Herzog & de Meuron Reveals Eames Museum Plan in California Warehouse

Herzog & de Meuron, EHDD and Field Operations have released master plan visuals for the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, a museum set inside an adapted 1960s warehouse in Novato, California, with groundbreaking expected in 2028 and phased openings projected to begin in 2030.

The updated design centres on a 400-foot-long Great Hall. The studios said it will be "one of the largest single-span spaces for art installations in the country". That claim, like all superlatives in the release, is the architects' own; no independent measurement accompanies it. The programme also includes a 275-seat theatre, a Japanese-inspired garden and children's play spaces.

The Eames Institute bought the 88.5-acre property in 2025 to create a public exhibition space and museum for its collection of furniture and other objects designed by Charles and Ray Eames. The site holds a sawtooth-roofed warehouse and office building by architects Jan Lubicz-Nycz and John Savage Bolles, built for the McGraw-Hill publishing company in 1965. Birkenstock USA occupied the campus until 2019.

Herzog & de Meuron and EHDD signed on when the project was first announced in 2025. The new announcement adds Field Operations as landscape designer.

What does the plan actually contain?

According to the team, the warehouse will house galleries, maker spaces, a theatre and a cafe. The former office building becomes a pavilion for events. Visitors enter past a fountain into a "warm, wood-clad space" holding admissions and the museum shop.

A grand stair leads to a 120-foot polished stainless-steel bridge traversing the galleries below. Renders show largely open-plan spaces with the roof's enormous concrete bevels exposed. Wood and ceramic workshops will sit throughout the building. The material palette: colour-stained plywood, plaster and aluminium windows, intended, in the team's words, to "create a dialogue between old and new".

For the grounds, Field Operations drew on an original plan by landscape architect Tito Patri, whose berms helped bury the buildings into their surroundings and buffer them from the highway running directly in front of the site. The design adds:

• A reconfigured parking and arrival sequence
• Gardens to the north and south of the warehouse
• Native stormwater gardens
• Custom furniture designed by the studio

Field Operations partner Richard Kennedy framed the ambition in two statements. "What makes this place so extraordinary is the relationship between its remarkable architecture and the landscape of Marin County," he said. "We imagined the grounds as a living extension of the museum. The idea is simple: ten landscapes, hundreds of places, and infinite journeys."

The team said the masterplan will "transform what was once a private, truck-oriented industrial campus into a public cultural destination". The phrasing is promotional; the transformation itself remains on paper until construction starts.

Who is behind it?

Institute co-founder Llisa Demetrios, a granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames, tied the project to the designers' working method. "For my grandparents, design was always grounded in curiosity and intention – looking closely, asking questions, embracing constraints, and finding beauty in the practical and the functional," she said.

"The museum carries that spirit forward, and it feels especially meaningful to do so in a building that asked us to do the same: work within a remarkable existing structure to imagine what else it can become," she continued.

The project has drawn criticism for its backing by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who in 2025 was appointed America's first Chief Design Officer under President Donald Trump. The release visuals do not address that controversy, nor do they name a construction budget or a project cost — two figures conspicuous by their absence.

The Eames Institute was founded in 2023 and opened a California headquarters in 2024; San Francisco agency Manual created its brand identity the same year. If the 2028 groundbreaking holds, the museum would give the Eames legacy its first purpose-built public home within roughly seven years of the institute's founding.