Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive unveil concept design for new Ito-designed buildingTheUniversity of California at Berkeley has a tradition of being bothinnovative and experimental. So when it came to selecting an architectfor the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive {BAM/PFA}, it didnot depart from that tradition. After considering 220 internationallybased firms and short-listing four, UC Berkeley selected Tokyo-basedToyo Ito and Associates to design its new building. The project will bethe first in the United States by Ito, who has designed numerousbuildings in Japan and around the globe including the highly acclaimedSendai Mediateque, in Sendai, Japan. Ito’s design calls for a three-storey building with an unexpectedlyfluid steel exterior that curves to meet dramatic, towering windows.The 139,000 sq ft interior will comprise a loose grid of interlockingspaces with gently curve walls that wind and bend throughout thestructure. In places, the gallery walls will separate as if pulledaside like curtains, to allow passage between the varied exhibitionareas.The museum’s first floor will house two theatres, five exhibitiongalleries, a museum store and cafe. The second floor will include eightgalleries, a screening room, the Conceptual Art Study Center, alearning center, and a library. On the top floor will be sevengalleries dedicated to works on paper and the BAM/PFA’s celebratedAsian art collection. This floor will include an Asian garden gallery.Ito’s design is a welcome departure from the traditional campusbuildings. With its largely transparent ground floor façade thatinvites exploration of the museum within and a large multi-purposeinterior forum, the building offers opportunities for rich interactionswith the diverse population and institutions that comprise the UCBerkeley community. HarrisonFraker, Dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, said, “I can’t imagine a University having the ambition of being the best inthe world without it having the best museum and film archive in theworld.”The final design for the museum is expected to be complete at the endof 2009 and the museum anticipates that the building will open in 2003.
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