Alfred Newton Richards and David Goddard Medical Laboratories
In 1957 the architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974) was commissioned by his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, to design conjoined buildings for medical and biological research. Kahn was then cutting back on his teaching at Yale, where he had worked since 1947, and beginning to teach at Penn. The commission was likely intended to convince him to finalize the move.
The Richards Medical Research Laboratories was completed first and was immediately recognized as both a new, strategic investment in science—Sputnik was launched in 1957—and a new kind of modern architecture. In June-July 1961 it was the subject of a one-building exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where the curator called it "probably the single most consequential building constructed in the United States since the [second world] war."
The building exemplified Louis Kahn’s important critique of the state of modern architecture, which by the 1950s had drifted into the doldrums of dreary sameness. Formulaic, boxy buildings, often of steel and glass, were being built to serve every possible function—schools, offices, residences, museums, and they were placed everywhere--in cities and suburbs, on mountains, and in deserts. Interiors were similarly non-specific “open plans,” suitable for anything, and for nothing in particular.
The Richards Building was recognized as the first potent demonstration of something different—the notion that modern architecture ought to derive its power from specificity rather than universality—the specificity of purpose, structure, and place.
First, the building was designed to support a particular kind of research--conducted by teams, each of which would occupy a 45 x 45 foot studio, stacked in three towers, with light on all sides. It was the judgment of Kahn and apparently his Penn clients that these teams would work relatively independently and would not significantly grow or shrink.
Richards was also defined by the specifics of its structure and mechanical systems. It was built of precast concrete Vierendeel trusses, engineered by August Komendant (1906-1992), which were manufactured off-site and assembled, locking together like a set of giant Lego blocks. This structure was not hidden within a shiny cocoon but forthrightly expressed on the outside and visible inside in every room.
The characterful towered skyline was also not the product of artistic whimsy but specific need. The scientists had heavily stressed the need to evacuate contaminated air from the laboratories, and so he designed huge exhaust stacks.
And finally, Richards was not a lightweight, go-anywhere modernist cube, but a weighty looking, picturesque design, attuned to the specifics of its site on the Penn campus. The craggy, towered profile and brick and cream-colored concrete structure echoed the shapes and materials of its older neighbors, the adjacent English Renaissance Morgan Building and the neo-Tudor Quadrangle dormitories across the way.
Kahn was not afraid of history, and although he always denied it, his youthful travels to the towered towns of northern Italy must also be counted among the deeper, perhaps unconscious energizers of this design.
To be sure, right from the start, researchers in the Richards Building found the light excessive, the lack of private space uncomfortable, and the assumptions about the structure and dynamics of research unrealistic. The labs began to be partitioned and the windows blocked before move-in day in January 1961. Moreover, there was difficulty raising money for the Biology Building. The library and lecture room were stripped from its program, and later that year Kahn was demoted to “consulting architect” for its completion, which came in 1963. But his design ideas were respected.
In 2015-2019 the Richards Building was scrupulously restored, and it was repurposed for "dry" research. This allowed many of the 45 x 45 foot lab floors to be partially opened, approximating Kahn’s vision.
Photo credit: UPenn
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