Keeping an Art Deco printing plant administration building out of harm's way while a $100-million museum is built under, in and around it requires some fancy falsework and delicate footwork. In October, crews at the University of California, Berkeley site finished installing a "body brace" on stilts to both protect the three-story shoe-box-like structure, which anchors one corner of the museum development, and to make room for new foundations and a new basement gallery space.
"The admin building is retained as a found object that is absorbed by the new construction and repurposed," says Ben Gilmartin, principal with Diller Scofidio + Renfo, New York City, design architect for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) project.