Richard C. Blum Hall opened its doors to the public on 8 October 2010. The 22,000 square feet contemporary and Craftsman-style wood, concrete and glass complex, which houses the four-year-old Blum Center is a remodelled historic Naval Architecture Building on the north side of campus.
A new three-storey wing is attached to the renovated Naval Architecture Building by a network of plazas, terraces and bridges that also link to Sutardja Dai Hall. The wing’s energy-efficient features include pitched roofs to keep the warm air high above the work areas, operable windows that promote the flow of fresh air, cedar shingles that provide maximum weather and sound insulation, and daylight sensors that make the most of natural light. Its upper levels are designed to offer views of the Campanile and San Francisco Bay.
San Francisco-based Gensler Architects designed the new wing and restored the Naval Architecture Building in conjunction with historic preservation specialist Knapp Architects based in San Francisco. Bordered by the weathered Northgate Hall, which houses the Graduate School of Journalism, and the College of Engineering’s Sutardja Dai Hall, the Blum Hall complex is designed to integrate both craftsman and modernist architecture.
The original Naval Architecture Building was designed by John Galen Howard in 1914 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the decades, the building has housed numerous academic programs including architecture, but has not been in use for some time.
Under a short-term agreement, the Blum Center Foundation leased the site from the University of California and used its own management to complete the hall, which will now be gifted to the campus.
Richard Blum, the center’s founder hopes that the new facility will offer a collaborative workspace for student innovators and their faculty mentors. Previously, the center’s operations and project teams were scattered across campus. Richard Blum has led the $18 million effort to construct a home for the center that he launched at UC Berkeley in 2006 with a $15 million gift.
The Blum Center for Developing Economies’ dual mission is to adapt cutting-edge technologies to solve real-world problems while educating the next generation of leaders in the fight against global poverty.
