Light and shapes as protagonists: Salk building by Fanatik

It's the first time I write about a building.

Thanks to a lucky encounter, I have now the Salk building by Fanatik in my inventory.

Flickr isn't a traditional social network, but also there people meet, sharing their passions and skills, talking about their pics and styles, noticing each others things they love.
So happened to me with Kendra Zaurak of Fanatik. I knew Fanatik buildings since a long time, and I've been appreciating their special style, their perfect shadowing, and how good they represent some of the most amazing modern architecture styles. Reading Kendra's comments to my pics has been a great surprise and I felt honored to receive congrats from such a refined connoisseur of modern design and aesthetics.
 
I'm even more honored to get the opportunity to shot the building Kendra kindly gave me, after we spent a very nice time talking about architecture history and styles.

It's the Salk building. The name belongs to the Salk Institute building, made in RL in the 1960s by the great architect Louis Kahn, who worked side to side with the Institute founder, the famous doctor Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine. The Institute is a big and prominent research institution, and its venue is a masterpiece of modern architecture.

Fanatik wanted to rebuild one of the buildings that form the big compound of the Institute.
It's a stunning building: the most modern ideas of the 1960s architecture are living in it and they are still a great lesson in architecture, taste and style. Raw materials made to last in the time without need of expensive maintenance; simple geometric shapes and lines to design open and "natural" spaces, where natural light plays the main role; suggestive changing perspectives at every change of point of view both from the interiors and from outside...
Fanatik replica is the same: an extremely careful choice of texture and lighting makes an intricate game of shadows; a perfect harmony among concrete walls, open windows, stairs and pillars produces fascinating compositions of shapes; wide wooden windows and doors contrast with the raw concrete, pairing the "born" and the "made" (wood and concrete) with a clear reference to the original's inspiration.

I shot it according to my own style: my passion for minimalist images has found a paradise in the Salk building, the large uniform surfaces, the alternance of materials, the contrast between voids and masses have been an endless source of inspiration for my eye.
I won't present a traditional blogger review of it, here. I've simply taken advantage from the building to build a series of  photos that follows my usual style and aim: catching unusual perspectives, letting light and shadow playing, showing details and compositions of geometrical shapes, enhancing the contrasts of empty spaces and massive elements. Full minimalism, in a few words.