Lower Sproul Redevelopment, University of California, Berkeley

The Lower Sproul Redevelopment Project is a student based initiative that calls for recasting the existing facilities at Lower Sproul Plaza into a revitalized and state-of-the-art facility combining both new construction and adaptive reuse strategies. The project program and design is rooted in sustainable practices. The project encompasses a site area of approximately 184,000 sf and includes a replacement to the existing Eshleman Hall, renovations and additions to Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, the plaza deck itself, and minor renovations to Cesar Chavez Student Center and Anthony Hall.

The proposed scheme calls for a series of careful interventions combined with the adaptive reuse of approximately 200,000 gsf of existing buildings and approximately 90,000 gsf of new construction. The seismically poor eight story Eshleman Hall will be replaced with a lower more porous and transparent six story design that will have built-in flexibility for the sharing of spaces between the many types of student run organizations. King Student Union will be transformed on its west and south sides from its current solid-like mass to a series of semi-transparent glass additions presenting an active and open public face to Lower Sproul Plaza and Bancroft Way.

This project has had an extensive pre-design process that included master planning, feasibility analysis / programming with the benefit of significant input from university representatives including both students and administrators. The project has continued to develop through the schematic design phase with regular involvement by university representatives at every step.