As part of my recent USA trip I stopped off in New Haven, mainly to see one of Louis Kahn's best known buildings, the Yale University Art Gallery. Completed in 1953, it was the first to demonstrate his key architectural distinction between 'servant' and 'served' space. In other words Kahn aimed to create large uninterrupted volumes for occupation and use, in this case galleries for art, with staircases and other servicing elements distinguished by their place in the geometrically ordered plan but given their own distinct architectural treatment.
The ceiling, emphasising the building's continuity of space, is a repetitive triangular grid derived structurally from the space frame, but heavy where the space frame is light. Kahn's aim here is to give a timeless, quasi-monumental quality to the building, which remains impressive but is less startling than it would have appeared in the 1950s, in contrast to the work of Mies and perhaps a complement to the contemporary work of Le Corbusier.
It also relates to the more general concerns about materiality in the 1950s , widely known as Brutalism. The use of shuttered concrete, unclad brick and block work were unprecedented at that time for a public building in the USA and this material quality is still startling but architecturally effective.
