The Salk Institute w/Max Escobedo

Jonah Salk & Funding The Salk Institute
The Salk Institute was founded by Jonah Salk who was a scientist and humanist that discovered the cure for polio in the 1950's. Funding was possible through the "March Of Dimes", in which at the time was a huge fear of polio that caused much of the population to willingly donate funds to help find a cure. The mayor of san Diego at the time was also a polio survivor which probabaly helped in starting up S.I. to be taken more serious. An interesting side note of Jonahs life was that he longed for Francis Gilot, the mistress of Pablo Picasso (mother of Paloma Picasso) he eventually won her over and got Pablos' sloppy seconds.

Construction of S.I.
Luis Kahn was the architect of The Salk Institute, whom Jonah partnered with/hired to create a facility worthy of a visit by Picasso. The towers along the courtyard are a "retreat" for scientists (also referred to as Principal Investigators/P.I.'s) to ideate away from the lab, with a serene view of the ocean. To finalize construction of S.I.'s iconic courtyard Louis Kahn collaborated with Luis Barragan, a world renowned Mexican architect at the time, who was admired for his aesthetic. Barragan instructed him to not do much at all with the courtyard and to purposely leave it plain, and even strategically put no signage to direct people where to go. The purpose of this was to "get people to have to interact and talk with each other by asking for directions".
          The unique stone materials used to build most of SI was "cheap/junk discount waste cement/stone" that was brought from Italy, post WW2. American ships that were taking relief supplies or other war materials were coming back empty and needed some filler weight to that the ships can safely make the journey back from Europe with storm winds cap-sizing the ships. so as a solution they were able to get a hold of this affordable or possibly even free stone material to load and weigh down the ships. When the ships got back to the US it was dumped at a Long Beach port and sat basically as junk for a while, somehow this got back to SI that they can get this material to build at an extremely discounted rate, since after all it was considered junk. Later another big company heard about this "junk", bought the rest of what SI didn't take and this material due to its unique look and color was considered a high-end rarity.

Why Graphic Design at S.I.?
Science at SI needs to be communicated internally. This is the purpose of Max Escobedo and his in-house team. Fund-raiser events take place periodically and they must produce print and digital materials to promote these events in order to attract private donors. SI also has a magazine that is designed by the in-house design team, in-house writers interview the scientists, or aka: Prinicpal Investigators to come up with content for this magazine.

Things to look up/Note

• Daily tours at noon
• The Way Of The Rain
• SI's renowned plant biology theme