On a mid-September evening, a cool dry air settled on Fort Worth, denoting a change in the weather. It was just before dusk when the blue tarp walls came down that had for three years obscured the Kimbell's new construction like a tattered blue cocoon, momentarily revealing the Kimbell Art Museum's highly anticipated Piano Pavilion. There wasn't a crowd; rather few people dotted the now truncated lawn in hard hats and business suits covered by bright construction suits. One visible security guard stood watching. The noted photographer Robert Polidori was in town to take pictures of the nearly completed expansion of the Kimbell, which opens to the public Nov. 27.
With its silk-like texture and seemingly weightless concrete walls, the new Renzo Piano-designed pavilion stood blushing in the orange light that evening. It looked bluish grey and transparent standing next to its older brother, the acclaimed Louis Kahn-designed building, which appeared heavy and warm in comparison. The latter is concrete and travertine, and the former a nearly flawless polished concrete designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. While similar in dimension and scale, their design reveals the different fathers that birthed them.
But the two buildings now face each other and share what was once fundamental to Kahn's allegorical silent space, engaging both in a new dialogue for years to come.
"These first studies will no doubt result in another major dialogue worldwide of the attributes which constitute beauty and the manner in which one may augment such a significant work," Mark Gunderson said in an article about the Kimbell Art Museum.
Gunderson is a Fort Worth architect and friend of two of Louis Kahn's children, Sue and Nathaniel Kahn. He has spent much of his adult life dedicated to studying the Kimbell.
In this article titled, Allees and Art: The Design of the Kimbell Art Museum in Brief, Gunderson mentioned the much-contested expansion project planned in 1989 when architect Romaldo Guirgola was hired to expand the Kimbell, mimicking Kahn's work by simply expanding his bays to the north and south of the original building. This was abandoned after much protest to one of the world's most noted museums.
So Gunderson asks the million-dollar question again with this new expansion: How does one augment something that is virtually perfect? It's a tough question, but one the Renzo Piano Building Workshop attempts to answer in the new building's design.
The Dialogue
"The building has created an amazing dialogue with the Kahn building," Lee said. "There are many echoes in the building like a 10-inch window above the gallery walls that run the length of the walls in both buildings. The columns are the same size in both buildings. The double stairs are an echo to the double stairs in the Kahn building … all while making his building his own."
Dialogue occurs between buildings, between patrons and across time. This dialogue lends to the prestige of a city as well. "We are looking at an age in which museums are considered to be what cathedrals used to be. A town's prestige was connected to its cathedral, museums occupy that place in cities today," Lee said.
Yes, buildings speak. They speak to their patrons in the same way a favorite book, poem, sculpture or painting speaks to an individual. When Kahn's building figuratively speaks, a "rapport" is established between the museumgoer, the building and the artwork, creating the affinity or harmony.
Piano does the same. He said in his acceptance speech for the Pritzker Prize in 1998: "Architecture is an art. It uses technique to generate an emotion, and it does so with its own specific language, made up of space, proportions, light, and materials-for an architect, matter is like sound for a musician or words for a poet."
The original director of the Kimbell, Richard Brown, knew this rapport was important in the success of designing a "first-class" museum, as Kay Kimbell requested in his dying wish. Brown and Kahn both believed in order to make his wish come true, they needed to establish a rapport with artwork. The patron must see that artwork in natural light and as that light changes throughout the day.
"The cloud that passes over gives the room a feeling of association with the person that is in it, knowing that there is life outside of the room, and it reflects the life-giving that a painting does…natural light has all the moods of the time of the day, the seasons of the year, [which] year for year and day for day are different from the day preceding," Kahn once said in an interview with William Marlin in 1972.
This light is controlled through innovative but different techniques in the original Kahn and Piano buildings. Kahn created his light through what he called "natural light fixtures." These were openings in the center of the cycloid vaults diffused by curved metal wings that tossed the direct light back onto the smooth grey underside of the vaults and down into the room. He also left a 10-inch window he called "glass joints" around the base of his vault.
Language of a Building
When Kahn designed the Kimbell, he held the utmost respect for the site's historical neighbors-the Will Rogers Memorial building. There were two roads the Will Rogers complex created in 1936-Will Rogers Road West, which is still there, and Will Rogers Road East, which had been abandoned and is now the lawn for the Kimbell. However the allée of trees that lined this abandoned road remains.
Kahn built his museum on that tree line and structured the bays of his building in the same rhythm of those historical trees. At one point, Kahn's plans went well into the trees and beyond, but he always incorporated the trees in his series of models, which are on display in the Kimbell offices. Both Lee and Gunderson said that although there isn't any evidence of this, it is obvious that the bays of the original Kimbell building parallel the rhythm of the trees.
Entering the Kimbell through these trees into Kahn's intended west entrance is part of the experience of this museum. Then there is the crossing over into the museum that begins on the lawn. Standing on the silent green space facing east toward the Kimbell's west-facing entrance, the sound of cars is distant. The elms rustle overhead. Before entering the building, gravel crunches under the feet. In the portico, a cool breeze blows through. Water from the fountains makes a delicate sound as the placid surface travels into the basin below.
Gunderson compared it to the "silence before the symphony."
All of the green spaces around this museum mecca are intentional and purposeful, which is why when the Kimbell Art Foundation's board knew they had to be careful when they decided to expand the Kimbell.
In a letter from the director to members, Lee wrote, "Because the Louis Kahn is one of the 20th century's most significant works of architecture, any expansion of the Kimbell had to be treated with the utmost sensitivity…Renzo Piano described the project as an "awesome challenge"… that walks the fine line between deference to the Kahn Building and the assertion of its own strong identity."
Initial plans for the pavilion building included a reflecting pool. Then at one point, there was going to be a piazza. Both were abandoned because it was important to the Kimbell Art Foundation's board to keep the lawn and the elms intact.
"The new landscaping is designed to extend Kahn's vision and conserve as much green space as possible, even in a design element such as Piano's 19,200-square-foot green roof," a Kimbell press release said.
Sitting on the steps of the original building looking out at the truncated lawn, a part of the story Kahn told through the Kimbell's design seems cut short. But Piano introduces a new story for patrons. The Kimbell's entire and impressive permanent collection will now be displayed. A much larger auditorium will allow for acoustic performances. The Kimbell's growing education program will have more space to expand its dream, not to mention generous underground parking.
"There are some painful tradeoffs. The main entry to Kahn's museum is a perfect sequence of outdoor spaces: the few shallow steps up from the lawn, the line of oak trees, twin arcades fronted by narrow reflecting pools. To anyone who has walked this route, the sense of inner quiet is unforgettable, and that experience will now be partly lost," New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff said in a review of the expansion.
The Man for the Job
"Piano has designed more museums than any other architect, and they are all incredibly beautiful. He designs buildings that enhance the viewing of art," Lee said.
If anyone were an expert in this field of museums and museum expansion, it would be Piano. According to Mark Carroll, a partner at Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Piano has completed 16 museums and museum expansion projects.
"We are called to do this kind of project because he has a respect for the buildings," Carroll said.
Piano also has a history with Kahn and his buildings. According to a short biography provided by the Kimbell, the Schlumberger heiress, Dominique de Menil, commissioned Piano to build the Houston masterpiece in 1980, The Menil. She requested the interior be "bathed in a "living light"… which would alter according to the time of day and weather…The location she selected was a park-like site in a quiet, outlying neighborhood of modest clapboard houses."
In a sense, Kahn haunts The Menil. Inspired by the Kimbell, Mrs. de Menil originally commissioned Kahn in 1973 to design the museum; however, plans for the project were halted when both Kahn and Mr. de Menil died. Lee said when Piano started work on the Menil in Houston, he spent three days in Fort Worth studying Kahn's light for inspiration.
"The Kimbell is one of the most influential, if not the most sublime, buildings of all time. Any architect that wanted to learn how to handle daylight after the Kimbell had to study the Kimbell, even Piano," Gunderson said.
Titans of Architecture
Carroll said he, Piano, Ben Fortson and a few colleagues were out on the lawn playfully tossing Frisbees in the new space. They also considered the proper distance for this distinguished dialogue between the buildings.
"You can't be too close and can't be too far," he said about placing the building 65 feet across from the original building. Piano demonstrated this by getting very close to a colleague and then very far when having this important conversation. Too close is abrasive, and too far is cold.
Piano made the entrance of his building not on the street side but on the east side, facing the original building. One method of preserving the green space is the expensive task of putting a parking garage under the green lawn, bringing the total cost of the project up to $135 million. An elevator carries patrons from the parking garage up through a transparent glass case and lets them out on the lawn, facing Kahn's intended west entrance.
Not only buildings speak through their application of material (concrete and glass) and immaterial elements (light), they speak to other buildings insofar as the architect takes everything around the site into account when doing his research before the project breaks ground. It not only shows deference to the other buildings, but a respect for what came before.
Photography by Jason Kindig
