The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity has unveiled the masterplan for its forthcoming archives in Marin County, California. The project, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and Bay Area-based EHDD, transforms a mid-century modern warehouse into a cultural destination, with art installation space, flexible galleries, learning and gathering spaces, a theater, and dining offerings. The large-scale adaptive reuse project is accompanied by a transformation of the gardens and grounds of the surrounding 88.5-acre site, led by Field Operations. While the Institute's Eames Archives will form one part of the museum, its exhibitions and programming are intended to extend far beyond the work of Charles and Ray Eames, bringing together different disciplines, creative processes, and ideas.
In August 2025, the Eames Institute acquired the roadside campus in Novato, California, on the 60th anniversary of its completion. The industrial building, known for its folded, origami-like white hyperbolic paraboloid concrete roof, was designed in the 1960s by Polish-born American architect Jan Lubicz-Nycz for the office of modernist architect John Savage Bolles. It was commissioned by the McGraw-Hill publishing company as a textbook publishing, warehouse, and distribution facility. The company left the facility in 1991, and the building later served as headquarters and warehouse for Birkenstock USA. Today, the project to transform the complex into a new multidisciplinary museum by 2030 is in the first phase of the review, permitting, and approval process with the City of Novato.
With an emphasis on showing process and ideas, the Institute is collecting works ranging from industrial design and painting to monumental works of art and public sculpture, to be housed in the converted warehouse. Herzog & de Meuron's project preserves the hyperbolic paraboloid roof while integrating new building systems. The former industrial building will open to the landscape with new recessed glass facades and porches along its north and south sides. The new spaces respond to the geometry of the existing structure, with a material palette of color-stained plywood, plaster, and aluminum windows that complements the preserved concrete structure. Visitors are expected to arrive through a new exterior room carved into an existing landscape berm, the Arrival Court, where the building can be seen against an infinity-edge fountain in the foreground.
The 185,000-square-foot interior is organized as a series of interconnected experiences, starting with a wood-clad space housing admissions, the museum shop, lockers, restrooms, and elevators. A grand staircase connects to a 120-foot polished stainless steel bridge that appears to float across the warehouse, offering views into the central Great Hall and the exhibitions below. The Great Hall will be 400 feet long by 120 feet wide and will host art installations and galas. Six interconnected galleries; making and collection spaces, including wood and ceramics workshops; storage, library and resting rooms; and a 275-seat theater for performing arts, film screenings, speaker series and live concerts form the rest of the cultural spaces. The complex also includes a café, a bistro, and a fine-dining restaurant with views over the surrounding landscape.
As an extension of the museum experience, Field Operations is redesigning the exterior of the complex, drawing on Marin County's oak savannas, coastal prairies, woodlands and meadows. The firm has selected native and climate-adapted plantings to create varied landscapes connected by a network of trails. According to the architects, the landscape project builds on the original approach of landscape architect Tito Patri, whose design used layered berms to integrate the buildings into their surroundings and buffer the campus from the highway, with new and existing berms framing public gardens and gathering spaces. Field Operations also cites as a reference the Eameses' Powers of Ten, a nine-minute short documentary written and directed by the couple, which explores the relative scale of the universe.
New exterior features include native stormwater gardens and wet meadows throughout the campus to capture and filter rainwater; interactive landscape features and custom furnishings designed by Field Operations; children's play spaces drawing on the firm's work on the Bay Area's Tunnel Tops Park; a tree-filled upper court that turns a former employee parking area into a gathering space next to the museum's café, bistro and restaurant; a redesigned parking and arrival area; and large gardens to the north and south of the warehouse in place of former truck turnarounds and loading docks. An adjacent 45,000-square-foot former office building will be restored as a pavilion for retreats, lectures, seminars, and other gatherings, with meeting spaces and a large multipurpose room overlooking the warehouse roof. Behind the pavilion, a Japanese-inspired garden will incorporate historic concrete relief murals by artist Gurdon Woods, carved into the existing retaining walls.
We have an extraordinary opportunity to rethink what a museum can be in the 21st century — not simply a place that preserves the past, but one that actively helps shape what comes next. Our goal is to create a place that makes people more curious, more connected, and more capable of imagining what comes next. By bringing art, design, making, and learning together under one roof, we aim to create a place where new ideas and unexpected connections can take shape. — John Cary, Founding President & CEO of the Eames Institute.
The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity was launched in 2022 as a nonprofit organization that aims to advance the design processes and problem-solving approaches of designers such as the Eames couple, equipping a new generation of creatives with tools for addressing contemporary challenges. The Institute extends the designers' approach across Northern California, adding to the material legacy of Case Study House No. 8, commonly known as the Eames House. The house was recently restored after smoke damage from the Palisades Fire in early 2025, with comprehensive cleaning and restoration work. As part of the reopening, the adjacent Eames Studio is open to the public for the first time.
