Save Salk Institute From Disfigurement

I was in Los Angeles recently for the opening of a retrospective at MOCA of my father, architect Louis I. Kahn (Calendar, “The Evolution of Kahn,” Feb. 27). Of course, it can’t help but make a son proud to see his father’s reputation continue to grow long after his death, but the evening contained a bitter irony for me.

While my father’s drawings and models were being admired under the protection of glass, acid-free paper and an army of guards, not two hours down the road in La Jolla, his Salk Institute, a universally acknowledged masterpiece of world architecture, was about to be brutally disfigured.

Any day, construction is due to begin on two ungainly buildings abutting the east end of the Salk Institute and its magnificent court facing the sea, a picture of which appeared on the cover of the Feb. 27 Calendar section. Not only will the new structures all but destroy a grove of eucalyptus trees through which visitors now enter the court, but they will also crowd the existing building so much that its singular power and beauty will be lost.

This may sound like yet another gripe by an architect trying to prevent a necessary institutional expansion. But I am not an architect, and I don’t object to the expansion, only to the placement of the proposed buildings. You don’t have to be an architect to see that there are any number of other places where new structures could be situated on the institute’s 27 acres that would not interfere with the perfect harmony of the existing building and its surrounding landscape. The MOCA show includes plans and models of the additional buildings my father himself planned for the site, including a meeting house for the north bluff, closer to the ocean.

What does all this matter to the average citizen of Southern California? This is your building too! To stand in this luminous court, while a thin channel carries a stream of water from the eucalyptus grove at one end, facing toward the Pacific and the setting sun at the other, is a profoundly spiritual experience.

In an age characterized by our inability to live and work in harmony with the Earth, this place stands as a magnificent exception. It does nothing less than restore your faith in the projects of humanity. If this modern acropolis is to continue to offer such inspirations, it will be up to you.

Dr. Jonas Salk and his board are used to the griping of the architectural community. They have turned a deaf ear to it. But if they hear from you, the people of this state, they will have to listen. They will have to move their new buildings to a better place.

It is all very well and good to admire an architect’s dreams in a museum, but not to preserve the few that became reality is a tragic confusion of ends and means we can all do without.

Letters should be sent to:

Office of the President

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies

10010 N. Torrey Pines Road

La Jolla, Calif. 92037