2626 Bancroft Way and 2625 Durant Avenue University Art Museum

Transcription

1 L A N D M A R K S P R E S E R V A T I O N C O M M I S S I O N S t a f f R e p o r t FOR COMMISSION ACTION FEBRUARY 2, Bancroft Way and 2625 Durant Avenue University Art Museum Landmark Designation Application (LM # ) Consideration of a City Landmark Designation initiated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission (Prepared by Sally Zarnowitz, Secretary to the Landmarks Preservation Commission) I. Application Basics A. CEQA Determination: Categorically exempt pursuant to Section (Actions by Regulatory Agencies for the Protection of the Environment) of the CEQA Guidelines. B. Parties Involved: Applicant Landmarks Preservation Commission John Sutton English 2500 Hillegass Avenue Apt. 3 Berkeley, CA Property Owner Regents of the University of California c/o Real Estate SVCS 1111 Franklin St, Floor 6 Oakland, CA Attn: Ms. Emily Marthinsen Physical & Environmental Planning University of California Berkeley, CA Milvia Street, Berkeley, CA Tel: TDD: Fax:

2 2626 BANCROFT WAY and 2625 DURANT AVE. LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION Page 2 of 8 FEBRUARY 2, 2012 Figure 1: Vicinity Map University Art Museum 2626 Bancroft Way

3 LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION 2626 BANCROFT WAY FEBRUARY 2, 2012 Page 3 of 8 II. Background At its meeting of December 1, 2011 the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) initiated consideration as a City of Berkeley Landmark for the University Art Museum property. On December 19, 2011 a nomination for the property was received. On January 5, 2012 a letter (attached) was received from the University requesting additional time to allow staff and stakeholders to participate fully in the process. On January 11, 2012 an initiation information letter was sent to the owner. On January 19, 2011 the LPC conducted a publicly noticed site visit with University staff present. On January 23, 2012 a revised nomination was received, and hearing notices were distributed. III. Property Description (taken from nomination; see nomination for full details) The University Art Museum property, located at 2626 Bancroft Way and 2625 Durant Avenue (APN No ), is commonly known as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Constructed from and designed by noted Bay Area architect Mario Ciampi, the approximately 100,000 square-foot, free-standing, Brutalist style building, covers roughly half of a 1.7-acre sloping site between Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue. The reinforced concrete building with board-formed concrete finish, often described as fan-shaped, is largely radial in plan. Nearly all its long major walls are on alignments that radiate from origin points clustered near the Bancroft Way entry. The building houses multiple cascading galleries placed at various angles, approached by ramps overlooking a sky lighted atrium (Photograph 2). The north façade and main museum entry is recessed into a low mass, with multiple higher masses above stepping back from Bancroft Way (Photograph 20). It is from the open space on the west side of the building that the fan shape created by overlapping outboard corners of prism-like masses containing the galleries above, begins to reveal itself (Photograph 23 and 24). The fan shape continues around to the Durant Avenue (south) façade, composed of three levels: open ground-level perimeter walls with ledges, mid-level accordian-fold gallery window walls and outdoor terraces with access ramps, and upper-level overlapping outboard edges of concrete masses (Photograph 30). The building is complemented by landscaped open space. The entry court on Bancroft Way features Alexander Calder s stabile A Hawk for Peace. The Westside garden is partially subdivided by freestanding concrete walls. Placed atop some stepwise terracing is Peter Voulkos s walk-through sculpture Return to Piraeus ( ). The garden used to have five additional sculptures, two of which were installed by 1971 or 1972 and the others sometime after At least four of them are now displayed at various sites on the main campus. The property sits directly across Bancroft Way from the University of California s main Berkeley campus. The site adjoins institutional, residential, and hotel uses, within a south-of-campus vicinity that includes high-density student housing.

4 2626 BANCROFT WAY and 2625 DURANT AVE. LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION Page 4 of 8 FEBRUARY 2, 2012 IV. History (taken from nomination; see nomination for full details) The nomination notes that near 1950 the University acquired the present museum s site in a physical expansion program whereby it acquired and redeveloped many acres within the old south of campus neighborhood. It further notes that in 1963 a Universitycommissioned survey recommended creation of a substantial art museum in order to better provide for the arts, while renowned painter Hans Hofmann donated to the campus 45 of his paintings and a quarter-million dollars for constructing a gallery to house them. In 1964 a special committee chose Peter Selz, then curator of painting and sculpture at New York s Museum of Modern Art, to be director of the campus museum. Film enthusiast Sheldon Renan was later appointed to head the new Pacific Film Archive film center within the museum, strongly influenced by famed Cinémathèque Française founder and secretary general Henri Langlois. The commission also established a competition to choose an architect for the new building, won by a team headed by architect Mario J. Ciampi that included Paul W. Reiter, Richard L. Jorasch, and Ronald E. Wagner. The University Museum galleries opened to the public in 1970, and the Pacific Film Archive unit began regular public screenings in V. Analysis To designate a property as a landmark, historic district, or structure of merit, the LPC must find that the property meets one or more of the criteria delineated in Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) Section The ordinance criteria regarding landmarks and historic districts are as follows: 1. Architectural merit: a. Property that is the first, last, only or most significant architectural property of its type in the region; b. Properties that are prototypes of or outstanding examples of periods, styles, architectural movements or construction, or examples of the more notable works or the best surviving work in a region of an architect, designer or master builder; c. Architectural examples worth preserving for the exceptional values they add as part of the neighborhood fabric. 2. Cultural value: Structures, sites and areas associated with the movement or evolution of religious, cultural, governmental, social and economic developments of the City; 3. Educational value: Structures worth preserving for their usefulness as an educational force; 4. Historic value: Preservation and enhancement of structures, sites and areas that embody and express the history of Berkeley/Alameda County/California/United States. History may be social, cultural, economic, political, religious or military; 5. National Register: Any property which is listed on the National Register described in Section 470A of Title 16 of the United States Code.

5 LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION 2626 BANCROFT WAY FEBRUARY 2, 2012 Page 5 of 8 Landmarks Preservation Ordinance Designation Criteria As a modern resource, the property is less than fifty years old. Because the LPO criteria for designation do not address the time frame within which properties have gained significance, the LPC may generally consider whether sufficient time has passed to obtain a scholarly perspective on the events or individuals associated with the resource, as is consistent with California Office of Historic Preservation Technical Assistance Series #6, California Register and National Register: A Comparison. The nomination for the property at 2626 Bancroft Way and 2625 Durant Avenue can be evaluated and considered pursuant to the relevant LPO criteria below. 1b) Architectural merit: Properties that are prototypes of or outstanding examples of periods, styles, architectural movements or construction, or examples of the more notable works or the best surviving work in a region of an architect, designer or master builder; The nomination has a section regarding the Museum as an outstanding and extensively referenced example of the Brutalist style within the modern architectural movement, including its strongly cantilevered reinforced concrete design and construction. The nomination includes extensive references indicating the breadth of scholarly perspective on the associations with design, construction and cultural events. The nomination states: The University Art Museum outstandingly exemplifies the Brutalist style of its era. The Berkeley museum is so strongly representative of Brutalism that in his international survey A History of Building Types, architectural historian Nicolaus Pevsner used it to exemplify the style s application to museums. 1 (The Brutalist style, which evolved in the late 1950s, can be seen as an antidote to the sleek and elegantly detailed packages that had come to house establishment institutions. 2 Brutalist buildings are sculptural rather than planar, 3 and they often have raw concrete surfaces that show the imprint of the formwork employed in casting them. 4 The style was used for many American university and other buildings of the 1960s and 1970s.) The building also dynamically illustrates the capabilities of reinforced concrete construction. 5 The nomination has a section regarding the Museum s qualifications as a masterwork of modern design, noting the building s widely referenced and accepted reputation as the Bay Region s first thoroughly modern museum structure and one of the very few such structures in the world. The nomination states: 1 Pevsner, A History of Building Types, Searing, New American Art Museums, Ibid. 4 The name Brutalism supposedly was coined by Allison and Peter Smithson in reference to Le Corbusier s own term béton brut (meaning raw concrete) for the board-formed concrete he used in many of his buildings. 5 Forell/Elsesser, Seismic Evaluation, E-5.

6 2626 BANCROFT WAY and 2625 DURANT AVE. LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION Page 6 of 8 FEBRUARY 2, 2012 It is considered a masterwork of modernist design. 6 In 1970 critic Alfred Frankenstein called it the Bay Region s first thoroughly modern museum structure and one of the very few such structures in the world. 7 It got attention in national, and even European, architectural journals. 8 Critic Robert Hughes called it a building of genuine architectural distinction that also poses some provocative suggestions for the shape of museums in the future. 9 The building has duly been called a visual masterpiece. 10 Especially impressive is the unique complex formed by the soaring atrium and spirals of multiple galleries and ramps. Visitors arriving from Bancroft pass through disarmingly modest front doors, enter the mostly low-ceilinged lobby and then, to fine theatric effect, suddenly find themselves amidst an ensemble, with its sky lighted atrium and many gallery levels, that is unorthodox and stunning. The upper galleries open front edges and boldly cantilevered, prow-like switchbacks create visual drama for people looking down from them and for people gazing up from below. The nomination has a section regarding the property as a notable work or the best surviving work in a region of an architect, designer or master builder. The nomination states: The University Art Museum is a prime example of work by the design team s head Mario J. Ciampi ( ). He was an important Bay Area architect and urban designer with a distinctive modernist flair. He was especially known for adopting innovative structural principles, 11 such as in the folded-plate concrete roof of design-award-winning Vista Mar Elementary School in Daly City. Among other notable projects bearing his stamp are school or church buildings in Pacifica, Daly City, San Francisco, and Sonoma and the 1966 Brutalist-styled Catholic Student Center 12 (Newman Hall) in Berkeley. In 1965 Ciampi redesigned structures planned for Interstate 280, south of San Francisco, as what critic Allan Temko called a breathtaking series of air foil overpasses... [that], together with Lawrence Halprin s landscaping, transformed a crude preliminary scheme into one of the most gracious freeways in the world. 13 2) Cultural value: Structures, sites and areas associated with the movement or evolution of religious, cultural, governmental, social and economic developments of the City. 6 Sardar, Plane Logic, Frankenstein, UC s Marvelous Museum. 8 Journals reporting on either the project or the completed building included Arts and Architecture (October 1965), Progressive Architecture (December 1969), Architectural Record (December 1965 and July 1972), Werk (November 1971), and L Architettura (December 1972). 9 Hughes, Provocative Museum. 10 Forell/Elsesser, Seismic Evaluation, E Temko, Retrospective of a Visionary S.F. Architect. 12 Cerny, Berkeley Landmarks, Temko, Retrospective of a Visionary S.F. Architect.

7 LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION 2626 BANCROFT WAY FEBRUARY 2, 2012 Page 7 of 8 The nomination has a section regarding the Museum s cultural significance within the context of contemporary art movement for its association with the University Museum and the Pacific Film Archive. The nomination states: In her 2003 book Art-Sites San Francisco, Sidra Stich wrote: At one time the [Berkeley] museum was the center of contemporary art activity in the Bay Area. It produced internationally significant exhibitions, had its finger on the pulse of avant-garde activity, and was an energizing hub for people and ideas.... [A]spects of the [museum s] program still focus on the current era, offering insights into contemporary ideas and modes of expression. 14 Along with the [Bay Area s] new [venues], stalwart institutions like the Berkeley Art Museum continue to add spice to the regional scene. 15 To quote from museum consultants Nancy L. Pressly & Associates: The identity that the institution so dramatically and brilliantly defined for itself in the 1970s and 1980s.... was very much associated with cutting edge exhibitions, some of international importance, the MATRIX series that provide a new model for the field, and the Hans Hofmann collection. 16 The museum has a continuing commitment to presenting new and experimental work. This is reflected especially by the MATRIX exhibition program. Artists represented in this program by 1990 included such people as Willem de Kooning, Eric Fischl, Elmer Bischoff, and Richard Diebenkorn. The nomination also clearly addresses the unique role of the Museum and the Film Archive within the fine arts. The nomination states: Also exceptional is the museum s world-class Pacific Film Archive. When the PFA opened, it was one of just four film centers anywhere in America to combine archive facilities with regular public screenings. 17 In her 2003 book Sidra Stich judged the PFA as second only to the film unit at New York s Museum of Modern Art. 18 The nomination also has a section regarding the Museum s usefulness as an educational force in that the Museum is the visual arts center for the flagship campus of the University of California, meets research needs through its Pacific Film Archive Library and Film Study Center, and prominently displays its own exemplary design. Because the Museum is an educational force within Criterion 2) for its significance in cultural events and history, and the architectural design is recognized within Criterion 1b), the Draft Notice of Decision does not include a separate finding for the Museum s significance under Criterion 3). 14 Stich, Art-Sites San Francisco, Ibid., Nancy L. Pressly & Associates, Discussion Paper, University of California, Press Release, Stich, Art-Sites San Francisco, 190.

8 2626 BANCROFT WAY and 2625 DURANT AVE. LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION Page 8 of 8 FEBRUARY 2, 2012 VI. Recommendation Because the LPO criteria for designation do not address historical resources achieving significance within the past fifty years, the Commission may consider designating the property in a manner consistent with the Special (Criteria) Considerations of the California Register. Because the building meets the necessary criteria to be designated a City Landmark under two of the three criteria discussed in the nomination, staff recommends approval of the designation. The Notice of Decision includes a description of the characteristics which justify the designation and a description of the particular features that should be preserved. Therefore, the Commission may consider designation of the building as a Landmark consistent with the following LPO criteria (Section ): 1b) Architectural merit: Properties that are prototypes of or outstanding examples of periods, styles, architectural movements or construction, or examples of the more notable works or the best surviving work in a region of an architect, designer or master builder; and 2) Cultural value: Structures, sites and areas associated with the movement or evolution of religious, cultural, governmental, social and economic developments of the City. Staff recommends that because the property appears to meet the necessary designation criteria, the Commission open the public hearing, receive public testimony, review the Draft Notice of Decision, and approve the designation. Attachments: 1. Correspondence, January 5, Nomination, revised January 23, Draft NOD. 4. Public Hearing Notice Staff Planner: Sally Zarnowitz, Senior Historic Preservation Planner szarnowitz@cityofberkeley.info (510)