Herzog & de Meuron to Turn Novato Warehouse into Eames Museum

Herzog & de Meuron and Bay Area firm EHDD will convert a 1960s McGraw-Hill textbook warehouse in Novato, California, into the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, a multidisciplinary museum slated to open by 2030.

The Eames Institute acquired the roadside campus in Marin County in August 2025, on the 60th anniversary of the building's completion. The warehouse is known for its folded, origami-like white hyperbolic paraboloid concrete roof, designed in the 1960s by Polish-born American architect Jan Lubicz-Nycz for the office of modernist architect John Savage Bolles. McGraw-Hill commissioned it as a publishing, warehouse and distribution facility, then left in 1991; Birkenstock USA later used it as headquarters and warehouse. The project is now in the first phase of review, permitting and approval with the City of Novato.

While the Eames Archives will anchor the museum, the Institute says its exhibitions and programming will reach well beyond Charles and Ray Eames, bringing together disciplines, creative processes and ideas. The collection spans industrial design, painting, monumental artworks and public sculpture.

What does the design keep and what does it change?

The design preserves the hyperbolic paraboloid roof while integrating new building systems. The building opens to the landscape with new recessed glass facades and porches along its north and south sides. The material palette — color-stained plywood, plaster and aluminum windows — responds to the geometry of the preserved concrete structure. Visitors arrive through an exterior room carved into a landscape berm, the Arrival Court, where the building sits behind an infinity-edge fountain.

Inside, the 185,000-square-foot floor plate works as a series of connected experiences. A wood-clad entry space holds admissions, the museum shop, lockers, restrooms and elevators. From there, a grand staircase leads to a 120-foot polished stainless steel bridge that appears to float across the warehouse, with views into the Great Hall below. That hall runs 400 feet long by 120 feet wide — roughly the length of an American football field plus both end zones — and will host art installations and galas.

The rest of the program breaks down into:

• Six interconnected galleries
• Wood and ceramics workshops plus collection and making spaces
• Storage, library and resting rooms
• A 275-seat theater for performing arts, film screenings, speaker series and live concerts
• A café, a bistro and a fine-dining restaurant with views over the landscape

How does the landscape work?

Field Operations is redesigning the grounds of the surrounding 88.5-acre site, drawing on Marin County's oak savannas, coastal prairies, woodlands and meadows with native and climate-adapted plantings linked by trails. The architects say the plan builds on the original approach of landscape architect Tito Patri, whose layered berms integrated the buildings into their surroundings and buffered the campus from the highway. Field Operations also cites the Eameses' nine-minute short film Powers of Ten, which explores the relative scale of the universe, as a reference.

New exterior features include stormwater gardens and wet meadows to capture and filter rainwater, interactive landscape features with custom furnishings, children's play spaces informed by the firm's Tunnel Tops Park in the Bay Area, and a tree-filled upper court replacing a former employee parking area next to the dining venues. Large gardens to the north and south replace former truck turnarounds and loading docks.

An adjacent 45,000-square-foot former office building will be restored as a pavilion for retreats, lectures and seminars, with a large multipurpose room overlooking the warehouse roof. Behind it, a Japanese-inspired garden will incorporate historic concrete relief murals by artist Gurdon Woods carved into the existing retaining walls.

Who is behind the Institute?

The Eames Institute launched in 2022 as a nonprofit that advances the design processes and problem-solving approaches of designers like the Eames couple. Founding President and CEO John Cary framed the ambition plainly: "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."

"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," Cary said.

The Institute extends the designers' legacy across Northern California, adding to Case Study House No. 8, better known as the Eames House, which recently reopened after cleaning and restoration work following smoke damage from the Palisades Fire in early 2025. The adjacent Eames Studio is now open to the public for the first time.

With Novato's permitting process just beginning, the 2030 target gives the city and the design team roughly five years to move from review to a finished museum.