The ugly duckling of UC Berkeley buildings to be demolished

A UC Berkeley building reviled for decades as among the ugliest on campus is being demolished.

The university said Evans Hall will be knocked down because retrofitting it would be more expensive than making a new one, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The decision came after a structural engineering study and architectural assessment.

The school has yet to make an official announcement and no demolition date has been set.

“In addition to seismic improvements, the building has extensive deferred maintenance, inefficient and crowded classrooms, spaces that are not sized or configured to meet current program needs, and aged building systems that have exceeded intended lifespans,” Wendy Hillis, UC Berkeley campus architect and assistant vice chancellor for capital strategies, told the newspaper.

Opened in 1971, Evans Hall is home to 12 percent of general assignment classrooms on campus with a capacity of up to 3,500 people. The building houses the Mathematics, Economics and Statistics Departments as well as the math and statistics library and the undergraduate advisers for the College of Letters and Science.

All the operations in Evans must first be relocated. At 270,000 square feet, no single building will replace it.

The building is described in Harvey Helfand’s “Campus Guide, University of California Berkeley” as “bearing the reputation expressed by many as the most despised building on campus.”

Designed by architect Gardner Dailey, it obstructs the view of the Sather Tower, also known as the Campanile, which was designed by campus architect John Galen Howard.

“The main problem with Evans is that it blocks off the Campanile,” said Anthony Bruce, executive director of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, to the newspaper. It was just built too close to it.”

The future of the site will be revealed at the end of the school year, when UC Berkeley completes its updated campus master plan.

[San Francisco Chronicle] — Gabriel Poblete

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