
BERKELEYARTMUSEUMANDPACIFICFILMARCHIVE
UNIVERSITYOFCALIFORNIA,BERKELEY
At the boundary between the City of Berkeley and the historic University campus, the new BAMPFA is a bridge institution, balancing civic and university interests, aligning its location with its mission as a nexus of aesthetic experience and critical discourse for the university and the community. The reuse of an existing 1939 Press Building to house galleries, a small theater, art-making lab, and other amenities sliced by a new structure to house a film theater, library, study center, and café offers an opportunity to create dynamic intersections across time-periods and styles as well as among disciplines and programs. The soft, supple body of the new structure, draped between adjacent orthogonal buildings and snagged on their sharp corners, creates a dramatic public spine. Through a language of adaptive reuse, strategic excavation and surgical addition, the existing Press Building will house eight galleries of varying sizes and characteristics. The form of the Osher Theater reinterprets 1930’s Streamline Moderne style of the Press Building in a contemporary language of ruled surfaces and precision-formed stainless steel. The sleek outer body is lined by a striated interior; the warm-colored sinews wrap the inside of the silvery shell. At the Addison Street end, the new structure hovers above an open excavation, exposing the library and works on paper study center to the public. The other end of the new form is counterbalanced by a café dramatically cantilevered over Center Street.
- Looking from cafe to main floor gallery below
- Large ground-floor gallery with view into the cafe above
- Interior view of the multipurpose event space and mezzanine, with the underside of the theater
- View of the cafe looking South over Center Street
- Aerial view from the UC Berkeley campus
Size (GSF) | 82000 | Location | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, United States |
Commission2010 | COMPLETED2016 |
Partner-in-Charge | Charles Renfro |
Partners | Elizabeth Diller,Ricardo Scofidio,and Benjamin Gilmartin |
Project Directors | Zoë Small and Anthony Saby |
Project Architects | Michael Samoc and Haruka Saito |
Design Team | Charles Curran,Mark Gettys,William Ngo,Sabri Farouki,Joseph Dart Messick,Jose Vidalon,John Chow,Irina Chernyakova,and Stefan Roeschert |
EHDD Architecture | Executive Architect |
Forell/Elsesser Engineers | Structural Engineer |
BKF Engineers | Civil Engineer |
IBE Consulting Engineers (now Stantec) | MEP Engineer |
Amec Foster Wheeler | Geotechnical Engineer |
Architect’s Security Group Inc. | Security |
Jaffe Holden | Acoustics |
Tillotson Design Associates | Lighting |
Boyce Nemec Designs | Theater and A/V |
Fisher Dachs Associates | Theater |
Hargreaves Associates | Landscape Architect |
Plant Construction | General Contractor |
Simpson Gumpertz & Heger | Facade Consultant |
Degenkolb | Shoring Engineer |
Ph.D Design | Graphics & Wayfinding |
HYT Corporation | Fire Protection & Alarm |
Teecom Design Group | Telecommunications |
SGH | Facade & Waterproofing Consultant |
Edgett Williams Consulting Group, Inc. | Vertical Transportation |
The Marshall Associates, Inc. | Food Service |