Architecture: Home in a Barrel Vault

ARCHITECTURE HOme in a Barrel VaultNew museums of late have tended to verge on the grandiose: the columned temple form of the Los Angeles County Museum, the mighty, circular Hirshhorn Museum planned for Washington, D.C., which rivals Hadrian’s Tomb in scale. One museum in the process of being formed has decided on a different style. It is Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum, due to open in 1971, and backed by an estimated $75 million left by the late Texas millionaire Kay Kimbell (groceries, oil, insurance). The architect: Philadelphia’s Louis I. Kahn, who has now proudly presented his model.

Kahn’s solution is a pavilion roofed over with vaults. Visitors will first en ter a reception area, then pass under an arcade to the permanent collection, which will be composed initially of only 100 choice objects. The exterior walls of the museum will be solid for security reasons, but Kahn has made sure the interior will be light and airy. He picked the barrel-vault roof not for its classical associations but because of its structural strength. Such vaults can easily span 100 ft. between supports, allowing museum spaces to be open and flexible.

To introduce as much daylight as possible, Kahn has designed slots that run along the top of each vault, permitting artfully diffused natural light to flood the galleries below. In random pattern, sections of the roof vaults have been removed to make open sculpture courts, providing greenery and glimpses of sky.