Berkeley Art Museum Anticipates Groundbreaking Within 2 Years

The University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (left) was found to be seismically deficient a decade ago, according to the East Bay Express, but plans for a new building have been a long time coming.

The museum’s 1970 building got a structural retrofit in 2001 that allowed it to reopen, easing the pressure for new construction. But now the university has picked both a site, on the western side of the campus, and an architecture firm — Toyo Ito & Associates Architects, of Tokyo, which has not worked in the United States until now.

Museum officials expect to have designs to show the public within a year, and to begin construction sometime in 2009. They say they hope to spend less than $100-million. The new museum would open in about 2012.

Meanwhile, local preservationists are concerned about the fate of the 1970 building, designed by Mario Ciampi along with associates Richard L. Jorasch and Ronald E. Wagner. Some preservationists call the poured-concrete museum building the area’s most significant Modernist structure.