The Art and Design Museum of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, employs several key strategies. Stepped embankments serve as landscape buffers, integrating the buildings into the terrain, shielding them from noise and unwanted views, and concealing legacy site features.
The warehouses—which retain their iconic concrete roofs—have been transformed into exhibition spaces. North and south wings now house gardens that accommodate a variety of activities, accessible via porticoes designed on either side of the lobby.
The pavilion, reimagined as a contemporary space, preserves its structure of large beams and a ceiling composed of prefabricated T-joists. This structure extends into the landscape, sheltering the glass curtain walls and opening onto a ground-floor porch, which is protected by the overhead roof.
Rendering. Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity Art and Design Museum by Herzog & de Meuron.
Project description by Herzog & de Meuron
The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity Art and Design Museum is an adaptive reuse project that transforms two iconic 1960s buildings, a former warehouse and an office building, into a design museum with collection galleries, immersive art experiences, performance spaces, destination dining, ateliers, and educational offsites.
Located 28 miles north of San Francisco, the two buildings sit along Highway 101 between the wooded hills of the Mount Burdell Open Space Preserve and the flat expanse of the Petaluma Marsh Wildlife Area. Originally designed in 1964 by architect John Savage Bolles for the McGraw-Hill publishing company, the two existing buildings on the site are enduring iconic examples of mid-century modern design.
While preserving the distinctive character of the existing architecture, the masterplan and building proposal transforms the up-to-now inaccessible site into a highly public cultural facility for the Bay Area and beyond.
Landscape
Designed by landscape architect Tito Patri, the historic campus uses layered berms to integrate the warehouse and office building into their surroundings. The berms screen noise and views from the adjacent highway, reduce the buildings’ apparent scale in the open landscape, and concealed the former paved truck turnarounds to the north and south.
The design proposal seeks to amplify the idea of berms as protective features which frame public spaces while providing a variety of distinct outdoor spaces.
A new linear berm is introduced along the highway shielding the forested arrival parking from fast-moving traffic.
The two existing turnarounds to the north and south of the warehouse are transformed into distinct gardens, which gives the museum ample opportunities for inside-outside programming.
The existing paved car park is transformed into a shaded public square and garden which connects the buildings and their new public programs with the Sonoma landscape beyond.
What were once two isolated structures surrounded by berms and grassy lawns are now connected by generously planted courts and gardens that amplify the qualities of the existing landscape while allowing users to take full advantage of California’s climate for indoor-outdoor living.
The Warehouse
The warehouse is organized into three zones: the arrival and atelier wing, the hall, and the collection wing with its public mezzanine.
The journey into the warehouse starts at the Arrival Court, conceived as an exterior room carved out of the existing berm. Here, the building’s full height is revealed. Two welcoming gates frame the central arrival window beneath the warehouse’s iconic concrete roof.
From the Arrival Court, visitors enter the Arrival Room, an obliquely oriented space which follows the roof geometry. From the Arrival Room, the guest can either enter directly into the Hall to visit the collections or ascend the stairs to a bridge, traversing the three distinct zones of the warehouse and taking the visitor to the Public Mezzanine and Upper Court.
At the center of the Warehouse, a new Hall spans the full length of the building between the north and south facades. The scale of the Hall facilitates large exhibitions, performances, and events. The building and lighting systems, once suspended from the ceiling and cluttering the view, are now consolidated and mounted to follow the ceiling’s geometry, revealing the Warehouse’s full height.
On either side of the Hall, the façade is set back by half a bay, creating porches that connect the exhibitions and events to the gardens that occupy the former loading areas.
The Collections are a string of six distinct gallery spaces that run parallel to the Hall. These galleries are either accessible as individual galleries or as one continuous exhibition. As guests cross the bridge to the mezzanine above, they can look down onto the exhibitions below.
A public mezzanine stretches the western façade of the warehouse and connects the auditorium, café and a fine dining restaurant with the Upper Court and Terraces. In warm seasons, visitors can move between the Café and the Upper Court, gathering beneath the shade of a dense grid of newly planted trees to sit, relax, and exchange in this plaza-like exterior space. The Café also acts as a pinwheel connecting to the 275-seat Auditorium and a Fine Dining Restaurant. Located at the warehouse’s northwestern corner, the restaurant occupies the site’s quietest area with extraordinary views of the surrounding hills.
The Pavilion
Originally serving as an office building, the 45,000-square-foot Pavilion is reimagined as a contemporary offsite space.
Its horizontal post-and-beam structure, characteristic of California buildings of the same era, celebrates the expressive potential of precast concrete: large beams support a precast tee-joist roof that extends outward into the landscape, sheltering the glass curtain walls that define the office spaces below.
Its ground floor opens to the landscape beneath a porte cochère, sheltered by the existing waffle slab roof, while a large terrace on the second floor offers views toward the Warehouse roof and adjacent Upper Court.
Entered at its center, the building’s two wings accommodate separate, private offsites for groups of up to 40 people each. Removing the old drop ceiling reveals an expansive interior beneath the underside of the historic precast concrete tee-joist roof, which extends past the building’s perimeter into the landscape. The façade is upgraded to current standards while remaining closely aligned with the original 1964 design intent.
Behind the building, small gardens offer intimate, tranquil exterior spaces, flanked by retaining walls bearing the iconic relief murals by artist Gurdon Grant Woods, which are preserved and enhanced. Along the building’s central spine are the Stout Library Archives and a large, flexible multipurpose room with unique views of the warehouse roof – all accessible to offsite guests.
