Archinect - News

DS+R's Berkeley Art Museum is a conceptual success

2016-01-27T14:07:00-05:00

Although the renderings and Twitter pics of Diller Scofidio +Renfro's Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive produced a heated response on Archinect, evaluating the museum from a programmatic standpoint makes it appear as less of a "giant TV on the sidewalk" and more a clever fusion of needs into an elegant, if perhaps somewhat muscular, form. The museum is part art exhibition space, part film gallery/archive. DS+R have chosen not to mask these separate identities into an amorphous form, but rather to architecturally demarcate these two mediums. Viewed from the side, as in Iwan Baan's photographs above and below, this choice results in an elegant exterior wrap that offers visual intrigue with the glassed-in multipurpose space peeking out between the two halves. This asymmetrical glimpse of the interior gives the building a muscular quality, as if it is in motion.

There are perhaps inadvertent throwbacks to Renzo Piano's BCAM at LACMA throughout the interior, not only with the ...

'Architecture of Life' exhibition marks opening of DS+R-designed new Berkeley Art Museum next week

2016-01-25T15:51:00-05:00

Commissioned to convert an abandoned printing plant into a university art museum, Diller Scofidio + Renfro took inspiration from fresh fruit. The architects left the original building intact, stretching a sleek skin around it, split open at the front. The new Berkeley Art Museum will open next week with an exhibition that historically contextualizes Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s design process, and provides a formidable storehouse of ideas for future architecture.

Recent photo of the almost completed structure on January 21. (Image via @BAMPFA on Twitter.)

Previously on Archinect: DS+R's new Berkeley Art Museum gets opening date

DS+R's new Berkeley Art Museum gets opening date

2015-06-29T18:44:00-04:00

After having to relocate its facilities due to seismic issues, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives, collectively known as BAM/PFA, will open its new home on January 31, 2016 in Downtown Berkeley. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the $112M project integrates a preexisting art deco building, the former printing plant of neighboring UC Berkeley, into a 35K sq ft new structure. All in all, the new BAM/PFA will include two theaters, a performance space, cafe, four study spaces (the museum has a strong connection with UC Berkeley's film and art departments), an "art-making lab", and a reading room.

Given its hybrid exhibition/screening requirements, BAM/PFA's total gallery space is relatively small at 25k square feet – compared to Snøhetta's SFMOMA across the bay at 130K, or Renzo Piano's new Whitney at 50K. The museum's inaugural exhibition, "Architecture of Life", will "explore the ways that architecture—as concept, metaphor, and practice—illuminates aspects of life ex...

A Berkeley Museum Wrapped in Honeycomb

2008-11-25T12:42:00-05:00

I have no idea whether, in this dismal economic climate, the University of California will find the money to build its new art museum here. But if it fails, it will be a blow to those of us who champion provocative architecture in the United States. - Nicolai Ouroussoff, NYT