Toyo Ito's Berkeley Museum in Jeopardy
A shortage of funds has prompted UC Berkeley to abandon its plan to construct a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive downtown. SF Gate"While the architectural plans will change," Cal Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau said after the announcement, "what will not change is our shared goal of building a dynamic, welcoming and seismically safe new museum at the corner of Center and Oxford streets."
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"Under such severe economic conditions, situations like this do happen," Ito said in an e-mail. "As we managed to create a new architectural concept for the new BAM/PFA and were especially fond of this project, we are sorry for such disappointing circumstances. However, as (the concept of) this spatial system can be flexibly utilized for projects of various scope and nature, we see a high possibility of it being reborn, perhaps in a different scale or for other museums. In the long run, we believe invaluable results were achieved from taking upon this challenge."
