The new building of the University of California-based institutions sits on the border of its campus and city blocks to serve both students and residents of Berkeley. Its basis is a university printing house, built in 1939 in the line of Art Deco; it was there that the UN Charter was printed in 1945. The most striking detail of this industrial building is the comb of shed skylights on the roof. Now the building houses eight exhibition halls, a small cinema (33 seats), and an art laboratory.
The new part of the building is a “cipher” sheathed with sheets of stainless steel (as the architects called it): it looks like a metal drapery thrown over the rectangular buildings of the printing house. There is a cinema hall (232 seats), a cinematheque, classrooms and a cafe. On the one hand, the "cipher" ends with a huge LED-screen, on the other, with a cantilever extension of the cafe, through the glazing of which the bright red interior is visible.
Seven Canary pines, which grew on the site before construction, were used for the manufacture of wooden interior details; 23 trees were planted as compensation.
The budget for the construction was $ 112 million: the funds were donated by philanthropists or came from other private sources.
The collection of the Berkeley Museum includes neolithic ceramics from the territory of China, graphics by old masters, works of modern and contemporary art. The Pacific Film Archive owns the largest collection of Japanese films outside Japan, an extensive collection of Soviet cinema, avant-garde films and video art created on the US West Coast.
