Review: Thom Mayne's Cahill Center at CalTech

The impossible-to-miss Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology, wrapped in red-orange panels and seeming to crack and heave around its midsection, as if squeezed by a vise, has been the topic of animated latte-line and cocktail-party conversation in Pasadena since its scaffolding came down last year.

The three-story, 100,000-square-foot building, which stretches its long, low, fractured mass along a prominent site on California Boulevard, engages the city -- and the public -- more pointedly than any other of the university's buildings. It seems eager to start a conversation or pick a fight, depending on your point of view, about the appeal of aggressively contemporary architecture. It has been the most anticipated of the many campus building projects initiated on Caltech's leafy, low-rise campus by David Baltimore, the biologist and Nobel laureate who was president of the university from 1997 to 2006.

And yet the Cahill Center's architect, Thom Mayne, founder of the Santa Monica firm Morphosis, calls it, with something of an apologetic shrug, a conventional building, "probably the most conservative" he's done.

So who's right? The locals, a few taken aback and many others thrilled that Morphosis has slipped a brash piece of architecture into such a conspicuous spot? Or Mayne, who even at the official opening of the Cahill Center was more interested in discussing the firm's forthcoming project at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, where he says he has been better able to indulge his interest in creating complex and unorthodox architectural space?

The answer is both, but with a twist. Much of the Cahill Center is indeed practical and straightforward. Arranged on a steady rectangular grid, its offices, conference rooms, basement-level laboratories, hallways and auditorium are crisply attractive but generally staid, with concrete floors polished to a high sheen and walls wrapped in white or sky-blue plaster. But in two prominent places -- on the exterior skin, which can be seen on all four sides of this free-standing building, and in a memorable main staircase -- the architecture seems to erupt in a cascade of fissures, phantom limbs, dark corners and broken planes.

The gap between the Cahill Center's standout elements and its conservative ones is no accident. Since the construction budget on the building -- which cost $50 million in total -- wasn't especially lavish, Mayne and Kim Groves, the Morphosis partner who helped lead the design team, borrowed money and design attention from the typical offices in an effort to give the most central and public elements some character and complexity. In other words, the daring of certain spaces depends on the cooperative, go-along conservatism of others.

It's architecture as zero-sum game.

The strategy will be familiar to anyone who's followed Mayne's recent work. His Caltrans District 7 Headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, finished in 2004, wraps a dramatic, brooding skin of perforated dark-gray metal panels around what is inside a rather depressingly predictable collection of offices. Mayne was not directly responsible for the interiors. But it was his decision to give the building's skin a shimmering, monolithic cast -- a choice that stretched to the breaking point the distance between the character of inside and out.

For the San Francisco Federal Building, which opened in 2007, Mayne took an increasingly commonplace and energy-efficient building volume -- the tall, narrow slab turning a broad face to the south -- and disguised it with another angled perforated-metal skin as an alien, even predatory presence in the skyline.

In nearly every case, then, the complexity of Mayne's buildings is both visually dramatic, sometimes bracingly so, and quite clearly contrived. Their skins present a highly staged picture of architectural chaos and operate as a kind of barbed applique.

That's not to say these moments of irregularity aren't, taken on their own terms, impressive and even moving. Although the Cahill Center's skin is partly a disappointment -- the color, flushed and upbeat, as if the building has stopped for a chat after a jog, clashes oddly with its cracked, disjointed form -- the staircase is remarkable. Endlessly rewarding to walk through and look at, it draws light from a rooftop skylight and through glass along its spine and redirects it in a thousand directions. It joins the lobby of the San Francisco Federal Building and the main gymnasium at Mayne's dormitory at the University of Cincinnati as recent examples of his firm in top form.

For Mayne, these spaces have a powerful metaphorical role to play. In the case of the Cahill Center, the fissured exterior is meant to make visible the myriad unseen forces in the universe that are bearing down on us. The way the exterior mass is lifted into the air above a ground floor wrapped in glass only exaggerates this effect. Inside, the stair is designed, as Mayne puts it, as "an occupiable telescope." It suggests the way in which the measured universe can shift and bend depending on your perspective and as you yourself, the measurer, move through space.

Still, some of these symbolic connections to clients grow less persuasive with each passing project. When it comes to the exteriors of his recent buildings, Mayne is making the case that the same skin system that was metaphorically perfect for state and federal bureaucrats and Midwestern university students is similarly appropriate for dozens of the world's leading astrophysicists.

There is nothing wrong with an architect pursuing and developing a consistent strategy over the course of several buildings. There is a compelling sense in this group of projects -- of which Mayne says Cahill is the last -- that the architect is testing out variations on a rich theme, taking the idea of the folded or ruptured skin and bringing it along from sketchy concept to confident motif.

But at the Cahill Center, the strategy has exhausted itself. It's as if Mayne were taking notions he's tested out in earlier buildings and rather rotely using them to cloak this one -- as if what he was hired to do was provide a kind of drive-by virtuosity, producing not Robert Venturi's decorated shed but something similar: a contorted shoebox.

The client probably played a significant part in all of that: It's easy to imagine that the faculty members were happy to see some daring geometry on the facade and in some of the public areas but balked at testing it out in their offices and labs. But this is hardly the first time Morphosis has been willing, even happy, to accept precisely such a trade-off.

The firm's surpassing achievement in recent years has been to take the kind of budget that usually produces a banal stucco box and use some variation on the skin system to produce a range of dark, confrontational effects. Rarely, though, does Mayne's approach move past what it essentially scenography. There is almost never a sense in his work -- as there is so clearly in the best designs by Frank Gehry, for example -- that some guiding idea, spirit or skill is radiating out from the center of a building, suffusing the whole.

The design of the Cahill Center seems very eager to look as though it's putting various spatial and architectural hypotheses to the test. But it doesn't extend that inquiry very far. The forces that Mayne uses the skin of the building to conjure up so dramatically have almost no effect on the interior life of the place. They push and push but ultimately can barely deform its regular, box-like character or warp its true personality. In the end, the Cartesian wins -- or at least more than holds its own.

--Christopher Hawthorne

Credit: Roland Halbe

Comments

[Jonah1979]

It's ugly and doesn't fit in with the local architecure!

[hazelnut]

It's beautiful and a great addition to the neighborhood. Well done!

[malevich]

neither ugly nor beautiful. boring. nothing new. why would they give architect all the budget to try out sculptural non sense? architects are soulless artists.

[jim in oregon]

"Contrived" is the operative word. How this work is considered anything but a study in the composition of a facade is not apparent. If the interior experience is as positive as the article suggests it may redeem what is otherwise a mediocre and extremely dated exterior.

[S.J. Erenberg]

Looks like a Gordon Matta-Clark rip-off to me.

[ArchtMig]

It's an awesome looking building on the outside, but it's completely miscast for the department it was designed for. It really ought to be the headquarters for the Cal Tech seismologists, i.e. the department staffed by Dr. Lucy Jones and Dr. Kate Hutton, who always appear on the news after every earthquake in So. California. The building looks like shifting strata of fissured fault lines, and the dark interior would represent the intense pressure found under thousands of feet of the Earth's crust. Really, the astronomy department ought to give the building to the geophysical department and get a new building for themselves that's designed by an architect that can figure out how to do a structure that's open and airy and embraces the expansiveness of deep space. I can't believe that Hawthorne missed that whole point in his critique.

[neutralino]

As a soon-to-be occupant of this building, I thank Mr. Mayne and his company for an intriguing design (especially by Caltech standards) incorporating loads of natural light.

[James]

How about CalRockTech. Looks more like a geology building with shifting tectonic plates. B+ but Love it! Now they should build giant glass telescope inspired circular additions as the fourth, fifth and sixth stories (with observation platforms) to house the astronomy and astrophysics folk above the dust cloud. Kinda like the Ritz-Carlton sitting on the Marriott at LA Live.

[curmudgeon]

Just as the Pontiac Aztek looked as if it'd already been through the crusher, this new edifice looks as if it's already been demolished by a massive earthquake. Perhaps, in time, this building will develop an accolade, similar to that given to the Aztek, as one of the "50 Worst Buildings of All Time" http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658544_1658540,00.html . The old, funky parking lot - complete with wispy eucalyptus, olive, and jacaranda trees - was far more aesthetically pleasing, IMHO.

[Lawrence]

Very observant piece by Hawthorne. Motif, scenography, and drive-by virtuosity are very much operating here. It is architectural equivalent of the fashion runway. Sexy, suggestive, and intriguing at first glance. But that is all that it is about, the promise of the first glance. This is nice clothing. Sadly, most architects are not even capable of designing nice clothing. But the review gets it right, it's only clothing. The "off the shoulder look" is on display in San Francisco. One wonders if it could not have been more.

[PrinceCharlesRedux]

Finally, a Caltech building which makes the Millikan Library look pretty! Fortunately, it is hard to imagine that anyone would actually occupy this tribute to the architect and his sponsors. Surely not, chaps? Perhaps it was intended only as an educational device to display what a typical suburban office park building would look like after a major earthquake. Indeed, the building is placed well next to, and diagonally across from a couple of 1970's eyesores, and will undoubtedly join them as it ages. The contrast with the classy, California mission style buildings which form Caltech's architectural backbone is quite striking. That venerable style can be reasonably well reproduced in modern buildings, such as Caltech's Beckman Institute and the Moore Lab, and even the Avery House. Let us hope that sanity will return to Caltech's building projects in the future.

[Techer]

The building is FUGLY. Too bad we will be stuck with it for another 75 years.

Perhaps former Caltech president Baltimore was too interested in constructing monuments, that his admistration will be remembered by.

Other recent buildings on campus do a much better job preserving the campus's overall unity & aesthetic ... eg, the Beckman building on Wilson Ave, and the Moore building.

[Aaltoreve]

Anyone who follows architecture would know that it's a miracle these days to get anything the least bit different or special built. Especially in Pasadena (more stucco and red tile roofs, anyone?) and for Caltech, both conservative places, at least architecturally. This building is a major departure for Mayne in the use of color -- it's very friendly and playful in that way. Also it is extremely well behaved -- it sits back along the street, perfectly in line with its neighbors, with glass along the ground floor, appearing open and welcoming to passers by. And on the inside, beautiful shared space. Yes, this is different and we should celebrate Caltech for taking a chance to do something great. And we should enjoy this last chance (at least for a while) to consider the merits of a new building. It's worth noting that Los Angeles is one of the last to have a architecture critic at its paper. And we should relish that too.

[HD]

Out of ideas...

[J. K. Beck]

I am having trouble understanding why the architect and owners found it necessary to place panels on the exterior of the building. They remind one of the gingerbread that was popular on new homes for short time about fifty years ago. I believe the panels detract from the overall design of the exterior. They also make this 50 million dollar building look cheap. The people in Pasadena are lucky that this building was not designed by Frank Gehry!

[Jim]

One thing I will say for the Cahill Center: It has made giving directions to the Caltech subterranean parking garage much, much easier. "Turn at the hideous, red monstrosity." No one gets lost any more.

[rkTEX]

It's a simple box that looks like the "Big One's" (earhquake for you east-coasters) already split it up.

Not "conservative," just simple or more to the point, simple-minded.

Who pays for these exercises? You and me, taxpayer.

[Collins]

Mayne's work has always been hit and miss with me, but that's okay. At least it evokes a reaction, one way or the other. Mind you, it could be worse.

Mayne could've done a ten story monolith with a symbolic giant pocket protector that faces the street, its "pens" working as solar collectors.

[Aaron morales]

Why was there nothing said about the people who built this building? It really wasn't an easy task, Martin Brothers was given a challenge and did a great job

[anonymous_BIM_enabler]

yes, AaronMorales. And don't forget the guys who helped Martin Brothers untangle the geometry and give Martin Brothers the chance to deliver on that challenge without losing their shorts.