It’s like installing a two-story-high picket fence around Stonehenge — San Diego Reader
A dispute over an addition to the Salk Institute in La Jolla has ended. Last week, the Planning Commission denied an appeal claiming the proposed design ruins the historic integrity of the East Torrey Pines building.
The proposed project, located at 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, increases the East Torrey Pines building from 94,200 to 97,140 square feet, while decreasing the future Salk Community Center. Changes will be made to the building's floor plans, exterior elevations and roof. as well as its access, parking and landscaping.
23 Comments
Is this serious? Wow. I'd love to read the complete design rationale for this enclosure and why the proposal doesn't affect the historical integrity of the building and its plaza. Does the proposed design expand lab space in a manner not otherwise possible?
well this is stupid but in this society people have the right to be stupid. let them learn the hard way.
actually. it's not clear what exactly is going to be lost here. It looks like the main plaza will be left open but there is an addition further to the east, and this was approved back in 2008.
Are these three pictures of the same area? They look to be, but it's hard to tell.
It's not just a matter of preserving the integrity of the design. This view also belongs to collective memory, and for many of us (me for a time) it's the only view we know of the building, the one that appears in general architecture histories and popular media, pre-internet the only one most had access to. And deservedly so. The image itself belongs to the whole culture, fueling our imagination in so many ways, and as such needs to be preserved (or the actual place that created it).
HDR, that's all you need to know. Never let a shit firm get involved in a project of this importance.
From Google Earth it looks like the 10010 North Tory Pines address is about 550 feet southeast of the start of the water feature in the plaza. At the present time it is a location of several industrial steel buildings you would expect to find in support of the Institute. The proposed changes would not 'threaten' the open plaza which has recently been restored. That said the changes do not seem to be very inspired at all. The main institute was designed by Louis Kahn and the water feature suggested to him by Louis Barragan. A restrained genius like I.M. Pei might have been able to come up with an appropriate structure - but we don't have those anymore.
The address for the whole Salk Institute is 10010 North Tory Pines. Google Earth only puts its little icon on one of the buildings.
It looks to me like HDR is proposing a renovation of these two buildings Anshen & Allen placed next to the Kahn building in the 1990s.
The Anshen & Allen buildings were themselves quite controversial in
the 1990s. IIRC, they replaced a grove of trees that many considered to
be part of an entry sequence to Kahn's plaza.
Ah so it's not the main plaza? The 2022 render seems to show the main plaza but the 2008 proposal seems to show the smaller plaza in your image.
Yes, it appears that the Salk understands that the Kahn buildings and main plaza have great value, they have spent megabucks on some very world-class conservation work to maintain Kahn's wood windows and other elements. How the rest of the Salk property surrounding the Kahn stuff gets used or not used for new buildings is where there seems to be no consensus.
This render shows what I now think is eally happening: A new building in what is currently the parking lot in front of the Anshen & Allen builidngs.
sorry, the photo didn't upload
A lot of the concern is about a view not being shown in the story: the space between Kahn's buildings on the opposite end of the ocean view.
Will this currently open space be filled with a piece of 2020's era corporate architecture?
I like some of the side views as well.
Here's a photo I took of the side of the building nobody ever photographs.
It's a great building. Please, please don't add on to it.
some people do;) it is a very nice photo. It has the feel of Ahmadabad buildings. A fortified palace of science.
Exactly, Orhan.
There.
Louis Vuitton is getting in on the act:
CRUISE 2023 SHOW
Nicolas Ghesquière presents his Louis Vuitton Cruise 2023 Fashion Show from California on May 12th at 9:45 pm (ET).
https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/magazine/articles/women-cruise-2023-show?dclid=CKLLgrr32vcCFSyKfwQdtj8JRQ#
This is the banner ad at NYT.
Sigh.
That guy on the third row tried to cut me off in the grocery store parking lot the other day. In the meantime, they are closed to the general public because of Covid excuse...
If you click on that link now you get the fashion show, plus many good shots and a flyby of the plaza. I'm trying to learn the flat stare of the fashion models.
The trick is to add just a whiff of disdain and boredom. Oh, and lose (for me) a hundred lbs.
I couldn't decide if I liked or hated the idea of a fashion show here. I want to hate it because of the silliness. But the notion of a big, splashy event using this wonderful project's forms and spaces to organize all the activities-- I love that.
I also enjoy the idea of wealthy rumps in painful discomfort on those unforgiving concrete benches. Then I figured that the organizers probably had custom cushions made by child labor, and stuffed with panda fur and condor feathers.
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