While there's still four months to go until its official grand opening in January, the new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive [BAMPFA] is shaping up to be a blockbuster addition to the Bay Area's active creative scene.
In an inspired case of adaptive reuse, Diller Scofidio + Renfro have transformed a 1930s-era former printing plant into an expansive, multifaceted ode to multimedia. What once was a kind of 'bunker,' says BAMPFA Director Larry Rinder, is now a fully fenestrated, natural-light-filled haven that achieves the dual goals of accessibility and transparency, guided by a serene sense of flow and interplay from the exterior, and throughout the interior. Coupled with the bold red and grey highlights, it achieves an almost 2001: A Space Odyssey-like effect.
The existing buildings included a disused factory and adjacent office. They were largely intact, but beset by seismic structural issues - a major factor in the earthquake-prone Bay Area - and abandoned for years in the centre of the bustling downtown college city. Diller Scofidio + Renfro kept the original structures, complete with Art Deco inflections and a trio of skylight bays in the expansive main event space, and united them with a second-story cafe 'dropped' in between. This angular addition cantilevers out over Center Street and cuts a modern silhouette against the backdrop of a clear blue sky.
Excavating the entire footprint doubled the square footage, and allowed for a series of subterranean spaces that include four additional galleries in the more traditional, four-white-wall style, as well as study centers with resources once only available to specialists. 'The goal is to store and preserve artifacts, but also allow people to engage with art in ways they haven't before,' Rinder says.
A pair of purpose-built theaters will offer screenings both intimate - in the smaller, 32-seater - and robust - in a Meyer Sound-optimized auditorium that can accommodate 230 viewers - plus a 12-piece-band for silent film performances. And in dedication to its role as a true boon for the community, a 30-foot-wide LCD screen will adorn the facade on the flip-side, opening up the possibility for '24/7 public programs and screenings,' Rinder says. 'Our role is as a part of the life of the city-and the city doesn't close down at 5pm.'
Scheduled to open officially in 2016, the project is an inspired case of adaptive reuse
The archive will be housed in a transformed 1930s-era former printing plant; including a disused factory and adjacent office
Diller Scofidio + Renfro redesigned the space into a modern, multimedia hub that will be open and accessible to the public
The existing buildings' gallery spaces will now be complemented by a series of subterranean display halls; this was achieved by excavating the entire footprint and doubling the scheme's square footage
An angular addition cuts a modern silhouette for the archive, creating contemporary shapes inside and out
INFORMATION
Photography: Iwan Baan
-
Stephen Prina borrows from pop, classical and modern music: now MoMA pays tribute to his performance work‘Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise’ recalls the artist, musician, and composer’s performances, and is presented throughout MoMA. Prina tells us more
-
Boffi | DePadova: the evolution of an Italian design superpowerFrom 1930s cabinet-maker to contemporary design force for every room of the home – how the Boffi | DePadova group came to stand for timeless Italian living, and a look at its current collections
-
Norman Foster and nine other architects design birdhouses for charity – you can bid‘Architects for the Birds’ is spearheaded by Norman Foster and the Tessa Jowell Foundation to raise funds to improve treatment for brain cancer. Ten architect-designed birdhouses will go up for auction
-
Meet Studio Zewde, the Harlem practice that's creating landscapes 'rooted in cultural narratives, ecology and memory'Ahead of a string of prestigious project openings, we check in with firm founder Sara Zewde
-
The best of California desert architecture, from midcentury gems to mirrored dwellingsWhile architecture has long employed strategies to cool buildings in arid environments, California desert architecture developed its own distinct identity –giving rise, notably, to a wave of iconic midcentury designs
-
A restored Eichler home is a peerless piece of West Coast midcentury modernismWe explore an Eichler home, and Californian developer Joseph Eichler’s legacy of design, as a fine example of his progressive house-building programme hits the market
-
How LA's Terremoto brings 'historic architecture into its next era through revitalising the landscapes around them'Terremoto, the Los Angeles and San Francisco collective landscape architecture studio, shakes up the industry through openness and design passion
-
Inside a Donald Wexler house so magical, its owner bought it twiceSo transfixed was Daniel Patrick Giles, founder of fragrance brand Perfumehead, he's even created a special scent devoted to it
-
The Pagani Residences is the latest ultra-luxe automotive apartment tower to reach MiamiRising up above Miami, branded apartment buildings are having a renaissance, as everyone from hypercar builders to crystal makers seeks to have a towering structure bearing their name
-
A modern cabin in Minnesota serves as a contemporary creative retreat from the citySnow Kreilich Architects' modern cabin and studio for an artist on a lakeside plot in Minnesota was designed to spark creativity and provide a refuge from the rat race
-
Touring artist Glenn Ligon's studio in Brooklyn with its architect, Ravi RajGlenn Ligon's studio, designed by architect Ravi Raj, is an industrial Brooklyn space reimagined for contemporary art
