Louis Kahn’s renovated Yale Center for British Art unveiled
![Yale Art Centre exterior view](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/uDZnFTQp6AZGJUrk5hVMga-415-80.jpg)
Today, Louis Kahn’s masterful Yale Center for British Art re-opens its doors after the completion of a $33 million, eight-year renovation led by New Haven-based Knight Architecture.
The five-story 1974 building houses the largest collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom, donated in 1966 by Yale Alumnus Paul Mellon. Its intimate, naturally lit galleries are organised around two ethereal interior courtyards, floored in travertine and clad with grids of bared concrete, matte steel and white oak wall panels. Perhaps most famous for its monolithic anchor piece, a drum-like cylindrical grey cement staircase— the centre is an astonishing example of Kahn’s unparalleled gift for eliciting visceral emotion through pure volume, light, and materials.
Much of the renovation, describes Knight Architecture principal George Knight, was 'an effort to defend the architecture in the face of legitimate issues.'
His firm, and a team of conservationists, builders, engineers, and facilities managers, restored original materials, improved the building’s technical systems, and added storage, research space, and guest amenities, all while re-installing and re-organising the more than five centuries of work in the unparalleled collection of paintings, sculptures, and manuscripts by Turner, Constable, Hockney, and so many more.
At the same time they left the building remarkably in tact. Original surfaces, for instance, were kept religiously as they were, even if they showed cracking or other signs of age. 'It’s definitely not pristine, not new,' says Knight. 'The cult of newness is something we wanted to avoid.'
Meanwhile Knight re-implemented details that various updates had 'drifted' from, removing partitions from the exquisite fourth floor Long Gallery (and hanging its walls in quirky, crowded, theme-based salon configuration), opening up the building’s exterior lower court, and implementing Kahn’s original scheme for flexible pogo walls.
The renovation’s three phases took place while the museum was still open, a colossal effort involving sealing rooms and weaving temporary ducts. Knight likens the process to conducting 'life support while the patient is playing tennis.' The result deftly balances incongruous elements like roughness and refinement, compression and expansion, and lets the architecture speak louder than any of its collective insertions.
'You really can’t get away from the architecture here,' explains Scott Wilcox, Deputy Director for Collections at the museum. 'We don’t want to.'
Much of the work, reveal the architects, was about bringing back and restoring original materials, improving the building’s technical systems and adding storage, research space and guest amenities. Photography: Richard Caspole
At the same time, the building was left remarkably intact. Photography: Richard Caspole
Parts of the building were opened up, for example by removing partitions on the fourth floor's Long Gallery. Photography: Richard Caspole
The $33 million restoration took eight years to complete and it took place while the museum was still open to visitors. Photography: Richard Caspole
The architects likened the process to conducting 'life support while the patient is playing tennis'. Photography: Michael Marsland
INFORMATION
For more information visit the Knight Architecture website
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Phaidon’s new Graphic Classics is a lavish greatest hits of graphic design
Graphic Classics is a compendium of seven centuries of visual culture, from the everyday and ephemeral to visionary works that reshaped our world
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Birley Chocolate hits the sweet ’n’ chic spot in London’s Chelsea
The new Birley Chocolate shop, a sibling to Birley Bakery, is a confection of colour as delicious as its finely crafted goods
By Melina Keays Published
-
Feel at home at Auberge, Château La Coste's new inn for culture lovers
Auberge La Coste sits at the heart of the art-filled estate, minutes away from the joyful town of Aix-en-Provence
By Harriet Thorpe Published
-
IM Pei's Everson Museum of Art gets a modern makeover
The East Wing of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY has been given a contemporary refresh by emerging Los Angeles studio MILLIØNS
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Black Modernism’s lesser-known, at-risk architecture gems gain a lifeline
Conserving Black Modernism announces vital funding to save and preserve overlooked and endangered buildings by African American architects and designers
By Bridget Downing Published
-
Step into the Blanton Museum of Art's reimagined public realm by Snøhetta in Austin
Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas is completed and reveals its reimagined public realm and plaza designed by Snøhetta
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
This New York Townhouse renovation is a lesson in contemporary minimalism
TenBerke’s carefully considered New York townhouse is the reimagining of a century-old Manhattan structure that reframes vertical living
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Visit The Frost House, a lesser-known modernist architecture marvel in Michigan City
The Frost House is a lesser-known midcentury architecture gem in Michigan City, Indiana; we took the tour as the property goes on the market
By Audrey Henderson Published
-
Broadway designer Scott Pask’s Arizona retreat is a scene-stealing discovery
Scott Pask invites us inside his Arizona retreat, nestled in the foothills overlooking Tucson – a place to reboot, recharge and commune with nature
By Michael Webb Published
-
Upstate New York retreat Ridge House evokes land art
Ridge House in upstate New York, the work of Brooklyn-based studio Worrell Yeung, is at one with the surrounding countryside
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Rafael de Cárdenas’ first ground-up project is a forever home with waterfront views and hidden treasures
Rafael de Cárdenas reveals his latest completed project in the Pacific Northwest, a family home of calming spaces that bleed the outside in, and ten years in the making
By Ellie Stathaki Published