The Louis I. Kahn Collection

Solomon’s Success: Trenton Bath House to be Saved On Friday, August 11th at 2:54 PM EST, news flashed across the internet and around the world that the Bath House and Day Camp pavilions designed by Louis Kahn in the mid 1950s for the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Ewing, New Jersey, would be preserved. The message was sent from architectural historian, DOCOMOMO US member, and Kahn scholar Susan Solomon. She is the leader of a ten-year struggle to preserve Kahn’s work in Ewing and literally wrote the book on Kahn and the Bath House (Louis I. Kahn’s Trenton Jewish Community Center, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000). Design of the JCC was the first major project of Kahn’s private practice. He acknowledged this work as inspiring a fundamental and profound shift in his architectural thinking. Kahn “discovered himself” after designing this project, considering the Trenton Bath House as his first opportunity to work out the concept of served and serving spaces. The architectural fundamentals he discovered is Exterior, Trenton Bath House, recognizable in every building he designed subsequently. Trenton, NJ Kahn’s Bath House and pool (1955) and four Day Camp pavilions (photo: Susan Solomon) (1957) have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and protected by a Ewing preservation ordinance since 1984. Due to extensive deterioration of the Day Camp pavilions, the JCC sought approval for the demolition of two of the four pavilions in 1966 but withdrew the request when the preservation community strongly objected. Although the Day Camp pavilions were not demolished, wooden barricades and wire fencing were erected to prevent access; deterioration accelerated. For the last ten years, Susan Solomon has rallied world-wide support for the preservation of the landmark site. She promoted the buildings’ continued use by inviting supporters to imagine what each cont’d on pg. 7 NATIONAL NEWS | fall 2006 ARTICLES DOCOMOMO NEWS 10 Compromise Reached to Save Saarinen’s Bell Labs Building 1 Solomon’s Success: 2 Welcome by Flora Chou Trenton Bath House to be Saved by Peter Anderson 3 Chapter News 10 Rapson Library Faces New York/Tri-State Uncertain Future 2 Kahn’s Yale Art Gallery Unveiled Georgia by Greg Frenzel by Leslie Myers, AIA Chicago Western Washington 11 Paul Rudolph’s Riverview 3 Status Report on Proposed New England High School Still Threatened Changes to The Salk Institute by Toni DiMaggio by Jeffrey Shorn and Vonn Marie May ANNOUNCEMENTS 11 Raymond House in Belmont, MA Demolished 4 Sherebanglanagar and the 8 2006: IXth International by Toni DiMaggio National Assembly at DOCOMOMO Conference: Dhaka, Bangladesh Istanbul/Ankara, Turkey by Saif Ul Haque by Theodore Prudon 5 A Personal Encounter with Kahn’s 8 DOCOMOMO US Indian Institute of Management Technology Seminar, Fall 2007 by Valeria Koukoutsi-Mazarakis by Theodore Prudon 6 The Lous I. Kahn Collection 9 2008: Xth International DOCOMOMO US by Julia Moore Converse and DOCOMOMO Conference: William Whitaker Delft/Rotterdam, The Netherlands Email: [email protected] by Toni DiMaggio Mail: PO Box 230977 New York, NY 10023 9 Update on SOM Buildings at Great Lakes Naval Station www.docomomo-us.org by Lisa DiChiera Welcome Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery Unveiled DOCOMOMO US is part of the larger international network of visible to all as clouded glass. This façade could ale University and the Art Gallery’s 12-year not be expected to survive through conservation DOCOMOMO International, which Y commitment to revitalizing Louis I. Kahn’s 1953 alone. as of the last International museum will be celebrated on December 10th, Signifying continuous unbounded space, this Conference in September of this 2006. What started as a replacement of clouded typically modernist façade presents a field of year in Turkey, has some 54 glazing became a comprehensive project to window bays of identical design. However, the countries represented. That restore the museum to the architect’s design, bays as built are not uniform, a fact at odds with international dimension and the re-program its spaces, and re-engineer its non- the standardization of the modern machine. The successful preservation of the structural systems for twenty-first century use. original wall was neither plumb nor square, and so-called Trenton Bath House The renovation has been rigorously guided by the original builders had to custom cut and fit the designed by Louis Kahn inspired Polshek Partnership Architects, Yale University individual steel pieces of the façade’s frame in Construction & Renovation Facilities, and the Yale us to look at the preservation of order to align it with the uneven concrete struc- Art Gallery. his work not just in the US but ture, which was far from co-planar by today’s The Yale University Art Gallery, Kahn’s first construction standards. The renovation team’s also elsewhere in the world and large-scale institutional commission, is often dis- re-engineered frame (detailed to match the profile make it the subject of this issue of missed to the degree that it does not prefigure of the original) was made through computer-aided our national newsletter. We will the architect’s mature projects. Kahn’s disappoint- fabrication and design, so its tolerance of error is continue to do occasionally issues ment with the interior changes wrought by gallery measured in millimeters. For a truly plumb that center around a theme or staff post-occupancy is legendary. He vowed replacement installation, the tradesmen began at subject be it a building type or the work of a particular architect. This fall issue is the second newsletter that we will largely distribute electronically and post on our website. This change is part of a larger strategic move to increase our advocacy and make it more effective and accessible. This summer we used our website as a ’forum’, the place where opinions and letters with regard to the renovation of the Alvar Aalto designed Woodberry Poetry Pre-renovation interior walls, Yale Art Gallery, 1972 Restored open plan, Yale Art Gallery Room located in Harvard (photo: Archives, Yale University Art Gallery) (photo: Elizabeth Felicella, ©2006 Yale University Art Gallery) University’s library could be never again to provide a modernist open plan for the concrete face farthest outboard and, moving posted and read. Because this clients and occupants to manipulate with conven- inward, crafted customized connections between experiment was well received and tional, nostalgic room divisions. In his later build- the frame and the irregular column and slab proved to be effective advocacy, ings, such as the Yale British Art Center across structure. we will take on other issues in the street, the room, radically re-thought, controls Whether because standard building practice the future. Kahn’s interior plan. mid-century was a poor match for the modernist Finally, with mid-century Kahn’s disappointment aside, the Yale Art ideal, or whether the architect chose to leave the modernism becoming the Gallery re-defined museum building typology for tradesmen’s decisions visible, the Art Gallery has buzzword for the preserving the the second half of the twentieth century, creating a fascinating relationship between what was from industrial materials an idealized, open space post World War II heritage, we drawn by Kahn versus what was built. While for viewing art. Only recently has cultural studies are continuing to add chapters to smooth, impersonal metal formwork was available challenged the presumption of art-space’s neutrali- for the tetrahedral ceiling pours, Kahn chose our network. This geographic ty, and the expressive possibilities of industrial smaller wood boards for the column and beam growth—locally, nationally and materials continue to be inventively explored by formwork. The fossil-like imprint of the wood internationally— and its diverse many museum architects. Because of the build- grain on the columns, the imperfect air entrain- membership is what makes ing’s architectural progeny, its experimental mid- ment in the pours, and the tracings of formwork DOCOMOMO unique among century modernism, and its unique place in Kahn’s seams all corroborate in the building’s personal, volunteer preservation organ- career, the renovation team was committed to even intimate, manipulation of the massive build- izations but can only be revealing the original architectural features—open ing material. Atypical of industrial building, the accomplished by your support. plan, industrial materials, and the electrical, mini-block designed by Kahn is about the size of lighting and HVAC services running through the a human hand, and often cited as a source of the tetrahedral ceiling voids. — Theodore Prudon Art Gallery’s surprising humanism. Some Kahn experiments, while prescient President After the Yale Art Gallery, Kahn not only architecturally, created problems for the building’s abandoned the modernist open plan, his building DOCOMOMO US longevity. Although not a true curtain wall, the vocabulary evolved considerably. However, the window wall along York Street was one of the absence of fussy ornament, a hallmark of previous century’s early attempts at continuous modernism, remained essential to Kahn through- double-paned glazing across a multi-storey façade. out his career. But lacking sufficient expansion joints (a design oversight), the window wall failed decades ago— —Leslie Myers, AIA DOCOMOMO US/FALL 2006 2 Chapter News Status Report on Proposed Changes to the Salk Institute NEW YORK/TRI-STATE Simultaneously, as the National Register ouis Kahn completed the Salk Institute for report was being prepared and subsequently Following well-attended summer L Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, in 1965. reviewed by the Keeper, the Salk Institute was tours of Edward Durell Stone’s His collaboration with Jonas Salk led to a project processing a required Coastal Development University of Albany Campus and that was the culmination of his study and interest Permit with the City of San Diego, where Wallace Harrison’s Albany in “meaningful order,” light, nature, and the La Jolla is located.

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