Description

Kahn’s last work, almost entirely designed by him but completed by his pupils, still gets a mixed reception. The purpose of the building is to accommodate a collection of British art donated to Yale University as well as an important library. The requirement was that the building’s scale should correspond to the collection that contains many small-scale pictures, watercolours and drawings. A strict quadratic grid of 20 feet per side is the basis of the four-storey building, its ground plan measuring 10 x 6 modular units. This austere structure becomes clearly recognizable through the minimalist exterior – a subtly chosen texture of cast concrete framework and fillings of stainless steel plates, rhythmically punctuated by window openings. The articulation in the interior takes place by means of two glass-roofed courtyards of differing sizes, of which the larger, called the “library courtyard,” occupies only the three upper floors and conceals the main stairway in a cylindrical concrete casing. The sculptural dominance of this element not only breaks with the proportions of the building structure readable everywhere else, including inside, but also raises the question as to the relation between “serving” and “served” rooms, on whose suitability Kahn otherwise used to lay great value.

The exhibition rooms – on the first and second floors for temporary exhibitions, on the third floor intended for the permanent presentation of the picture collection – are laid out around the square courtyard in the two mezzanine storeys. (The library is laid out around the larger, rectangular court.) On the top floor, the exhibition rooms surround both the interior courtyards. Although the modular structure remains recognizable here too, not only in the column system and the removable partitions, but also in the wall articulation (the fillings between the concrete framework consist of light oak or unbleached linen), the impression of a flowing spatial continuum prevails nonetheless. The lighting of the exhibition rooms – apart from the lateral light distributed by sporadically distributed windows that open both to the inner courtyards and the outside – is accomplished in the mezzanine storeys by means of spotlights, on the top floor through filtered daylight which falls through almost room-height superstructures corresponding to the module grid. Whether these rooms also radiate the sought-after atmosphere of the English mansions in which such art works were once to be found is a question that remains open.
A major building conservation project was undertaken 2008-2016 (Knight Architecture).

 

Architectural Record 7/1977, pp. 95-104 (Vincent Scully) • The Architectural Review 965/1977, pp. 37-44 (W.H. Jordy) • L’architecture d’aujourd’hui 193/1977, pp. 70-74 • Jules David Prown, The Architecture of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1977 • Domus 579/1978, pp. 1-5 (Agnoldomenico Pica) • Progressive Archi­tecture 5/1978, pp. 76-82 (Martin Filler) • Architecture: the AIA journal 6/ 1978, pp. 80-89 (A.O. Dean) and 1/1986, pp. 64-67 (M.J.Crosbie) • Baumeister 3/1979, pp. 239-242 • Casabella 43/ 1979, pp. 38-39 • A+U: extra edition 11/1983, pp. 172-184 • The Architect’s Journal 9/ 1992, pp. 50-53 (D. Hawkes) • Romaldo Giurgola/Jamini Mehta, Louis I. Kahn, 4th edition, Zürich/ Munich/ London, 1992, pp. 87-90 • Bruno Jean Hubert, Louis I. Kahn: Le Yale Center for British Art, Marseilles, 1992 • Duncan Robinson, The Yale Center for British Art: A Tribute to the Genius of Louis I. Kahn, New Haven, 1997 • Klaus-Peter Gast, Louis I. Kahn, Basel/ Berlin/Boston, 1999, pp. 24-27 • Ana Tostoes (ed.), Modern Heritage. Reuse Renovation Restoration, Basel, 2022, pp. 96-105 (on the conservation project).

 

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Originally published in: Paul von Naredi-Rainer, Museum Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2004.