One of the goals of this trip was seeing the Kahn buildings in out-of-the-way places that I had not seen before.  An unintended theme that developed has been seeing most of the Piano museums across the country.  The Kimbell is where these two came together, in what must be the ultimate compare-and-contrast question for a modern architectural history exam.  After seeing the two together, I’m more convinced than ever that having Piano design the addition to Kahn’s Kimbell was the best possible choice.  There is no other living architect whose work could pay homage to Kahn without imitating him, and who could simultaneously complement Kahn’s work while taking an archetypally different tectonic approach.

Of all of Kahn’s major works, the Kimbell was the one I always found least interesting.  It just seemed too simple – come up with a bay cross-section that’s supposedly good for daylighting, extrude it to an absurd length, then repeat that bay module in a slightly-varied way.  Of course it’s rigorous, it’s subtle, it’s beautifully-detailed, but I thought the spatial experience would just be too uniform.  I was wrong.  It is the perfect example of how playing within a strictly-controlled system can lead to a lot of richness and experiential variety.  The modules are used to make long rooms and short rooms, narrow rooms or wide rooms, they open up at the end or the side, they are left out and so create spaces not strictly within the system – such as the entry court or the small internal courtyards.  Or walls are left off and it becomes a loggia.  

Of course, the building is about the light, something you have to go there to see.  My prior reaction was entirely too conceptual, thinking about this parti versus the partis of other Kahn buildings.  Kahn buildings seem simple when you study them, but when you visit you are overwhelmed by the experiential richness.  The Kimbell is the most extreme example of this.

it’s a remarkably calm building, and even though it’s brilliant, it can recede into the background, allowing you to focus on the art – the spaces are comfortable, bathed in the wonderful light, and movement among the galleries is clear and effortless.  So here is the biggest problem I had with the Kimbell, compared to the Yale British Art Center – the collection is just too good.  The British Art Center is full of ghastly English paintings, all giant Stubbs with horses, etc., nothing to distract you from looking at the building except the Turners.  The Kimbell collection is superb – who else has a small painting done by the 12-year-old Michelangelo?  The Renaissance art is great, as is the modernist work – I now have a new favorite Munch.  As much as I wanted to think about the building, the art kept pulling me away.

I do have some niggling problems with it.  The intended main entry was from the lawn and grove on the west side, but I bet it wasn’t much used.  In a car-dominated environment like Ft. Worth, the entry sequence is from the car.  It is like the current American house – you’re supposed to enter through the grand entry hall, but everyone comes through the garage door into the kitchen.  The default entry, from the small car court, is pretty uninviting – and this is the street facade.  It is severe, almost like a service entry.  The sculpture doesn’t even help.

The stairs from here up to the gallery level are okay, slowly revealing the essence of the design as you ascend,

but they then drop you at kind of a funny point – facing a wall not quite in the museum, sort of in the bookstore, looking across to the courtyard area facing west.  It’s a problem with a modular building – how do you emphasize entry or centrality, when every bay is equal?  The new entry sequence from the Piano building is much better – after parking under the building, you head up a new funny little stair, not unlike Kahn’s, then turn, and see the Kahn building across the lawn.  This is the intended main entry, but it took the Piano addition to get you there.  

This movement across the lawn and through the grove / allee is wonderful.  Entering either building from its own parking area below is bad, so the sequence now should be: park under Piano, come up the Piano stairs, see the Kahn building and go there, and then later recross the lawn to the Piano building.  They probably wouldn’t let Piano design a stair up that was any nicer than Kahn’s.

There are a few things that seem a little unsystematic, such as the fire stairs.  The vaults meet at a relatively narrow channel/beam, which doesn’t provide enough width for services such as fire stairs.  So Kahn sticks the stairs  at the end of the building, poking out a bit, and then tries to hide them with travertine.  They just bugged me – kind of awkward, and not in the system of how he’s using travertine in other places.  Also not in the vocabulary of how he’s using this in-between zone elsewhere.

And be aware that if you make big reveals between parts in your system, the staff will pile things in these places that theoretically should be empty.

Kahn had the advantage here of working sui generis, whereas everything Piano subsequently did has to be seen in relationship to Kahn’s building.  The basic dichotomy is great, and plays to Piano’s strengths:  if Kahn’s building is about mass, walls and vaults, Piano’s building will be about frames, panels, joints and beams.  His building mirrors Kahn’s across the lawn in  its north-south linear bays, its use of the east-west cross axis for entry, and in its symmetry.  But then everything about the tectonics is different, and in the typical Piano vocabulary.  

Neither building can be said to have a facade that really addresses the lawn between – the north-south walls are the side elevations where the logic of the linear bays plays out.  The Piano entry hall also mirror Kahn’s across the axis, but this time done with paired glu-lam beams instead of post-tensioned vaults.  

The Piano light scoops and shades are in full play, fitting in a building which plays off the iconic American daylighting masterpiece across the way.  The main galleries are to the north and south, and are beautifully lit and proportioned.  

The east-west axis is very transparent, with a glazed corridor continuing the axis to the second part of the building between two small internal courtyards, which separate the building into two bars.  The view is terminated by a daylit concrete wall.    

The second bar of the building contains some more gallery space, offices and support spaces, and a large auditorium.  Most of these spaces are at the lower level, which is reached by symmetrical stairs on the longitudinal axis.  

They are bound by two massive concrete walls, one of which is tilted.  This being Renzo Piano, there must be reason for it (with most other architects these days, I wouldn’t even bother to ask why), but I couldn’t figure out what the reason was.

The auditorium is a two-story volume, the west wall of which is completely glazed, with light bouncing off another concrete wall outside.  I was curious about the space between the glazing and the concrete, so I went around the back and found that a sloping lawn extends over the roof of this bar, and you can look down into the most elegant dead-pigeon space ever built.  

This green roof also allows you a close-up view of the roof structure of the front bar.  I wish Simpson would bring out a Renzo Piano line of framing connectors.  

There are also some antennae on the roof, which they clearly did not want to anchor through the roof membrane, so they attached them to metal pans which are then weighted down.  Notice that the one on the left is weighted with standard concrete blocks with the cells facing upward, the one on the right uses concrete blocks with the cells facing sideways, and the one in the middle has thinner, solid blocks (probably concrete pavers). The amount of care that Piano’s office takes with such detailing decisions is truly staggering – every different condition is thought through carefully and resolved.    

As always, all the detailing is scrupulous.  The logic of each piece is worked out to the nth degree, and then no expense is spared to fabricate the perfect element.  This is the detailing at the entry vestibule upper corner:  

Ordinarily I revel in Piano’s detailing – following the logic to understand the form is an intellectual pleasure that really only we architects get to share, eh?  But something was nagging me here;  after seeing Kahn’s building, parts of Piano’s seems a little fussy, perhaps baroque?  

Compared to:  

The contrast is revealing.  Kahn’s work may be tectonic, in that the columns, vaults, infill panels, etc., are all expressed and articulated, but when you look closely, you have to admit that there is a lot going under the skin that you don’t see.  That isn’t a travertine wall, it is a concrete block wall covered in travertine.  He is not trying to fabricate a completely abstract surface, such as in the work of other architects the period, but neither does he want you to see the real guts of the building.

Piano wants you to see the guts, but actually only the really good-looking guts –you certainly don’t see any conduit running around – in fact, you don’t even see any ductwork.

Kahn is reducing the complexity of the tectonics to the big, elemental, iconic pieces of Architecture, while Piano is taking those big iconic pieces and breaking them into as many little beautiful parts as he can.  They are both masters at what they’re doing, and being able to see these buildings together makes you think about the two approaches much more than if you saw one at a time.

A comparison of the end elevations is also revealing.  Each has the problem of how to end a modular building – essentially you are chopping it off at the bay line, revealing the cross section.  The Kahn building is more elegant than I thought it would be – the rhythm of the vaults and the interstitial spaces is is powerful, like an aqueduct running across the landscape.

In constrast, I thought the end elevation of the Piano building was its weakest point.  

It feels lugubrious and too dense, with too many big pieces too close together.  Paradoxically, Kahn, the master of mass and masonry, uses concrete and stone to make a facade which feels light and reflective, while Piano, the master of transparency and ethereal steel fabrications, uses frame elements to make a facade which feels heavy and clumsy.

The Kimbell was always an important destination for architects, but with the Piano addition, it has an even stronger attraction, as a complex which makes you think, and not just enjoy.

Given the architectural milieu of the South, the last thing I expected to find was a Frank Gehry building.  But right there on the Biloxi waterfront, just past the first wave of casinos, is this recent museum by Gehry, primarily designed to house the biomorphic pottery of George Ohr, the Mad Potter of Biloxi.  It is actually an ensemble of five new buildings and a reconstructed (post-Katrina) historic one playing off a cluster of live oaks in the middle.  As has occurred in some other Gehry projects, the breakdown of scale and the need to engage the landscape leads to more interesting work than when it’s just a large object building.

The individual buildings show a range of visual and formal approaches.  The visitors’ center / shop / cafe building has a brick shell, with big roofs shooting off, and a rooftop terrace that is sheltered by a similar roof, which seems to refer to a Gulf Coast vernacular approach for which I can’t remember the name.      The interior is a big volume with lots of exposed everything.  The contrast between the curving brick walls and the linear steel elements which make up the roof framing is kind of fun. 

There is temporary exhibits building, which is much simpler, tucked behind a porch and fading into the background.  

There is a building for African-American art, but at this point half of it is being used for Ohr pottery, as the building intended for Ohr’s work is not yet completed.  On the exterior there again is the juxtaposition of differing systems, with brick volumes below and the metal roof above.   But strangely the interior is all gypsum-board shapes, which somewhat reflect the exterior forms, but the materiality of the exterior is completely absent.  There’s a disconnect here that I don’t understand. Is it budget, is it wishing to create a more neutral space for the exhibition of art?  

The cluster of four curving metal pods for Ohr’s pottery sits across the courtyard.  The contrast between the trees and the metal is beautiful, and the abstract, unified quality (they are just surface) of the pods sets them off from the other buildings.      Looking through the door at one of the unfinished pods was revealing – it resembles an Airstream trailer, with a metal skin over large metal framing, and another skin on the interior, which probably provides the shear resistance.  But in the one pod which is completed, the interior is again covered in white gypsum board.  Early Gehry buildings got a lot of mileage from revealing and using the necessary building elements;  I don’t know why he is now covering all that up.  

There is one reconstructed historical building, a house that was built in the 19th century by a local freedman, Pleasant Reed.  It was destroyed by Katrina, but has been faithfully rebuilt as an interpretive center, showing the vernacular construction, and tracing the lives of him and his family.  

The Biloxi pottery center has studio, exhibit and meeting spaces, and plays different games with some of the same elements as the visitors’ center.    The rooftop terrace here has been enclosed as a board room.    

The five new buildings are quite different, but they hold together as a group for a few reasons.  First, there is a common material vocabulary – brick, white panels, steel framing, curtain walls and metal sheathing.  Second, there is a form-language of how these pieces are used – rectilinear, curvilinear, and skewed shapes.  Each building is a mix-and-match of elements between these two systems, leading to a lot of richness.  There isn’t a rigid assignment of materials or shapes to specific roles within a system of meaning (I couldn’t see that the brick always meant one thing), but rather playfulness in the pairings, as if every possible combination was being explored to get the maximum variety within the limited palette.  (I can feel an analytical matrix coming on.)  

Third, the relationships of the buildings to each other and the spaces in between is well-handled.  

There is small entry zone, where you are squeezed between the brick gallery building, the pods, and the trees.  

You emerge facing a seating area by the visitors’ center, 

and then turn towards a large brick terrace.  

The central courtyard is the heart of the scheme, with the oaks framing, obscuring and balancing the buildings.  These are not simple fabric buildings, fading into the background in deference to the needs of the whole.  Each building is a strong, simple statement, and even though they share an architectural approach, without the open space and the large trees, they would be at war with each other, each clamoring for attention.  

Reflecting back on the Gehry buildings I’ve seen, my favorites are the ones where they have this relationship to the landscape, or where he creates a campus (such as the Loyola Law School).  The buildings are such powerful objects that they often look ill-at-ease on a city street.  They often don’t play well with others.  

This siting allows them each to exist and be considered on its own terms, while still working together to make a complex, varied, but still lovely outdoor space.   We don’t think of Frank Gehry buildings as being very contextual, but this complex responds wonderfully to the site, the climate, and even some vernacular building elements.  I got the impression from some locals that they don’t really understand or like this museum, but I think they got one of the best Gehry buildings around.

Sometimes it seems that Renzo Piano has designed every new museum in the US in the past 20 years, but then we come across some places that have resisted the hegemony.  However, even in these non-Piano buildings, you can see how he has shifted the conversation.  We’ve visited a lot of new museums on this trip, and in general, I think there is a much greater emphasis on the clear expression of the buildings’ systems (often with exquisite detailing), and less emphasis on look-at-me form-making, starchitect branding and spatial gymnastics than there was in prior decades.  The new buildings have great conceptual clarity, but this hasn’t been at the expense of being good museums for displaying art.

Herzog and de Meuron’s recent Perez Art Museum in Miami follows up on the success of their parking garage in South Beach, which highlighted their ability to work with structure and space, eschewing the intricate screen facades for which they were known.  The Perez Museum continues with this approach, with a parti where the articulation of the elements of frame, roof, box and plane are the basis for the scheme.  In the photo above, the roof/trellis floats above the whole building, supported on tall columns.  (We wondered if the metal plates visible at the middle of the columns are external steel reinforcement, allowing for an extreme slenderness ratio that otherwise might cause buckling.)  In the shadows under the roof you can see one of the concrete box galleries poking out.

The beautiful parking garage is under the main floor plate, which has tightly-spaced precast joists and a thin slab.  There are stairs, ramps, and stepped terraces which connect the plinth to the ground plane at a few points.

There are some excellent details at the stairs – a few ways to differentiate the conditions:  

On the side towards the water, the roof creates an enormous shaded porch with views out.  The roof structure is used to hang all sorts of growies, mimicking the Spanish moss / jungle atmosphere we’ve come across in many places, but which do somewhat resemble gigantic Chia Pets.    

And one can watch the life of the city and the port go by.

The ground floor is mainly glass, with a solid wooden box for the entry.  The parti element of solid box gallery rooms is visible, and the gallery spaces between the boxes are the gaps where the interior space can connect out to the cityscape.  

The general impression from the exterior is an almost Japanese timber-frame approach in precast concrete, with layering of structural elements.  The roof reminded me of Kenzo Tange.  The boxes and spaces under a huge roof is an approach seen before, even back as far as Pietro Belluschi houses.

Moving in from the lobby, the distinction between the concrete boxes and the partition walls in the open plan can be seen.  

There are galleries on the main floor, but most of them are one flight up.  To reach that level, you climb up this monumental stair, which also functions as the circulation for a presentation/lecture space.  

From above you can see how the auditorium can be tuned and curtained off.  In section and in function it is similar to the Seattle Public Library, where the auditorium space isn’t isolated most of the time, but open to the passer-by patrons.

There are open gallery spaces between the boxes

and a clear way of making an opening into a box

The rigor of this approach is pretty consistent, although there are some places where the detailing seems a little fudged – boxes dying into the concrete floor slab above, but screen walls doing the same.  This may be a matter of budget or convenience – it is easy to pull a screen wall way from a box for a reveal in plan, but not attaching the wall to the slab above presents structural problems.  (I may be more focussed on this after a visit to the Kimbell yesterday, where the articulation of these issues is rigorous to the nth degree.)  But it does make me wonder whether we would even be thinking about these issues if Mies had jus let the wall support the roof in the Barcelona Pavilion.  (This issue will resurface with some subsequent posts.)

There are some interesting juxtapositions of the art and architecture:

and a gallery which opens up to the third floor of offices, where a site-specific installation occurs.  I was looking at this and a museum guard offered me a lengthy handout on the piece.  I looked at it, but said that I had a problem with art that needed three pages of explication to be understood – if the piece can’t speak for itself, what’s the point?  This triggered a reminiscence by him of his earlier days studying art with Norman Rockwell and how he learned to really draw, and how a lot of the conceptual stuff he sees now makes no sense to him.  I’ve been thinking recently about the particular hell of being a classically-trained artist who spends his days surrounded by contemporary conceptual art.

And no piece on a Herzog and de Meuron museum would be complete without a photo of the sublime rest room.  This one is similar to those at the Walker addition in Minneapolis, but somehow not quite as transcendent.  I think it may be the contrast with the dark color, whereas the Walker is all white and more ethereal, an unusual  feeling to have in a public bathroom.  

The art was interesting, but not overwhelming.  Except for a show of paintings by Australian Aboriginal painters, which was spectacular.  I have a new artist on my favorites list:  Tommy Mitchell, who died a few years ago.  He didn’t start painting until he was 65.  

Overall, a building in which the articulation of the elements is striking, especially on the exterior.  The gallery spaces are fine, but not extraordinary.  And sometimes, the curators must be making an effort to make sure the artwork is well-integrated with the architecture.