San Diego

In the spring of 2024, I attended a team offsite in San Diego. While the first few days were spent locked in a hotel conference room, Thursday was a free day for team activities. For my team, I arranged a private tour of the Salk Institute just north of San Diego.

Jonas Salk pioneered the polio vaccine. After that, he was a bit of scientific hero/celebrity and was able to establish the Salk Institute. He wanted it to be a place that was worthy of Picasso, so he hired the famous architect Louis Kahn. He wanted it to be an inspiring and comfortable place to come to work, and for people to do their best work.

Today, people come to the Salk Institute to work on some of the most challenging problems facing our time, including cancer, climate change, and more.

A few things that stuck out to me:

• The story of him sitting at his dining room table with different kinds of concrete. Thinking about everything from how it would absorb water to the color when the light hit it.
• As you approach, the path doesn’t go straight in, instead, you approach from a bit of an angle, which allows the main courtyard to slowly reveal itself it to you. Then, when you cross into the courtyard, a large bench immediately blocks your path, and you need to travel the length of it to enter the courtyard, which he hoped would lead to more serendipitous connections of people running into each other and needing to talk.
• The building was designed in a way that it could always be modified and improved upon. Huge parts of it are modular and can be reconfigured to the different types of work that need to take place as the building evolves.
• “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.”
• Fibinachi sequence of the heights of floors. A, B, A, C

(Cameras: Leica Q3, iPhone 16)