Richards Medical Research Laboratories Building, 1957-1960
Hamilton Walk between 37th and 38th Streets, Philadelphia PA 19104
© Preston Thayer and Jed
Porter, Workshop of the World (Oliver Evans Press, 1990).
images © Louis I. Kahn, Architect, Richards Medical
Research Building (Museum of Modern Art, 1961).
The Richards Building was the first multi-story,
rigid-frame structure to employ pre-cast, pre-stressed,
and post-tensioned concrete construction in the United
States. 1
Each independent
eight-story tower is supported on eight precast concrete
columns, set at one-third points on the facade of the
building, supporting a latticework of 47' long primary
and shorter secondary Vierendeel trusses in precast,
prestressed concrete, each steam-cured to a high
finish.
Each of the
secondary Vierendeel trusses was postensioned after
placement to create a highly rigid frame.
This highly
innovative structural system allowed for 45' square,
column-free lab spaces, three to each floor, clustered
around a poured-in-place concrete service tower core and
flanked by poured-in-place concrete peripheral towers for
stairs and other services.
The structural system is readily visible on the facade
and in particular in the ceiling of the open entry porch.
Built between 1957 and 1960, the Richards Building was
designed by architect Louis I. Kahn; August E. Komendant
was the structural consultant.
1 August E.
Komendant, 18
Years With Architect Louis I.
Kahn,
(Englewood, N.J., 1975)
Update May
2007 (by
Harry Kyriakodis):
Still in use.
See
also:
Louis Kahn grew up in Northern
Liberties. His son Nathaniel filmed a
biography entitled "My Architect, A Son's Journey—a Man,
his Buildings, his Secret Lives,"
which was
released in 2003 to wide acclaim. While doing
research, Nathaniel walked through Northern Liberties
and was struck by the similarity between Kahn's
monumental masonry structures with their large voids
and shadows, and the hulking industrial buildings of
Northern Liberties. When The New Yorker magazine wrote
about the biography, Nathaniel and his sister were
photographed in front of 1010 North Hancock Street.
Decades earlier, Lou Kahn had written, "A city should
be a place where a little boy walking through its
streets can sense what he someday would want to
be."