Description
American post-war architecture was largely determined by the enormous economic resources of a nation which had become a dominating world power. Fleeing from persecution and repression, many European (primarily German) visionaries of Modernism had taken refuge in the United States. In the New World, their ideas fell on fertile soil and in cooperation with young American architects they set the stage for a new development that would dominate global architecture for decades to come. The building-up of a powerful war industry to defeat the fascist dictatorships in Europe and Asia culminated in the construction of the first nuclear bomb; it was developed in the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. Since the forties, new research facilities were set up mainly along the east coast at an awesome pace. Subsequently, some of these institutions became architectural prototypes for the further development of research buildings.
Similar to the industrial buildings of the 1930s, laboratory and research buildings at that time took on a pioneer role in American Modernism. Both building types were and still are essentially governed by similar planning principles. Typical features of modern architecture such as large flexible open-plan spaces with separate office and service zones won undisputed recognition; they were first realised in industrial buildings, later in administrative buildings, and then in laboratory buildings. The best architects of this era attended to planning research facilities: Louis I. Kahn, Philip Johnson, Walter Gropius with his TAC practice, Frank Lloyd Wright, and I. M. Pei among others conceived research buildings that became icons of 20th-century architecture and are works of reference for this building type to the present day.
Landmark buildings
Planned by Frank Lloyd Wright, the headquarters of Johnson Wax Co. in Racine, Wisconsin, were inaugurated in 1939. The famous laboratory tower, an addition to this complex, was completed in 1950. Together, the administration building of the first phase and the slender research structure with its rounded corners form an impressive ensemble. All vertical elements are located at the core of the tower. The streamlined façade to a large extent consists of glass tubes and provides ample natural light for the laboratory floors that alternate with mezzanine floors. The building is reminiscent of factory laboratories of the 1930s; it represents an independent approach of a great individualist of the 20th century.
The laboratory towers of the Richards Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, erected from 1957 to 1961 and planned by Louis I. Kahn, were a globally acclaimed radical experiment with prefabricated concrete elements. Square work towers, alternately used as offices or laboratories, are grouped around a central service tower containing general facilities. The square zones are free of columns and do not contain any other vertical elements either; all ”serving” elements, articulated as variations of a theme, are positioned around the perimeter and brace the structure. The slender concrete structure determines ceiling spans and the shape of the towers as well as the façades. The fully flexible primary floor area is strictly separated from all vertical elements. In doing so, the building’s typology follows the floor plan layout of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s (SOM) administrative buildings of the same time for Inland Steel Co. in Chicago and for Crown Zellerbach Co. in San Francisco.
Connection between two laboratory buildings: Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Architect: Louis I. Kahn 1957-1961
Typical floor plan, Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania. Architect: Louis I. Kahn 1957-1961
With hindsight, however, the importance of Kahn’s laboratory towers lies in their ingenious architectural language rather than in their function as laboratory buildings. This is because such a precisely crafted ”clockwork” made of prefabricated concrete elements has never been economical in the United States. Also, the stacked, relatively small office areas are not suitable for many large-scale research projects. In Germany, however, Kahn’s design became an example for type schemes of educational facilities of the sixties. His idea to position all vertical ventilation and air-conditioning shafts along the exterior walls also set standards for the further development of research buildings in the USA. Various laboratory towers show this arrangement: for instance, the Kline Biology Tower at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (1966), by Philip Johnson; in modified form, the Earth Sciences Tower by I. M. Pei at the MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1964), or, also in Cambridge, the five-storey Hoffman Laboratory at Harvard University designed by Walter Gropius and his TAC practice as far back as in 1960. In contrast to the uncompromising clarity of Kahn’s and SOM’s designs, these buildings contain a rather conventional middle zone. Except for individual peripheral shafts, this zone accommodates all service and circulation cores and thus forms a considerable barrier to a flexible plan layout.
Ground floor plan, Kline Biology Tower of Yale University, New Haven, CT. Architects: Philip Johnson and Richard Foster Architects
The other laboratory building by Louis I. Kahn, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla near San Diego, California, completed in 1965, is considered to be one of the masterpieces of 20th century architecture. Kahn made use of the spectacular setting on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean to create a holistic work of art embracing the landscape, self-confident architectural volumes, and awesome views. Although the unique character of this research building is mainly based on its location, its design concept still comprises some groundbreaking ideas. The client, microbiologist Dr. Jonas Salk, made a major contribution to the design. The complex consists of two parallel building wings separated by a court featuring a narrow canal, pools, and sea views. In-situ concrete Vierendeel girders span the entire floor width of the building volumes. As in the Richards Medical Research building, all vertical elements are integrated into the perimeter of the lab floors. Horizontal ducts run in interstitial floors. In contrast to the Richards building, there are fewer storeys, and the laboratory zones are rectangular and much larger. Facing the court, small individual cells for concentrated study are attached to the open lab floors. Offices and libraries are positioned at the gable ends of both wings. Kahn succeeded in creating a human working environment by contrasting the exposed in-situ concrete with untreated timber elements and careful detailing. The floor plan layout of the complex became a reference for many laboratory buildings to come, particularly in the highly equipped chemical, biological, and pharmaceutical sector.
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California. Architect: Louis I. Kahn, 1959-67
Between 1961 and 1967, the practice of I. M. Pei had the opportunity to design a research building in similarly breathtaking countryside. The National Center for Atmospheric Research was to be planned in the virgin mountain scenery of a mesa in the Rocky Mountains near Boulder, Colorado. At an altitude of 2000 m, the institute of scientist Walter O. Roberts was to give a number of selected scientists from different American universities a base for creative work outside the big cities. The complex consists of two groups of six-storey towers about 33 m in height resting on a two-storey pedestal. One of the groups accommodates laboratories, the other houses offices. The base contains an entrance hall, conference rooms, a canteen, and a library. The original plans proposed a third cluster of towers at the southern edge of the mesa, which would have rounded off the architectural composition – unfortunately it was never built. Roberts had envisaged a research complex that would encourage the intensive exchange of ideas between scientists. He did not want any narrow corridors, but instead opted for intimate clusters of spaces for meetings and social interaction. At the same time, the building had to be as flexible as possible to cater for the frequently changing requirements of scientific work. Pei translated this brief into an extremely small-scale layout providing many spatial interrelations between open plan areas (laboratories) and single rooms (offices) linked by mobile partitions. As it turned out, since the building’s inauguration nearly every room has been changed at least once.
Out of respect for the location, Pei refrained from designing monumental axes but leads the visitor to the complex on a narrow, twisted mountain road. The prevailing building material is porous, hammered in-situ concrete containing red aggregates from the surrounding mountains. The roofs of the laboratory towers are shaped like fume hoods. Due to the harsh climate only 15 % of the exterior received continuous vertical glazed slots. The location is also crucial for this project: one could call it a high-tech monastery in the wilderness. The small-scale interior interrelations have set an example for many other research buildings mainly in the field of arts.
A new architecture for industrial research
However, possibly the most interesting and groundbreaking development took place independently from these unique architectural achievements in the Midwest and the suburban periphery of New York City. In the fifties, these areas saw the emergence of a new industrial research architecture that was closely related to the fundamental economical and social changes of the era. In his book The Organizational Complex – Architecture, Media and Corporate Space (MIT Press, 2003), Reinhold Martin, professor at Columbia University, New York, analysed the foundations of American commercial architecture right after the war by detecting and re-evaluating original sources and linking them to social sciences. His analysis puts corporate architecture into the context of structures of a so-called ”organisational complex”. World War II and the pace at which economical interdependences within the new market created organisational structures for the leading corporations. They called for schematic and modular design patterns that were to be transformed into three-dimensional structures. This development must be seen against the technological, aesthetical and social background of the forties, fifties, and early sixties in the USA. Also, the reception and transformation of the modern architectural movement in America has to be taken into consideration. Later, this development was to take effect in post-war Europe as well.
The ideals of Modernism were transformed fundamentally by the accelerated commercialisation of the times. In America, the non-bearing glass curtain wall was invented. Its grid-like structure reflected the upcoming serial production of consumer goods in the thirties, with the automobile production of Ford as its most prominent example. From now on, the entire architectural vocabulary was subjected to standardised formats and modular dimensions. This allowed flexible organisational structures following the requirements of the ”organisational complex” to be accommodated within its grids. In form, the repetitive patterns of curtain walls on all sides of a building created a ”floating” architecture. The huge, low-rise buildings by Eero Saarinen are particularly prominent examples of this approach. In trying to explain this formal aspect, Martin reverts to the writings of Gyorgy Kepes who describes the translation of Bauhaus principles into the realm of cybernetics.
Saarinen and contemporary architects such as Gordon Bunshaft or Walter Netsch who worked in the design sections of large architectural and engineering practices (for example Skidmore, Owings and Merrill) that were organised like business corporations, themselves understood the corporate client’s requirements, and they knew best how to deliver. In merging the ideals of the European avant-garde and the interests of capital, they managed to launch Modernism into the second half of the 20th century. But it would be unfair to claim that these architects betrayed Modernism, an opinion held by some critics. The emergence of the ”corporate image” irrevocably demanded new solutions that went far beyond one-dimensional façade patterns reminiscent of IBM punch cards. Saarinen and SOM were in the vanguard of a large number of architectural practices – among them Mies van der Rohe with his later works – that succeeded in reconciling their architectural designs with the new ”corporate ethos” of their clients. The list of Eero Saarinen’s clients in the fifties reads like a who-is-who of the American ”military-industrial complex” on the verge of cold war: General Motors, International Business Machines (IBM), and Bell Telephone. This architecture cannot be understood without its historical context. The avant-garde had started its march through the ranks of big business.
Eero Saarinen and General Motors
When Eero Saarinen started designing the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan (near Detroit), in 1945 he still worked in his father’s, Eliel Saarinen, practice that he soon took over. Prefabricated building elements were already commonly used for industrial facilities. Just like in the car production, this type of architecture allowed a number of variations within system limits. GMC’s own development reflected this aspect of industrial fabrication. After World War II, military production was switched to civil goods again. With an annual production of ten million automobiles General Motors subsequently became the most successful industrial corporation in the world. GMC sold a range of different models which were, however, all based on a small number of basic modules.
Even in post-war terms the extent of Saarinen’s commission was gigantic: the brief called for 25 buildings on a 130 ha site. The final scheme proposed five groups of buildings adjoining a 9 ha artificial lake and linked together by almost 18 km of roads. Parking lots took up 35 ha. At the time of its enthusiastic inauguration in 1956, about 5,000 scientists, engineers, technologists, and designers were employed.
Although the site plan of the realised scheme bears strong resemblance to the IIT campus in Chicago designed by Mies van der Rohe in the beginning of the forties, it would be unfair to call Saarinen a disciple of Mies (who shared this view). Among other things, Saarinen had worked on the Futurama Pavilion of the New York World Fair in 1939/40 and was strongly influenced by streamline design and Norman Bel Geddes.
For the individualised consumer culture emerging in America, car production was more than simple mass production of equal products. The industry rather produced branded images that were revised and updated every year. GMC’s Technical Center became the birthplace of countless new stylings. Saarinen’s client was the glamour designer Harley J. Earl from Hollywood, who translated streamline design into extra-long automobiles with low silhouettes that seemed to follow fashion rather than the laws of aerodynamics. With the Technical Center, Saarinen had broken free from Mies’ strict functionalism. Instead, the flat and long building volumes with their endless façade patterns strongly echoed the ideas of his client. In the Technical Center, product designers, engineers, and management jointly developed every new model. All of them were branded to cater for individual groups of clients. Only production and sales took place separately in other building complexes. The project was an enormous logistic challenge that Saarinen also managed to handle through his experience in the US army.
Saarinen’s first proposal from 1945 pictured a streamlined campus and an organically shaped artificial lake. This scheme reflects the early ideas of organic urban design by Eliel Saarinen. At that time, this type of campus was believed to be a universal solution for the design of suburban development areas. During further work on the scheme, Saarinen kept the basic layout. The lake now became a rectangle and the surrounding buildings were subdivided into groups for service, research and development, engineering, and design. Furthermore, the scheme comprised two centrally located buildings on stilts in the lake housing administration and a canteen. From that stage on, the architectural language displays the influence of Albert Kahn and undoubtedly also Mies van der Rohe. But Saarinen felt closer to the vocabulary of Mies’ Lake Shore Drive Apartments than to his IIT buildings. Due to organisational changes at GMC the administration building was not built. The engineering complex was the first building to be erected. It is based on a 5 ft grid and comprises a structure with large ceiling spans and curtain walling. The building itself became a testing laboratory for new building technologies and materials: Saarinen used enamel-coated spandrel panels, tinted solar glazing, luminous ceilings, glazed bricks, and mobile partitions. Other innovations like glazing set into neoprene gaskets reflect technologies that were used in car production.
The gigantic dimensions of the campus, highlighted by the long, regularly structured façades, appear like a single introverted organisational and formal unit. At that, it created an unprecedented spatial experience. The scale reflects the dynamic perception of the complex from an automobile in motion. The landscaping scheme and the large lake tie the complex together; the most elegantly detailed group of buildings is the design complex. Generally, only the entrance halls of the individual buildings and their prominent canopies act as identifying elements. Landmarks of the complex are the steel water tower rising from the lake and the almost 20 m high aluminium-clad steel dome with a diameter of 57 m which serves as a show room for new GMC models. The dome’s skin reflects the surrounding landscape and passing automobiles.
Altogether, the General Motors Technical Center appears as an integral corporate organisational structure which is also typical for other SOM projects of the same period, for example the Connecticut General Life Insurance headquarters (1956/57) or the US Air Force Academy (1954). The boundaries between military, commercial, and academic use became increasingly blurred.
Eero Saarinen and IBM
In the mid-fifties, a fascination for shapes of the first computers and their product patterns, the IBM punch cards, evolved. People who could read and understand these signals counted themselves members of a new era. From now on, the lives of people were embossed into the modular system of the punch cards – like in the matrices of the modularly structured sheathing of the facilities they were made in. In 1956, Eero Saarinen had been commissioned to design the new IBM Manufacturing and Training Facility in Rochester, Minnesota. This factory, which also included administration, was to stand at the forefront of a new series of IBM production buildings displaying the company’s corporate image. The extensive low-rise complex received a curtain wall made of extremely thin tinted neoprene glazing with different shades of colour based on a 4 ft grid. The wafer-thin glass skin makes the building appear abstract and dematerialised; it is a telling expression of the precision of the IBM machines manufactured inside. The blue shades of the façade colour scheme also hint at the IBM nickname ”Big Blue”. (Just like Olivetti, IBM was in the process of creating a new corporate logo). The individual wings containing the production halls are connected to a central shared area accommodating the canteen, lounge and visitor areas. Instead of designing a conventional lavish entrance lobby Saarinen concentrated his attention on creating a good working environment. Differences in the appearance of production and administration facilities were abolished as far as possible in order to tear down traditional hierarchies and differences between workers and employees. To express this equality, both areas are indiscriminately sheathed with the same façade pattern. In the following, IBM went on building further factories across the US modelled on the Minnesota facilities.
The IBM plant in Rochester was a precursor for Saarinen’s next commission, the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York (completed in 1961). The centre was to provide facilities for the development of a new ”intelligent” computer generation.
During World War II a new type of large research laboratory for the private industry had emerged based on a diffuse affiliation of military and university research. Academic research hereby grew increasingly dependent on private foundations which in turn were governed by large companies. In addition, the government coordinated military projects during the war, thus taking a leading role in this field of research. This development continued during the cold war and led to the formation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950. In the following years, this affiliation became known as the ”military-industrial-academic complex”. The new research facilities needed for this purpose were separated from production and obtained their own corporate image.
When Saarinen was commissioned to design the IBM Yorktown Heights centre IBM had entertained close links with Harvard University for years. At the same time, it handled public contracts in the military sector. This close connection between military and university research also existed in another project by Saarinen which he carried out in two phases for Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey between 1957 and 1966. Both projects have to be considered together since their planning was carried out almost at the same time. Furthermore, both projects had to provide maximum flexibility because the outcome of the respective research projects they were to house could not be foreseen. While the IBM facilities in Yorktown Heights contained six departments for multi-disciplinary computer sciences, the Bell complex in Holmdel comprised research and product development. It maintained close links with universities and was designed particularly for research in the fields of circuits, data transmission, quality control, and network design.
Saarinen’s first proposal for the IBM project envisaged a campus consisting of low-rise, interconnected buildings with double-loaded corridors, grouped around a large courtyard and nestling in the hilly terrain. In contrast, the design proposal for Bell was based from the beginning on an introverted compact massing of the building volume. Saarinen’s starting point for both projects was a remarkably progressive research complex completed in 1941 – the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Yet in developing the scheme, Saarinen turned conventional day-lit areas with workplaces on the building perimeter into centrally located deep work zones which were air-conditioned and artificially lit. This tendency had become apparent in office and laboratory buildings throughout the USA, but Saarinen pursued this idea more radically. Whereas in his preliminary design sketches at least offices were positioned along the façades, ultimately all offices and laboratories were allocated in central zones accessed by peripheral corridors. The completed scheme drastically broke with the ideals of European Modernism which had postulated a strong doctrine in the twenties with its call for light and air for apartments and workplaces. From now on, the public and circulation areas around the perimeter set the stage for sweeping views of the landscape or into inner courtyards; relationships between interior and exterior space could only be experienced in a controlled manner during periodical breaks and were to take place along the building’s curtain walls.
It is interesting to compare Saarinen’s project with Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla, built approximately at the same time (1959-1965): Kahn’s offices were day-lit and naturally ventilated ”thinking cells” with adjoining loggias; they were located in front of the inner laboratory zones.
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center for IBM was one of the first large research complexes to be linked to new highways, thereby changing the bucolic landscape of the Hudson Valley south of New York City. Initially, Saarinen had envisaged natural lighting for the laboratories via courtyards and for the offices via exterior façades respectively. Yet eventually he opted for a compact three-storey building volume based in plan on a 4 ft x 6 ft grid. Each floor plan comprises funnel-shaped cores and corridors along the façades. The open plan spaces are column-free. 24 ft deep rows of laboratories are arranged back to back along narrow service corridors perpendicular to the façades. Alternately, 12 ft deep office rows are also arranged back to back along central rows of fitted cabinets. Both zones are accessed via transverse corridors. The sweeping lightweight façades of the building are juxtaposed by massive natural stonewalls facing the peripheral corridors on their inner side. The rocks were gathered locally. Individual rocks have been marked with the coordinates of their original position within the landscape. The corridors afford generous views of the surroundings. The staggering of the natural stonewalls supports the contrast between the orthogonal workspaces and the sweeping shape of the glazed exterior membrane – at that time, this was an extraordinary composition! Just how groundbreaking this scheme really was became apparent 40 years later when Sir Norman Foster adapted it for his McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England, in a striking way.
While the concave façade of the IBM building consists of natural stone and glazed panels, the convex main façade received a full height curtain wall made of dark tinted glass. It is based on a 4 ft grid and bears no relation to the 6 ft interior grid. All interior partitions are modular steel-and-glass elements. The interior grid manifests itself in prefabricated wall and cabinet elements consisting of modular panels in two different widths in dark and light colours. This differentiated interior scheme is reminiscent of the façades of the IBM factory in Rochester; it facilitates orientation in the highly repetitive circulation system.
Walter Gropius and his TAC practice were also commissioned in 1962 by IBM to design a large research centre for the development of computer systems for the Federal Government. Gropius’ proposal for the IBM Federal Systems Division Facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was a clear layout comprising linked rectangular rows of laboratories. In an alternative scheme he proposed square building volumes with inner courtyards. Unfortunately, the interesting schemes were never realised.
Saarinen’s final design for the Bell Laboratories is based on a monolithic, introverted block structure with very deep inner zones and a row of small courtyards. The basement houses the IT control rooms; also, an auditorium and a canteen are located here.
The Bell Laboratories are characterised by the strict correspondence of the square 6 ft ceiling grid, the transparent glazed interior partitions, and the grid of the continuous curtain walls. Although the building volume is embedded in a generous baroque elliptical layout of roads and green spaces, in reality the complex appears just as neutral as the grid of the interior partitions (their only variation being different shades of grey). The neutral appearance is reinforced by the sheer endless and repetitive veneer of the light reflective glazing supported by a delicate 3 ft grid of metal profiles. In the two-dimensional, graphic system, the floor levels are no longer visible. With a length of more than 400 m it was the longest ”mirror” that had ever been built. This achievement was also revolutionary in terms of building technology. Saarinen had brought together the transparency of the interior spaces with a reflective exterior skin. Solar heat gains were reduced and with it energy consumption for the air-conditioning of the exterior corridors by approximately 70 %. At that time, the Architectural Forum called this an ”inside-out” air-conditioning.
Paradoxically, the huge reflective façade does not reflect much; the flat landscape and the huge parking lots do not produce images that could be mirrored. Yet this effect was fully intended: Saarinen and his client wanted to express IBM’s corporate image with an impersonalised, incomprehensible façade – a mirroring computer screen that in its way was to become a symbol for the ”military-industrial complex” of the time.
The visions, wealth of ideas, and architectural potency of the portrayed American research buildings of the post-war era between 1945 and 1965 are the key to a better understanding of an important period of architectural history of the 20th century. After the end of Postmodernism and the rediscovery and resumption of Modernism, the echo of these projects can be heard. This is true for today’s laboratory and research buildings and many other building types.
Originally published in: Hardo Braun, Dieter Grömling, Research and Technology Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2005.