The Carl Icahn Laboratory at Princeton University. Credit: Rafael Viñoly Architects PC
Architecture is not science and, to the dismay of many of its appreciators, it's not art. Still, it borrows from both: Science, in particular, has profoundly influenced architects, informing their knowledge of materials, geometries, volumes and natural forms. Still, beyond the fundamentals, architecture owes a great debt to the language of science, which has become a dominant discourse of our times. Architects may produce shapes modeled on fractals or conceivably sit down at a drafting board after imbibing a few pages of chaos theory.
Newer structures often have an obvious analog in elements of the natural sciences: a butterfly wing, a ribcage, a microscopic pattern enlarged to a grand scale. Adrian Forty writes in his book, Words and Buildings: a Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, that "...since the scientific metaphors employed in architecture are drawn from such a diversity of scientific fields, from natural sciences as well as physical sciences and mathematics, the cumulative effect is to suggest the unlikeness of architecture from science in general." Most architects would prefer not to take sides—instead feeling free to borrow from technology and sculpture, poetry and engineering.
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In recent years, architects have also been called upon to devise new buildings, in which scientists will research, experiment, theorize, discuss, reevaluate and present findings. Architect Louis Kahn, one of the pioneers in designing monumental science buildings, was both celebrated (for the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA) and derided (for the Richards Medical Center at the University of Pennsylvania) by the researchers housed in his monumental designs of the 60s. In the post-Kahn design world, iconic buildings designed with the sciences in mind have lost traction, replaced with traditional structures built to support the sciences—typically utilitarian, homogenous and passable as a hospital or nameless corporate office.
The buildings presented here signify a new and radical experiment, finding their inspiration in Kahn's work. All of them are meant to serve a social, rather than symbolic, function, giving form to the latest high-minded and urbane scientific inquiries: exploring the mysteries of how humans think, how the universe works and the further unraveling of man's most basic building blocks. Architecture's task—with its collage of concrete, steel and glass—is to position the scientist in a cultural space (even if the researchers put up a fight). The dream is that they will do away with the drab, often windowless structures where the search for truth often takes place, and introduce an interactive world swathed with natural light, inspiring shapes and the occasional sightline peeking into another colleague's lab.
How architecture and science will define each other through this encounter is still to be seen, but it begins a dialogue that places architecture in a position to enable science to reach further into the unknown and come up with answers to life's mysteries. Even more provocative is the possibility that this new architecture may somehow determine or influence the science conducted on the inside.