Finished-Unfinished: The design of Bauer Wurster Hall | Exhibition
Find out how the architects of Bauer Wurster Hall, Joseph Esherick, Vernon DeMars, and Donald Olsen, fulfilled Dean William Wurster’s directive to create “a ruin that no regent would like.”
For better or worse, Bauer Wurster Hall is unlike any building on the UC Berkeley campus. Completed in 1964, it has since confounded many a tour-group leader trying to reconcile its stark appearance with its identity as the architecture school. While many have a love/hate relationship with this concrete monolith, fewer likely know that this tension was in part intentional.
This exhibition tells the story of Bauer Wurster Hall’s design: how it came to be and how it was imagined to persist into the future. It traces the building's history from initial conceptual designs to the 2014 addition of the Digital Fabrication Lab through sketches, architectural drawings, and photographs.
On view in the Judith Stronach / Raymond Lifchez Exhibit Cases in the Environmental Design Library through October 8.