Berkeley Global Campus

At the core of our vision for the Berkeley Global Campus is a question: how does one define a campus of the future? Campuses are most importantly spaces for interconnection, a nexus between individuals, departments, and disciplines. Yet how can we plan for a future that is yet unknown? This new campus for Berkeley is able to intelligently adapt to the evolving demands of research agendas, both within the academy and industry.

Recognizing the benefits of a stronger relationship between a campus’ ensemble of buildings and landscapes, we structured the campus as a series of alternating bands running east to west, optimizing solar performance and connections to the landscape at the site’s center. Embracing this existing coastal prairie, we can create a contemporary version of the quadrangle, the defining iconography for the campus but more expressive of a contemporary, performative environmental sensibility, founded on ongoing ecological dynamics brought into the heart of a campus for the very first time.

A series of dedicated study and research spaces optimized for daylighting and natural ventilation comprise the primary planning modules of the new campus. If the quadrangle represents the locus for collaboration and flexibility within the academy, certainly a similar home for innovation in the Bay Area is the garage: we have then arrayed a series of more flexible, hangar-like volumes between these more conventional building types, their open, semi-conditioned multistory interiors enabling fit-out to be borne by tenants, allowing development funds to be stretched further. A broad roof stretches across these building typologies, structured as a lamella. The depth and orientation of its members allow for solar control, with filtered daylighting spilling into the spaces below through ETFE membranes stretched along its north-facing slopes.

“The vision for the Berkeley Global Campus is unabashedly bold. It is a new kind of international hub where an exclusive group of some of the world’s leading high tech companies and universities will work side by side. It is a transformational model for research and education across disciplines including Big Data, global health, robotics and artificial intelligence, and new forms of energy and medical treatment in a global context.”

N I C H O L A S D I R K S,
C H A N C E L L O R, U C B E R K E L E Y

S E R V I C E S

Architecture, Planning & Urban Design

T E A M