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Berkeley Art Museum selects architects for new home

June 24, 2010 6:00 am by Tracey Taylor

Future site of BAM-PFA. White building is former printing plant. Photo: UC Berkeley.

The Berkeley Art Museum-Pacific Film Archive has chosen New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design its new building in downtown Berkeley. The announcement follows a nationwide search which saw ten architecture firms considered for the project.

DS+R is tasked with transforming the former University of California printing plant at Center and Oxford streets in downtown Berkeley for BAM/PFA, after the museum decided to abandon plans to create a building from scratch. In 2006, the museum selected architect Toyo Ito to design a new building for them, but the Japanese architect’s proposal proved expensive and funding did not materialize.

The museum’s current home on Bancroft Way, designed in 1970 by Mario Ciampi, has a multitude of seismic issues.

“DS+R’s experience integrating architecture with issues of contemporary culture and civic life perfectly aligned with BAM/PFA’s core mission to ignite critical dialog and to inspire the imagination through art and film,” said BAM/PFA’s director Lawrence Rinder

Charles Renfro, Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller of DS+R. Photo: Abelardo Morrell .

At the downtown site, DS+R will renovate the existing 48,000-square-foot moderne-style printing plant and add a new building covering 50,000 square feet along Oxford Street, just outside the boundaries of the university campus. The museum hopes to open the new complex in 2014. It will be just one block away from the new home of the Magnes Museum, set to open in 2011.

DS+R, whose principals are Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro, has extensive experience in museum design. It is currently working on New York’s  Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, it designed Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, was responsible for the redesign of the Alice Tully Hall and, last year, collaborated with James Corner Field Operations to complete New York’s High Line, an urban park on a 1.5-mile stretch of elevated railway in Chelsea.

The budget for the new downtown museum is $95 million, nearly half of which has been raised. Funds will come from private sources and are being raised by BAM/PFA in partnership with the campus.

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  • Alan Tobey

    It was almost quaint to read the phrase “the boundaries of the university campus” as referring to the traditional area east of Oxford. UC has long since been expanding to the north, west and south — in both purchased and leased space — so parts of “the university campus” now show up as far west as Milvia (Golden Bear building).

    One of the many good things about the Ito museum design was that it eliminated the current blank wall of the printing plant on Center Street and provided a welcome active pedestrian interface to the rest of the actual pedestrian downtown. Expanding that existing building with an addition to the north now creates the greater likelihood that the new complex will simply face east across the traditional “boundaries of the university campus” but turn its back on the rest of the city.

    Let’s hope the new architects talk to more people than just campus planners and rich alumni donors; the whole city deserves a result that helps integrate “the campus” with Berkeley’s downtown.

  • Christine

    I love DS+R! Years ago, I saw an exhibition of their work at the ICA that featured their more conceptual designs (building made out of mist, for instance). I’m pretty sure they were my first architecture firm crush.

  • http://www.preservenet.com Charles Siegel

    The big question: will they open up the facade of the printing plant that faces Center St. to make it more pedestrian friendly? Currently, there is essentially a blank wall facing Center St. (There are windows, but they are glass bricks that are not transparent and they are above the heads of people walking by on the sidewalk.)

    The south side of Center St. is a great place for pedestrians. This would be a great street if the UC Museum opened up the wall of the printing plant facing Center St. and built (for example) the movie theater entrance and a sidewalk cafe facing the street.

  • Felicity

    I hope they make a good building here. Their website is regrettable. (That’s the nicest word I could think of to put in a comment.)

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