Post-Toyo Ito, Berkeley Art Museum Pressing Forward with Relocation Plans
At last we left it, following their announcement that they couldn’t afford the flashy new building Toyo Ito had designed for them, the Berkeley Art Museum said they were still planning to make a big move, instead heading to a former printing plant, which they were going to have fully restored. The momentum seems to be continuing along that path, at the San Francisco Chronicle‘s resident critic, John King, reports that the museum has drawn up a shortlist of 10 architecture firms to help them rebuild their new old home. Fortunately, for cost-saving’s sake, there isn’t a Gehry or a Foster among the names (at least among those firms King has confirmed):
[museum director Larry 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.
In that same story, King also has some brief info on SFMoMA‘s much-publicized hunt for someone to build them a new Donald Fisher wing.
