 | The AIA jury described the British Art Center as "one of the quietest expressions of a great building ever seen." |
The Yale Center for British Art has been selected to receive the American Institute of Architects' (AIA) Twenty-Five Year Award, a prestigious honor recognizing architectural structures "of enduring significance," the AIA announced.
The AIA has presented the Twenty-Five Year Award since 1969 to honor architectural landmarks built 25 to 35 years ago that have "withstood the test of time." The Yale Center for British Art is the fifth building designed by architect Louis I. Kahn to receive the award; the Yale University Art Gallery, which Kahn designed in the 1950s, was similarly honored in 1979.
As this year's recipient of the Twenty-Five Year Award, the Yale Center for British Art will be honored at the American Architectural Foundation's Accent on Architecture gala on Feb. 11 in Washington, D.C. The event will also pay tribute to Kahn, who died in 1974, one year after construction of the center began.
Opened to the public in 1977, the Yale Center for British Art received an AIA Honor Award one later. In announcing that award, the jury that selected it for the honor noted, "This building is a gentle urbane masterpiece. It offers a quiet foil to its more demonstrative neighbors and, from the interior, frames and augments them. The small specialty shops tucked into its façade give vitality and continuity to the pedestrian character of the street. The interior spaces are well planned for easy movement through the exhibits. They frequently reveal surprising glimpses of one another. A quiet feeling of delight grows within you with the discovery of each new space, and the manner in which the whole is subtly revealed has an ever-surprising complexity."
The Yale Center for British Art was erected to house the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. Located across the street from the Yale University Art Gallery (Kahn's first major commission), the center was the first museum in the United States to incorporate retail shops on the street. In announcing its award to the center, the AIA noted that the building's exterior of matte steel and reflective glass "becomes animated in the sunlight."
"On a gray day the building looks like a moth; on a sunny day, like a butterfly -- just as Kahn once predicted," wrote James F. Williamson of the AIA and Louis R. Pounders, a fellow of the AIA, in their nomination letter.
The center's geometrical interior is designed around two courtyards, one housing a massive concrete cylinder concealing a spiral stair that dominates the library courtyard. Other features of the center include Travertine flooring, Belgian linen wall coverings, white oak woodwork, stainless steel panels and ducts, and exposed concrete structural elements.
In keeping with his belief that natural light is essential to fully appreciate the artworks on view, Kahn designed the building in a manner that would allow for an abundance of light. The natural light that illuminates the four-story entrance court is filtered into the adjoining galleries through unglazed interior windows and skylights light the top-floor galleries. Angled louvers and baffles in the truncated, pyramidal concrete coffers block bluish north light and screen ultraviolet rays, admitted larger quantities of light when the sun is low than when it is higher in the sky. The jury for the Twenty-Five Year Award noted, "This building reflects Kahn's continuous search for simplicity and the use of daylight to define space. It is one of the quietest expressions of a great building ever seen -- so rewarding and exhilarating when you step inside. The materiality and the language of the wood, stainless steel, concrete and natural linen is still a delight for the eye."
Kahn, who immigrated to the United States from Estonia at the age of four, earned his bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught at Yale from 1947 to 1957, during which time he was also a resident architect at the American Academy in Rome. While there, he traveled throughout Italy, Egypt and Greece, recording historic architecture in drawings and sketches. After his tenure at Yale, he became dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. In the mid-1950s, Kahn rose to prominence in his field, receiving significant awards and commissions. Other buildings designed by Kahn that have been honored with the AIA's Twenty-Five Year Award are the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; and the Phillips Exeter Library in Exeter, New Hampshire.
Among the other notable structures which have been honored with the Twenty-Five Year Award are the Rockefeller Center in New York City (designed by Raymond Hood); the Guggenheim Museum (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright); the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, and Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia (both designed by Eero Saarinen); the John Hancock Center in Chicago (designed by Bruce Graham/SOM); and the Seagram Building in New York City (designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe).
The AIA represents the professional interests of America's architects. Its members include more than 74,000 licensed architects, emerging professionals and allied partners.
T H I S
AIA honors British Art Center
for its 'enduring significance'
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