Tag Archives: Berkeley architecture
Berkeley firm, project win AIA SF architecture awards
The American Institute of Architecture San Francisco announced the winners of its annual Design Awards on Friday and two Berkeley names made the grade.
The renovation of Berkeley’s North Branch Library on The Alameda, by San Francisco firm Architectural Resources Group and Tom Eliot Fisch, earned a Merit Award for Historic Preservation. “This publicly funded project preserved, expanded, and updated the City of Berkeley’s beloved 1936 North Branch Library on The Alameda,” AIA SF wrote in its award list. “The $4.5 million, LEED Silver project included rehabilitation of 5,700 sq ft of historic spaces and a new 3,900 sq ft addition and was completed in 2012.”
It was the second architecture award for the North Branch Library this month. It was also one of nine Berkeley buildings recognized for representing the best recent design work in Berkeley by Berkeley Design Advocates in early April. … Continue reading »
Nine Berkeley buildings win ‘design excellence’ awards
Nine buildings have been singled out as representing the best new design work in Berkeley for 2010-2012. Berkeley Design Advocates, a volunteer group of architects and urban planners, selected three UC Berkeley buildings, a restaurant, a senior home, two retail spaces — one newly built, one restored — a wine store, and the renovation of a branch library from a list of 15 submissions, and handed out the award certificates at a ceremony on Thursday, March 28. (See the 2013 Awards Brochure for full details.)
This year threw up a particularly impressive crop of winners, according to Anthony Bruzzone, President of BDA, who said that two years ago, with the recession having put the kibosh on many construction projects, the group was concerned it might have no buildings to consider at all in 2013. … Continue reading »
Lovingly restored mid-century modern opens for a tour
Joanne Koch knew it was a tall order: she wanted a mid-century modern home in Berkeley within walking distance of a Peet’s. Even her realtor told her she might have to revise her thinking. Most homes built in that period are perched in the hills to take advantage of their inherent indoor-outdoor design and to offer the best views of the bay.
But the Berkeley architect struck lucky. In 1999, a level-in home designed in 1952 by the well-regarded Bay Area architect Roger Lee came on the market. The 1,125 sq ft home needed attention, but this was not a deterrent for Koch who had the remodeling chops, as well as a passion for mid-century homes. She and her husband snapped it up for $365,000 and moved in with their young daughter. The icing on the cake? The house is three block’s from the original Peet’s on Vine Street.
Koch’s Oxford Street home, which she has sensitively rehabilitated and extended, will be one of five homes on the East Bay Modern Home Tour on Saturday Oct. 20. … Continue reading »
Berkeley Built: Sand hoppers at Second and Cedar streets
Berkeley Built is a new occasional series in which architect David Stark Wilson of WA Design takes a look at a notable Berkeley structure or building. He begins by considering an industrial structure not far from his practice in West Berkeley.
These sand hoppers are at the Monterey Sand Company plant on Second and Cedar streets in Berkeley. I included this image as the only urban structure to appear in my 2003 book, “Structures of Utility” (Heyday Books) and explained why:
I became captivated by the agricultural buildings that punctuate the landscape of the Central Valley. The vertical forms of grain elevators, like erratics deposited by a long-receded glacier, interrupt the valley’s level terrain… The elevators are equaled in eccentricity by oversized storage sheds housing lanky, intricately evolved agricultural machinery. In the foothills, long-abandoned mines reveal only their head frames, an extension of the mines’ subterranean architecture… Their origins were in simple utility, in adaptation to functional requirements, yet they had attained an elusive and austere elegance. … Continue reading »
Landmark Bernard Maybeck home for sale in Berkeley
Chances to buy — or at a minimum see inside — a Bernard Maybeck designed home in Berkeley come along rarely. The Kennedy-Nixon house at 1537 Euclid Avenue in north Berkeley has just gone on the market.
The landmarked home, which was built in 1914 (and quickly rebuilt in 1923 after it burned down in the devastating Berkeley fire of that year), is priced at $1,995,000. The home has had only three owners since it was built, and it has stories to tell.
The Nixon family built it as a live-in studio for their daughter’s piano teacher, Alma Kennedy. It was designed to include a recital hall, a waiting area for students’ parents, a reception room with a small kitchen and an upstairs sleeping quarters. The recital hall, with its cathedral windows and clear-heart unfinished redwood paneling, is particularly arresting. … Continue reading »
Group circulates ballot measure to preserve ice rink
A group that worked to place Berkeley Iceland on a city list of historic places is circulating a ballot measure that calls for the city to consider including a recreation space in any future development.
Members of Save Berkeley Iceland started collecting signatures on the measure on March 31 and hope to gather 3,000 signatures by May 10. If they are successful, the measure would go on the November ballot.
The measure would set city policy so that when any plans for the property come before the City Council or any commission, policy makers would have to consider the need for community recreation in their decisions, said Tom Killilea, the president of Save Berkeley Iceland. … Continue reading »
Berkeley developer sees future in small, smart homes
In a top-secret location in Berkeley, Patrick Kennedy is showing a reporter around a tiny living space — so compact in fact that, at 160 sq ft, it is the smallest apartment one is legally allowed to build.
“It is how small you can go without causing psychological problems,” jokes Kennedy, who, through his company, Panoramic Interests, is responsible for developing swathes of Berkeley. His projects include the Gaia Building on Allston Way, the Berkeleyan Apartments on Oxford Street, and the Touriel Building on University.
The “bijou” apartment in which we are standing, with its trompe l’oeil view of the Bay Bridge, is the prototype for the SmartSpace, a largely prefabricated, furnished space that, when multiplied and stacked together like Lego blocks, creates a fully fledged apartment building. … Continue reading »
BAHA’s Spring Tour will focus on villas of Arlington Heights
The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association‘s annual Spring Tour, which takes place on Sunday May 8, will this year be devoted to the villas of the Arlington Heights neighborhood in north Berkeley.
Always a popular event for architecture enthusiasts, the tour will include homes designed by architects including Bernard Maybeck, Edwin Lewis Snyder, Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr., John Hudson Thomas, Sidney & Noble Newsom, Henry H. Gutterson, Joseph M. Walker, and Rowland & Rowland.
The hilly neighborhood east of … Continue reading »
Berkeley home moves across town, slice of history saved
Last Sunday, a house went on a journey across Berkeley. To be precise, it was half a house, the top half, and eagle-eyed Berkeleyans may have spotted it making its way, slowly, at walking pace, from Albany Village into Berkeley on 8th Street, then down Gilman, down 6th onto University and then along Sacramento until it reached its new home on 62nd Street.
The house belongs to Tom White and Dmitri Belser who bought it for $16.00 from UC Berkeley in 2009 after it was advertised on Craigslist and Ebay.
Known as the Cheney Cottage, it is the smaller of two properties originally located at 2241 and 2243 College Avenue on the Cal campus and built by journalist and real-estate agent Lemuel Warren Cheney. The larger of the two homes, the Cheney House, was demolished in March 2010 after the university failed to find a buyer for it. Built in 1885, the Cheney House was believed to be the second oldest surviving structure in the Berkeley Property Tract. (Read the full history on the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association website.) … Continue reading »
Saving Berkeley High’s Old Gymnasium: A proposal
Berkeleyside exclusive: The Old Gymnasium on the Berkeley High School campus, a landmarked building originally designed by William Hays, has fallen into disrepair — see slideshow above — and the School District is suggesting it be demolished. Noted Berkeley architect Henrik Bull has a different suggestion:
It is easy to understand why the School Board of the Berkeley Unified School District has decided it wants to demolish the Old Gymnasium at Berkeley High School. Walking through the … Continue reading »
