The 7.7-acre complex at Oak and 10th streets near Lake Merritt was designed by then little-known Kevin Roche, who later won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field's highest honor. His concept layered three spaces devoted to art, California history and the natural sciences, then layered atop that a stepped series of walkways amid a thick landscape designed by Dan Kiley.
This is a wonderfully humane approach to architecture and city-building, but Roche's vision fell short in spots.
His open-air "pedestrian street" linking the gallery levels wasn't so inviting during storms, and a blue awning added later for protection darkened things all the more.
The official entrance was placed atop stairs in the middle of the block off Oak Street, where few pedestrians roam.
Canopies and concrete
Eager to freshen things for a new century, the museum in 2005 hired Mark Cavagnero Associates of San Francisco. The gallery levels devoted to California art and the state's history were upgraded with new mechanical systems as well as being restored. The gift shop and cafe were enlarged.
Cavagnero's most obvious move is at Oak Street: The large entry courtyard now is protected and signaled by a lightweight canopy of smooth stainless steel that extends to the edge of the stairs from the sidewalk. Another canopy hovers above the "pedestrian street," providing shelter while offering an attractive visual marker, a navigational tool of sorts.
The changes to the galleries, by contrast, involve subtraction rather than addition.
This is especially true of the top-level space reserved for art. Gone are decades of structural clutter; Cavagnero has restored the calm essence of the original Roche design, where concrete walls form 20-foot-wide bays, but the central section is open so that the ceiling can lift from a height of 11 to 20 feet.
