Let’s Twist Again: Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Silver-Skinned BAMPFA Opens This Weekend

It’s been a long journey, but Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will finally celebrate the opening of its shimmering new addition this coming Sunday. An original proposal for the extension by Toyo Ito was thwarted by global economic turbulence and funding problems back in 2009, and New York-based firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro was drafted in two years later, tasked with transforming a former printing plant into the institution’s new home.

With a backstory so full of twists and turns, the torsion present within DS+R’s “surgical addition” feels appropriate: this is a building delivered to address divergent needs of a complex institution while also utilizing the site’s existing structure, the expressive industrial skeleton of the 1939 University of California Press Building. The resulting project is an exercise in architectural symbiosis, the renovation of an old factory being intersected by a highly contemporary extension the architects have called a “cipher.”

Charles Renfro uses wonderfully evocative language to describe the sinuous, steel-clad addition. “The soft, supple body of the cipher is draped between adjacent orthogonal buildings and snagged on their sharp corners, creating a dramatic public spine,” explains the architect. “This radical overlay of old and new creates dynamic intersections — across time-periods, styles, disciplines and programs — while facilitating a cultural hub with a more porous interface with the street.”

BAMPFA’s program is as multifaceted as the architecture that contains it. The repurposed factory building now houses galleries, a small theater and an art-making lab, its sawtooth roof and north-facing skylights providing ideal conditions for exhibitions and artists’ workshops. Meanwhile, the twisting form of the new addition contains a film theater and library, along with multiple study centers and a café. This functionality extends outside: its northern elevation frames a large-format LED screen on which free public screenings will be aired.

This public space is counterbalanced by another at the opposite end of the twisting, tubular structure. A café is located within the narrower portion of the cipher, which is “dramatically cantilevered over Center Street, serving as the museum’s marquee.” The interior — clad with bright red panels — strikes a warm-toned contrast with the sleek shell of the exterior, clearly delineating communal amenities from the pure white walls of the galleries and the obsidian hues of the theater.

The opening of BAMPFA marks the start of another exciting year for Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The firm’s comprehensive remodeling of the Museum of Modern Art in New York is set to begin construction next week, and its US Olympic Museum in Colorado — sporting a silvery skin reminiscent of BAMPFA — will break ground this spring. For more images of and information on the firm’s work, check out Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s in-depth profile on Architizer.