A First Look at Our Future Museum

Design is not distinct from the urgent questions of our time. It is the answer to them. With that conviction, since 2019, the Eames Institute has been establishing destinations across the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to collecting, connecting, cultivating, and creating, to community-building and imaginative problem-solving. 

In August 2025, the Institute acquired the iconic roadside campus in Novato, California, on the 60th anniversary of its completion. Commissioned by the McGraw-Hill Company and later occupied by Birkenstock USA, it was designed by Jan Lubicz-Nycz for the office of John Savage Bolles. Today, as we ramp up to the opening of a world-class museum on the site in 2030, we are reaching far beyond the Eames Archives. Through major gifts, pledges, and acquisitions, we are collecting work across multiple disciplines, mediums, and scales⁠—from industrial design and painting to monumental works of art and public sculpture. Our emphasis is on process, not just product, and ideas, not just objects. While most museums continue to focus on “what,” ours will ask “what if.”

To envision a museum that will engage and activate, not just contain and display, the Institute has commissioned a dream team of designers. We are privileged to be working with world-renowned Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, in partnership with Bay Area-based EHDD as our executive architects. Together, they are reimagining the campus, through adaptive reuse, as a series of interconnected spaces capable of continuous evolution. Outdoors, the landscape architecture firm of Field Operations⁠—acclaimed for its work on New York City’s High Line and the beloved Presidio Tunnel Tops in San Francisco⁠—is designing the gardens and grounds. With these firms’ inspiring ideas and images in hand, we have begun the first phase of our review, permitting, and approvals process with the City of Novato, which has been an exceptional thought partner, deeply invested in this gateway site.

Arrival Court

The vision for our future museum involves the transformation of a campus of iconic mid-century modern architecture and its 88-acre site. Herzog & de Meuron’s adaptive reuse of the 134,000-square-foot warehouse preserves the power, geometry, and scale of the original 1965 structure while opening it up to the public for the first time in its existence. The distinctive hyperbolic paraboloid roof will continue to anchor and define the property.

From a tree-shaded parking area, the journey into the former warehouse starts at the Arrival Court, which was imagined as an exterior room carved out of an existing berm. It is here that the building’s full scale is most palpable. Two gates frame a large central window leading into the entrance, an obliquely oriented room that is aligned with the geometry of the roof. Here, a carefully choreographed entry sequence and grand stair will help visitors to transition from the everyday world into a space built to spark new relationships and experiences.

Great Hall and Bridge

Visitors will enter directly into the central hall at ground level⁠—where the full scale of the original warehouse and roof are preserved⁠—or ascend to a newly inserted, 120-foot bridge that overlooks flexible galleries, hands-on making spaces, and the hum of activity below. Beneath the bridge, the interior will operate as an interconnected environment with “streets” linking works on view to making and gathering spaces. At 20-feet wide, the bridge will also become the site of some art display and activities. The bridge will be clad in mirror-finish steel, giving the hall the illusion of even greater volume, depth, and transparency.

The hall runs the length of the building between its north and south facades, its scale facilitating large exhibitions, performances, and events. Updated building and lighting systems⁠—formerly suspended from the ceiling, cluttering sightlines⁠—will be consolidated and elegantly integrated into the sculptural ceiling. This will emphasize the hall’s full height, which rises to 36 feet at its peaks.

Ateliers

Rather than a repository for objects alone, the museum will be a home for inquiry, action, and play. In our makerspaces, it becomes a living laboratory, an ever-evolving environment where art, design, and human ingenuity come together. The interior will connect works on view to ateliers and community spaces in rich ways, instead of separating these important cultural partners. Extremely large-scale, flexible exhibition areas will draw inspiration from history’s cabinets of curiosity, adding transparency that invites exploration, discovery, and self-directed learning. The ateliers will include studios and wood and ceramics workshops in order to offer visitors a window into the creative and craft work taking place.

Southern Porch

On its north and south flanks, recessed glass façades will open the museum to the surrounding landscape, forming porches up to 30 feet deep. These areas will provide shade and shelter, between indoors and out, and connect exhibitions and events to the gardens that will occupy the warehouse’s former loading areas. Here, visitors can sit, sip coffee, play, and picnic within sight of monumental plein air sculptures, discrete botanical landscapes, and extensive walking paths.

Upper Court

In warm weather, visitors can move between the museum café and the Upper Court to sit in this plaza-like space. From here, they will be able to choose their own adventures. The landscape architects, Field Operations, are composing ten gardens laced with meandering pathways in order to facilitate multiple journeys (and much discovery) across the site. They will be planted with native species⁠—oak, manzanita, and California poppy, lilac, aster and allium⁠—creating a variety of Marin-native landscapes that range from creek-watered woodland to coastal prairie. This series of ecosystems will also decant onto hiking trails that extend from the museum into the rolling hills of the Olompali State Historic Park beyond.

Northern Garden

At the northern and southern ends of the museum, the Herzog & de Meuron architecture, hemmed by porches and courtyards, will continue to dovetail with the work of landscape architecture office Field Operations. This team envisions a series of outdoor gardens, punctuated with decks, plazas, and play surfaces that will become mixed-use sanctuaries for visitors, whether they’re picnicking, taking pictures, or playing tag, as well as a showcase for large-scale art and gathering spaces for community events. ❤

Keep an eye out for more museum design reveals to come. You can check the Eames Institute website for updates to our Museum page and Stories features in coming weeks.