Herzog & de Meuron turn a 1960s concrete shell into the Eames Institute's museum

A mid-century warehouse north of San Francisco will become the permanent home of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity. Herzog & de Meuron is the design architect, with EHDD as executive architect and Field Operations on the landscape. New renderings were released at the end of October, as the masterplan entered review with the City of Novato.

Render of the museum entrance: three gabled concrete roofs, vertical timber slats and an open arrival court — *The arrival court, cut into the existing earth berm. Render: Herzog & de Meuron*

A roof worth keeping

The building is a former McGraw-Hill textbook distribution centre, completed in 1964 and later used by Birkenstock. It was designed by Jan Lubicz-Nycz for the office of John Savage Bolles, in close collaboration with structural engineer Raj Desai. Its defining element is the roof: a field of repeated hyperbolic paraboloid ("hypar") shells in thin concrete, about three inches thick, with 35 peaks rising to 36 feet. At the perimeter, the triangular tips cantilever past the walls without support.

Side view of the white hyperbolic paraboloid concrete roof of the former Birkenstock warehouse, with the hills behind — *The hypar roof today, with its tips projecting beyond the concrete walls. Photo by Scott Hess, courtesy of the Eames Institute*

Top-down aerial view of the roof: a grid of diamond-shaped hypar shells with drains at their low points — *From above, the shells form a diamond grid that drains at each column. Photo by Scott Hess, courtesy of the Eames Institute*

How the shells were built

A hypar is a doubly curved surface generated entirely by straight lines, which is what makes it buildable: the formwork can be made from straight timber members and flat sheets. In Novato, curved timber ribs were set on scaffolding over each bay and sheathed with plywood before the concrete was placed. The 1964 structural drawings detail the junction at each column, with steel tie rods tightened by turnbuckles before the forms were struck.

Black and white construction photo of timber ribs and scaffolding forming a hypar shell — *Roof formwork taking shape during construction. Eames Institute collection (A.2025.4.009)*

Black and white photo of a worker applying plywood sheathing to a hypar form — *Applying plywood sheathing to a hypar form. Eames Institute collection (A.2025.4.008)*

1964 structural drawing of the warehouse hypar roof details by John S. Bolles, with plan, sections and column connections — *Warehouse hypar details, John S. Bolles, 1964. Eames Institute collection (A.2025.4.010)*

The design drew on the work of Félix Candela, who built hypar factories and warehouses in Mexico in the 1950s and spoke at the World Conference on Shell Structures in San Francisco in 1962. Candela called the hypar "the easiest and the most practical to build" of all shell shapes. According to the Eames Institute, Novato is the only major hypar concrete roof built by Bolles and Desai.

Wooden string model of a hyperbolic paraboloid on a base labelled Hyperbolic Paraboloid — *Straight lines, curved surface: a geometric model of a hyperbolic paraboloid by Robert Chaffe, 1937. Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian (CC0). Gift of Helen M. Wheeler*

Black and white elevated view of the McGraw-Hill distribution centre and office in 1966, with the hypar roof beside the flat-roofed office — *The McGraw-Hill distribution centre and office in 1966. Eames Institute collection (A.2025.4.007)*

New façades under the shell

The project keeps the roof. The insulation that now hides its underside will be removed, exposing the undulating concrete ceiling above the main spaces, with building services and lighting integrated into it.

Most of the intervention happens at the edges. On the north and south sides, new glass façades are set back from the roof line, creating covered porches up to 30 feet deep that shade the glazing from the Californian sun. The palette is short: colour-stained plywood, plaster and aluminium windows beside the original concrete. A wood-clad entry leads in, and a mirror-polished stainless-steel bridge crosses the Great Hall.

Render of a covered porch under the concrete shell, with a timber deck, a concrete column and recessed glazing — *A deep porch under the exposed shell, in front of the recessed glazing. Render: Herzog & de Meuron*

"It is as much of a landscape project as it is a building project." – Simon Demeuse, Herzog & de Meuron

Render of the gardens with an olive tree in front of the folded roof edges of the museum — *The roof edges seen from the gardens. Render: Herzog & de Meuron*

The programme

About 185,000 square feet of museum space will include a Great Hall of 400 by 120 feet, six galleries, wood and ceramics workshops, a library, a 275-seat theatre and restaurants. The Eames Archive will move here from Richmond, California. A 45,000-square-foot former office building will become a pavilion for retreats and lectures, and the 88.5-acre site will be reshaped into gardens and trails, keeping the original berms by landscape architect Tito Patri.

Timeline

The Eames Institute acquired the property in 2025. Construction is expected to start in earnest in 2028, with an opening targeted for 2030. No budget has been published.

Why it matters for the envelope

This is adaptive reuse in which the most valuable part of the envelope already exists, and it was engineered with a level of material economy that is rare today: a few inches of concrete, shaped by geometry, spanning a whole warehouse. The design challenge moves to the new glazed edges: how they meet a three-inch shell with 35 peaks, how that junction handles movement and thermal bridging once the insulation comes off, and how deep porches take the place of added shading devices. We will follow the project as the technical design is released.

Credits

Design architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Executive architect: EHDD
Landscape architect: Field Operations
Client: Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity
Original building (1964): Jan Lubicz-Nycz for the office of John Savage Bolles; structural engineer Raj Desai
Images: renders by Herzog & de Meuron; photos by Scott Hess, courtesy of the Eames Institute; archival images and drawing, Eames Institute collection; hypar model courtesy of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian (CC0)

Sources: Eames Institute ("The Art and Design of the Hypar Roof", Marisela Mendoza Ramos and John Ochsendorf); designboom; ArchDaily; SFist.

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