ABSTRACT
The eastern half is the mirror image of the first Kimbell Art Museum building, designed by Louis Kahn and completed in 1972. Kahn had said that an art museum should embrace daylight because objects of art are best seen in natural light. Geometrically, the main body of his building consists of 24 vaulted concrete roofs, each 20 x 100 feet. Renzo Piano uses the diffuse natural light from the roof and combines it with controlled light from one glazed wall. He then uses the color and the materiality of concrete walls and white oak floors to temper the light. He sees the column as coming out of the ground. By placing more than half of the building under a landscaped green blanket, the entire building appears as an intimately scaled pavilion paying respect to the Kahn building, while greatly improving the energy performance of the building as a whole.
