Berkeley Art Museum – Pacific Film Archive

Forward-looking and versatile, the new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will be a dynamic and engaging place to experience our diverse art, film, performance, and education programs, and to access our extensive collection and archives.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s design for the new BAM/PFA combines the 1939 concrete Art Deco-style former printing plant, unoccupied since 2004, with a new metal-clad structure. The new design creates a cohesive and visually arresting space for art, film, education, civic interaction, and administration. Plans call for the industrial building—currently a single-story, skylighted structure with a three-story administrative wing at its east end—to house the museum’s collection and exhibition galleries, a thirty-two-seat screening room, museum store, learning center, K–12 education areas, community gallery, and offices.

The new structure, extending between the corner of Oxford and Addison Streets and the museum’s Center Street facade, includes the 230-seat PFA Theater, Library and Film Study Center, special event space, collection study area, café, and nonpublic areas. The facility is thus defined by two primary and integrated components: the imaginatively repurposed older building and a complementary, forward-thinking multipurpose structure.