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Light is the Theme: Kimbell Art Museum

urban.agent
| August 7, 2008

My trip to the Kimbell Art Museum was perhaps the first time I visited a work of architecture that I consider a masterpiece.  It is timeless, elegant, beautiful, and a feat of structural engineering.


[Image: Louis Kahn inside the auditorium of the Kimbell Art Museum. Scanned from Light is the Theme.]

Of all buildings I have visited, I consider the Kimbell Art Museum ideal to begin a series entitled, Light is the Theme, which has less to do with the book of the same name.  For me, this visit was a pure reflection of Louis Kahn’s gift with light and his firm belief in the power and importance of natural light.

No space, architecturally, is a space unless it has natural light.

As part of architecture as experience, and following the introduction, this post serves as part two of the series, Light is the Theme.  It will be followed by the National Museum of Roman Art, by Rafael Moneo, and the de Young Museum by Herzog and de Meuron - respectively.

For those unfamiliar with this project, a brief rundown:


[Image: Aerial view from south of the Kimbell Art Museum. Scanned from Light is the Theme.]

If you have the opportunity to visit, I have a word of advice on how to approach the building.  In the same way people recommend approaching the Eiffel Tower from the École Militaire, I strongly encourage you to visit the Kimbell from a specific vantage point.  It will impact your experience.

The Kimbell offers parking on the east end of the site, but is not intended to be approached or entered from this direction.  Instead, park on West Will Rogers Road that runs parallel to the field at the west end of the site.  From this point, you will enter as intended.  As you approach through the field, moving between trees, up a flight of steps, between reflecting pools, and into the grove of yaupon holly trees at the entrance; you will experience an alternating sequence of moving parallel and perpendicular to the building.  This creates an overwhelming sense of arrival through the articulated procession.

Furthermore from this approach, like all of Kahn’s buildings, the structure of the building is visibly revealed at the entrance.  Flanking the north and south side of the holly grove are two open vaults that serve as porticos oriented toward their respective reflecting pools.  These open vaults are part of 16 total that define the building; 6 on each side, 4 down the middle.


[Image: North portico of the building entrance on the west side.]

Each vault, itself, is 23 feet wide and 100 feet long.  This may not seem extraordinary, but these are single span vaults supported on four columns.  This placement of columns only at the corners creates a bit of deception.  When viewed from the short end, the perceived length of the vault is dramatically reduced due to foreshortening.  However, a broad face view reveals the incredible span, that becomes even more apparent when you put your eye behind the lens of a camera.  As you see below, I found it difficult to capture a single vault within the frame of a normal lens without putting a great distance between myself and the building.  Try it yourself.


[Image: My own attempts at capturing a single vault within a single frame.]

As if that wasn’t impressive enough, natural light is introduced at the peak of the vault by a continuous slit.  Thinking of an arch, this is typically the place for a keystone.  With the Kimbell, however, Kahn decides he will introduce light at the zenith of the vault.

Ok, let that sink in a moment.  Continuous skylight at the peak of a vault?

These vaults are not, in fact, vaults; rather, they are a structural hybrid between pure vault and pure shell.  Thus, as you will see in the picture below, ribs at 10 foot intervals maintain the integrity of the barrel “vault.”  Meanwhile, the “shell” acts as post-tensioned concrete beams, curved beams at that.


[Image: Construction photo taken from the future location of the library. Scanned from Light is the Theme.]

Kahn was willing to obscure the real complexity of a structure for the sake of visual clarity.

One of the reasons Kahn was willing to do this resulted from the quality of light produced by this system.  The as-cast finish, using marine-grade plywood as formwork, combined with the diffused light to create the environment and experience envisioned by Kahn.

Here I felt that the light in the rooms structured in concrete will have the luminosity of silver.  I know that rooms for the paintings and objects that fade should only most modestly be given natural light.  The scheme of enclosure of the museum is a succession of cycloid vaults … each forming the rooms with a narrow slit to the sky, with a mirrored shape to spread natural light on the side of the vault.  This light will give a glow of silver to the room without touching the objects directly, yet give the comforting feeling of knowing the time of day.


[Image: Interior view from a southern vault containing part of the permanent collection.]

I remember seeing images of this building back in school thinking, it can’t possibly be that beautiful in person.  Having such a unique luminescence, I imagined it could only be the result of the “perfect” day or some tricks of photography.  Not so.  I was absolutely dumbstruck by the silver shimmer on the as-cast surface, that can only be described as lunar.

Underneath this skylight is attached a continuous diffuser, which Kahn dubs a “natural light fixture.”  However, this is not the only means by which natural light is introduced into the spaces.  Among the other methods are:


[Image: Left - Vault exterior with polycarbonate and acrylic sheet atop the light opening; Right - “Natural light fixture,” or anodized aluminum reflector suspended below skylight.]


[Image: Left - Background illustrates partial glass infill between cycloidal vault and semi-circular travertine infill, foreground illustrates full glass infill between library floor slab and cycloidal vault; Right - Glass infill below the 100 foot long span reveals light at the structure while highlighting the use of only 2 support points.]


[Image: Left - The Blue Courtyard, one of three courtyards cut across the vaults; Right - View of the Blue Courtyard from inside the gallery space.]

Located in Fort Worth, the Kimbell Art Museum becomes a filter of the harsh Texas sun for the fragile art contained within.  However, this building is not limited to the purely technical aspects of light.  This building truly is a celebration of natural light as expressed through structure, in all its forms.

Structure is the giver of light.

As witnessed above, the many different methods of introducing natural light allow the user to be fully aware of the weather, time of day, and time of year.  We know this to be true of any building with transparency, but are perhaps growing less aware of its effects.  The need for consistent lighting has filled many of our buildings with fluorescents and floor to ceiling glass - the latter of which I find good and bad.

Artificial light is a static light… where natural light is a light of mood.  And sometimes the room gets dark - why not? - and sometimes you must get close to look at it, and come another day, you see, to see it in another mood…

The museum has as many moods as there are moments in time, and never as long as the museum remains as a building will there be a single day like the other.

Perhaps it is our anthropocentric nature to associate human emotion to buildings, but effective nonetheless.  This method helps us share an experience or sensation that defines an event or place.

My visit to the Kimbell was unusually long, even for me, but it helped me experience a broad range of the building’s moods.  I arrived after lunch, shortly before an appointment I had with Patricia Cummings Loud, the building’s architectural historian and Kahn scholar, using the extra time to experience the site and landscaping with patience.  I approached as recommended above, then drifted toward the sculpture garden on the south, around back to the parking, finally completing the circle to arrive at the entrance again.  This left me with a little time to quickly experience the magnificence of the gallery space.


[Image: Noguchi sculpture garden at the southern end of the site.]

The tour was definitely worth the effort to organize.  She took me into the library, auditorium, and admin area; not accessible to most visitors.  Moreover, she was very patient with my trigger-happy finger on the camera.

However, I move quickly through the majority of this visit, because even as I sit here typing, I’m bursting with excitement to share the most amazing part of the day.  It was late in the day, with the sun setting low over the Texas horizon, ending what had been a beautiful afternoon.  I decided to return inside for one last pass through the galleries, while my dad is snoozing in the car, to get my last fix for the day before we drive back to Houston.  This was the best decision yet.

As I turned into the southern gallery for one last time, I saw what can only be described as architectural magic.  The setting sun cast a shallow angle of light across the surface of water outside.  Reflected at this angle, the light bounced underneath the portico.  More importantly, it shot straight into the short piece of infill glass resting between the long span beam and travertine infill.  Inside, the eastern half of the barrel vault captured the reflection, displaying a dance of light overhead.  Agitations in the surface of the water were translated inside the museum, producing an experience of the museum’s art in concert with the art of architecture.

And the cloud that passes over gives the room a feeling of association with the person that is in it, knowing that there is life outside of the room…

This is something you truly have to see for yourself.

Don’t forget to answer the poll at the top right.  I am curious to see how many of you have made the trip.  For those who haven’t, and never had any intentions to, maybe I changed your mind.

Next: The National Museum of Roman Art by Rafael Moneo

ARCHITECTURE AS EXPERIENCE

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