Louis Kahn’s Hewlett Building has been renovated by Russell Architects

In Berkeley, California, renovations by San Rafael agency Russell Architects to Louis Kahn’s Flora Lamson Hewlett Constructing at UC Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union (GTU) accomplished this November.

The Hewlett Constructing—designed and constructed between 1974 and 1987—is distinct in Berkeley for its Brutalist model, its exterior terraces with lush plantings, and sensuous picket slats coalescing with a clean concrete end. Its lighting, lintels, mantels, window trims, and furnishings are painted in a proto-Yves Klein blue, performing as distinction to the wooden and concrete. A pyramidal skylight into the atrium house crowns the symmetrical, ziggurat facade.

Beginning in 2020, Russell Architects started surveying the constructing for at this time’s wants whereas searching for to protect the historic edifice’s profound qualities. For the adaptive reuse undertaking, Russell Architects in the end moved a number of capabilities to totally different areas: The Hewlett Constructing’s unique library was relocated to the primary stage, opening as much as the constructing’s entrance on Scenic Avenue; new gathering and examine areas have been added to flooring one and two; a uncommon e-book, archival studying room, extra lecture rooms, convention rooms, and flex areas have been added; and college, pupil companies, and GTU workers have been consolidated to the second ground in a centralized operational house. The restoration was completed simply in time for GTU’s 61st anniversary.

Since its founding in 1962, the GTU’s mission has been advancing the causes of moral management, social justice, sustainability, and non secular look after the betterment of communities worldwide. Its three-story, 50,000-square-foot Brutalist headquarters inside strolling distance from Berkeley’s well-known campanile is house to over 375,000 volumes.

Kahn was chosen by the GTU to design a brand new headquarters in 1972. He died two years later in 1974 in the midst of design. Following Kahn’s surprising demise, the California workplace of Peters, Clayberg and Caulfield, in affiliation with Esherick, Homsey, Dodge, and Davis, was employed to complete the undertaking. The California architects have been tasked with staying true as a lot as attainable to Kahn’s imaginative and prescient.

From the road stage, it’s laborious to determine that the constructing is in actual fact sq. in plan, very similar to Kahn’s well-known Exeter Library in New Hampshire. Not like the Exeter Library, the Flora Lamson Hewlett Constructing steps again from the road at every stage; it formally evokes close by modernist designs within the Berkeley space like Kevin Roche’s first undertaking, the Oakland Museum; and Wurster Corridor by Vernon DeMars, Joseph Esherick, and Donald Olsen. The Hewlett Constructing’s trademark house is its 3-story excessive Oculus that visually connects every of the constructing’s three flooring, centered by an summary sculpture.

“I see the library as a spot the place the librarian can structure the books, open particularly to chose pages to seduce the reader,” Louis Kahn mentioned describing his design strategy on the Flora Lamson Hewlett Constructing. “There needs to be a spot with nice tables on which the librarian can put the books, and the reader ought to have the ability to take the e-book and go to the sunshine,” he mentioned shortly earlier than his sudden passing.

The Hewlett Constructing didn’t have its dedication ceremony till 1987. That yr, the constructing earned its moniker in use at this time, the Hewlett Constructing, after Flora Lamson Hewlett, a philanthropist and spouse of William Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard Firm, made a beneficiant donation to assist fund the GTU constructing. The Hewlett Constructing is now acknowledged as one of many only a few Bay Space buildings to be named after a girl, in line with a 2020 examine carried out by the Division on the Standing of Ladies.

“We’re proud that the alterations remained true to Louis Kahn’s unique imaginative and prescient, particularly the function that pure mild ought to play in illuminating an area and provoking its occupants,” mentioned Uriah Kim, GTU’s president. “The completion of those alterations represents a key milestone in our five-year strategic plan, bringing the GTU neighborhood underneath one roof in reimagined areas that can proceed to foster the interreligious dialogue and courageous conversations which are hallmarks of our GTU neighborhood.”

At present, Kahn’s unique drawings of the Hewlett Constructing are on the Architectural Archives of the College of Pennsylvania.