Yale Center for British Art

The building's discreet, grey, monotone exterior of mat steel and reflective glass and its clearly read concrete frame confer a certain noble, armored mien appropriate to its purpose. If a building can be personified as possessing a powerful physicality and musculature, those are the words for the Yale Center for British Art. ...Inside the building the visitor experiences the same clarity and organization seen on the exterior. Without the plan being fully revealed upon entry, the entrance court immediately establishes a sense of logical orientation, and the second-floor library court continues this interior organization so that the visitor intuitively feels familiar with the plan and can find his way around the galleries through reference to the courts.

Louis Kahn's Yale Center for British Art, based on a repetitive 20-foot-square grid, was formally conceived as a series of highly structured 'roomlike' spaces. Organized around two inner courts which, like the fourth and top floor, are beautifully naturally lighted from above through a coffered skylight system, the whole ambiance of the building is rich, seductive, and well-scaled to the mainly eighteenth and early nineteenth century paintings. The exposed concrete structure with oak paneled inserts has led to a warmer, more sedate feeling, appropriate to the art displayed. As Kahn asked himself questions about light to the interior he made openings in planes; as he broached questions of exhibit he devised systems to place planes in space.