The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity is transforming the former Birkenstock campus north of San Francisco into an art and design museum.

The goal is to support the institute’s vision of bringing impactful art and design to the public. The plan for the Novato, California, site includes immersive art exhibitions, workshops, educational programming, public spaces, culinary and retail spaces, the Eames Collection, and family archives, according to the July 31 announcement.

“I’m very excited about ... these buildings and coming out, just completely transformed, just so ecstatic about what the possibilities of art and design really are,” John Cary, president and CEO of the Eames Institute, told The Epoch Times. “We’re also trying to create something that'll be truly multigenerational.”

The long, rectangular 88-acre site has two buildings—a distribution center and an office building—which make up a 166,000-square-foot campus. John Savage Bolles, a renowned modernist architect, designed the campus for the McGraw Hill Corporation in the 1960s. In 1994, the Birkenstock footwear company acquired it and operated it until 2019. Since 2020, the campus has been vacant.

“This acquisition will transform a long inactive property into a powerful economic engine for Novato,” City Councilman Mark Milberg said in the announcement. “This project will create good jobs, stimulate our local businesses and boost tourism—solidifying our city’s position as a booming cultural hub and a strategic place to invest.”

According to Cary, the institute’s staff would occupy only about a quarter of the office space, so the remaining areas will be converted into additional space for collections and archives, a cafe, restaurant, retail, and other guest amenities.

The institute plans to keep the iconic sawtooth roof structure of the warehouse distribution center, which is supported by a curtain wall system.

“Below each one of those sawtooth tips is a kind of arch form of glass, and that glass is not load-bearing,” Cary said. “So it will give us the opportunity to create more of a connection between the indoors and the outdoors, between the office building and the kind of parking lot that is currently behind the warehouse, and just try to really kind of thread together those two buildings and in an even more deliberate way.”

The institute is currently in the conceptual design phase, enlisting Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. The goal is to transform the campus into a more dynamic public space.

The next phase is schematic design, where institute officials will look at how well their elements fit into the building.

There will also need to be some permits and approvals from the City of Novato before actual construction.

Currently, their vision is to be open to the public by 2030.

“We will do everything humanly and technically possible to get it open as soon as possible. We really want this to become both a community treasure and a world class, global destination,” Cary said.

Cary said the project will be funded through grants from foundations and individuals. The goal is to become self-sustaining through ticketed admissions with options for reduced fees and K-12 programming.

“To share my grandparents’ vision with the world is the honor of a lifetime,” Llisa Demetrios, the institute’s chief curator, said in the announcement. “Ray and Charles’ boundless curiosity for solving problems through design has been at the core of the Eames Institute’s mission, and this expansion will allow us to share those gifts with our community on an even larger scale.”

The former Birkenstock campus. (Courtesy of Eames Institute)

Inside the former Birkenstock warehouse. (Iwan Baan)