces are well planned for easy movement through the exhibits. They frequently reveal surprising glimpses of one another. A quiet feeling of delight grows within you with the discovery of each new space, and the manner in which the whole is subtly revealed has an ever-surprising complexity.”

Andrea O. Dean wrote in the AIA Journal, “The new Yale Center for British Art serves as a fitting summation of [Kahn’s] work and ideas...In fact, many of the most forward-looking aspects of this building...are adaptations of Beaux-Arts principles firmly repudiated by most ‘Modern’ architects. Kahn returned to the use of natural light, though employing it in a completely novel way. Instead of undifferentiated spaces, he created rooms complementing the scale and tone of Paul Mellon’s collection, never overwhelming it.”

Kahn’s first major commission
Endowed by Mellon, the Yale Center for British Art was erected to house the largest, most comprehensive collection of British art outside the U.K. Located across the street from the Yale University Art Gallery, Kahn’s first major commission, the Center for British Art, was the first museum in the U.S. to incorporate retail shops on the street. A monumental yet restrained civic structure, the center’s taut exterior of matte steel and reflective glass becomes animated in the sunlight. “On a gray day the building looks like a moth; on a sunny day, like a butterfly—just as Kahn once predicted,” wrote Louis R. Pounders, FAIA, and James F. Williamson, AIA, in their nomination letter.

The geometrical interior is designed around two courtyards, one housing a massive concrete cylinder concealing a spiral stair that dominates the library courtyard. Travertine flooring, Belgian linen wall coverings, white oak woodwork, stainless steel panels and ducts, and exposed concrete structural elements complete the restrained and formal palette of materials. As Vincent Scully observed, “the effect is rather Miesian, and suggests a kind of dignified, if reductive, Classicism.”

Awash with natural light
Kahn believed that natural light is essential to fully appreciate the works contained within. Hence, the majestic four-story entrance courtyard is awash in natural light. That light is then filtered into the adjoining galleries through unglazed interior windows. Skylights provide illumination for the top-floor galleries; angled louvers and baffles in the truncated, pyramidal, concrete coffers block bluish north light and screen ultraviolet rays, admitting larger quantities of light when the sun is low than when it is higher in the sky. The jury noted, “This building reflects Kahn’s continuous search for simplicity and the use of daylight to define space. It is one of the quietest expressions of a great building ever seen—so rewarding and exhilarating when you step inside. The materiality and the language of the wood framed in stainless steel, concrete, and natural linen is still a delight for the eye.”

Louis I. Kahn, FAIA, emigrated to the U.S. from Estonia at the age of four. After receiving his BArch from the University of Pennsylvania, Kahn taught at Yale from 1947 to 1957. During that time, he was also resident architect at the American Academy in Rome. While there, he traveled throughout Italy, Egypt, and Greece, recording historic architecture in drawings and sketches. After his tenure at Yale, Kahn became dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. In the mid-1950s, Kahn rose to prominence in the field, receiving significant awards and commissions. Sadly, he died alone and unrecognized at the zenith of his career. Some of Kahn’s most memorable structures include the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, Calif.; the Kimball Art Museum, Ft. Worth; the National Assembly, Dhaka, Bangladesh; and the Phillips Exeter Library, Exeter, N.H.

The Yale Center for British Art is the fifth Kahn building to receive the Twenty-five Year Award. Both building and architect will be honored at the American Architectural Foundation’s Accent on Architecture gala February 11, 2005, in Washington D.C.

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