The Salk Institute: A Monument Worthy of Picasso
Near La Jolla, California
On the bluff to the north stands one of the most admired buildings in America, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. It carries the name of Jonas Salk, the scientist who developed the first safe, effective vaccine against polio. To grasp what that meant, consider this.
In the two years before his vaccine became widely available, the United States averaged roughly forty thousand polio cases a year. By nineteen sixty-two that number had fallen to about nine hundred ten. Salk did not want to stop at curing a disease.
He dreamed of a place where scientists could explore the basic principles of life. In nineteen sixty the City of San Diego gave him twenty-seven acres overlooking the Pacific, and he partnered with the architect Louis Kahn. Salk told Kahn to create a facility worthy of a visit by Picasso.
What Kahn built, two long blocks of laboratories framing a bare travertine courtyard split by a single thin channel of water that seems to run straight out to the horizon, is widely called his masterpiece. Its first laboratory opened in nineteen sixty-three, the complex was finished in nineteen sixty-five, and the original buildings were named a historic landmark in nineteen ninety-one.
