Cathedrals of Culture: The Salk Institute

In 1959, famed virologist Jonas Salk asked the architect Louis Kahn to design his dream for a new kind of research institute - a place, as he put it, where Picasso would feel at home. He imagined a "monastery" on the California coast that allowed scientists to work in tune with nature and unfettered by the distractions of the modern world. Robert Redford's "Salk Institute" reveals Kahn's final design as a modern masterpiece, a romance of angles. Contemplating the building, the film urges a larger conversation about the existential qualities of a space. Can the soul of a building influence and inspire those who work there to achieve great things? Set to the music of Moby, the film is a tribute to two innovators who shared a belief in design serving the highest of human ideals.