Location: Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Architect: Louis Kahn
Ccompleted: 1937
15 Photographs
There is something timeless about the Kimbell Art Museum, almost like it could be a hundred years old, or a thousand, the way it rises out of the earth like a stone formation, left alone by the hand of the wind. It has a character quite suited to becoming a ruin, and will no doubt be a highlight in post-apocalyptic tours of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area if it survives the churn.
Henry and I had come to Texas at the end of a long road trip through the deserts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and we had experienced many wonderful places, people, and events along the way. Only weeks before, we had stood in Monument Valley, admiring the mesas in the dusty purple evening light after dusty day on the road. Having lived as desert rats for the weeks leading up, it is no surprise that when we come to talk about the Kimbell so many years later, Louis Kahn’s masterpiece evokes a similar kind of connection to this place for the both of us.
In the days after our visit, Henry described it as ‘The most complete building, I have ever visited’. In the years before and since, I have seen a lot of concrete buildings, old and new, from the good to the great and all the way down to the terrible. I have been involved in the construction of a few of our own as well. Amidst all of this, I still can’t think of another building that compares. There is a level of craftsmanship in the Kimbell that makes it feel like a piece of furniture as much as a building, and when you understand how in-situ concrete of this type is made, this makes perfect sense. To make a building like this, the liquid concrete is poured into a negative formwork, made of steel or timber, and then that formwork, almost like a cabinet shell itself, is stripped away to reveal the concrete.
I have always been intrigued by how we as humans inhabit the desert. It is such a hostile but beautiful place and from Sedona to Uluru, humans have struggled with how to inhabit the hot dry parts of the world, providing protection from the elements, and embracing the beauty. There is a lot of learning from those attempts in the result at the Kimbell, both in the form of the building and its response to the elements. Like all desert dwellings, the primary objective is to bring in the light, while protecting from the sun and in doing so, this is the great success of the building, above anything else. The way the ceiling vaults reflect light is just divine, the shape and finish carefully crafted to express this as primary to the function of the building.
Like all profound artistic works, the Kimbell Art Museum feels simple enough to be drawn by a child. An architect I admire once claimed that good architecture is obvious in retrospect because where it is successful, it is drawn out of its context in such a way that it feels almost inevitable. The Kimbell is a building that does this, a perfect example of Oliver Wendell Holmes concept of ‘the simplicity the other side of complexity’, sitting neatly at the intersection of a mud hut and a Stradivarius.
HWLK
