Berkeley Art Museum/PFA seeks proposals


Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Courtesy Toyo Ito Associates

This digital rendering by Kuramochi Oguma shows the original yet too pricey vision of Toyo Ito for the Berkeley Art Museum.

Here's a surprise: SFMOMA isn't the only local cultural institution seeking an out-of-town architect to design its new home.

There's also a "help wanted" sign at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, which is planning a move to the old University of California printing plant at Center and Oxford streets in downtown Berkeley. Letters went to 10 architectural firms early this month and all 10 have responded with initial proposals. The institution hopes to narrow the list to three and name its designer in June.

The surprise is that BAM/PFA already traveled this path - in 2006, when it selected Toyo Ito to design a new home. The Japanese architect's response was seductive - an abstract egg crate with thin steel walls - but also prohibitively expensive. Ito and Cal parted ways last fall, and the institution decided to revive the printing plant, making the most of such features as the enormous redwood-floored shop beneath saw-toothed skylights.

"We decided the best approach is to repurpose what's there and build an additional 50,000 square feet," said Larry Rinder, the museum director. "This requires a combination of two design skill sets, integrating old and new to create a functional and exciting whole."

Rinder won't say who's in the running except that all 10 are North American firms, but three firms confirmed to us they've been invited to take part: Bernard Tschumi Architects of New York, whose acclaimed Acropolis Museum in Athens opened last year; Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the designers of Cal's sublime C.V. Starr East Asian Library; and Will Bruder + Partners of Phoenix, the design architect for our very own award-winning Hercules Public Library.

These aren't the favorites, simply the ones I've heard. Whoever gets the nod is expected to pair with EHDD Architecture, the local firm that worked with Ito and would remain as executive architect.

Asked when downtown Berkeley might receive a cultural shot in the arm, Rinder said the target opening date is "late 2014 ... but I'm making no predictions." Considering what happened the last time around, I don't blame him.

Better than taxes: On the west side of the bay, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Tax Day received the initial proposals from firms in the running to design a major new wing for the museum along Howard Street.

The contenders were asked to present "ideas" for how they might go about adding a northern extension from Mario Botta's 1995 icon that, by the way, would serve to show off the contemporary art collection of Don and Doris Fisher. Given that the treasure trove includes several remarkable large-scale sculptures, no easy task.

As has been the case since the invitation letters went out in February, SFMOMA is keeping mum except to say that it is on schedule to release a list of two or three finalists early next month. But apparently some of the big-name architects flew into town with fully hatched concepts while others have worked closely with local firms to hone their approach - even though the institution apparently reserves the right to select a lead architect and then recommend a different local firm than the out-of-town designer worked with.

In this economy, who's going to say no?