I have looked at a million pictures of the Salk, Lou Kahn's 1965 masterpiece ... but it wasn't until I went there and saw the building for myself did I get it.

Something happened recently that I didn’t see coming … I visited a building that I had known about since college, seen a million and one pictures of the project, but truly didn’t appreciate until I walked the space and experienced the building.
Isn’t this what the power of architecture is all about" Visiting this project reaffirmed many things for me, number one on that list is that you need to visit these projects in person if you truly want to understand how they work.

There isn’t an architect on the planet that is unaware of the Salk Institute1, Louis Kahn’s 1965 masterpiece of brutalist architecture. I heard someone on my tour mention (and get it wrong) that this was a “brutalist” project because it was extreme in nature, ergo “brutal”. I need to set the record straight on this … Brutalist architecture, sometimes simply called “brutalism”, isn’t called this because it’s “brutal”. Originating from the French words for raw (brut) and concrete (bĂ©ton), the term “Brutalism” was adapted by British architectural critic Reyner Banham2. Banham went on to say that brutalism was not a style, but rather the expression of an atmosphere among architects of the time reflecting “moral seriousness.R...