Groundbreaking for Weiss/Manfredi designed Gateway at University of California, Berkeley

Weiss/Manfredi recently attended the highly anticipated groundbreaking ceremony for University of California, Berkeley’s new 380,000-square-foot Gateway building. The Gateway’s name is meant to both welcome diverse disciplines and areas of expertise and reference the building’s location at the north edge of the Berkeley campus where Hearst Avenue meets Arch Street. This dual role as a physical and intellectual gateway inspired Weiss/Manfredi, in collaboration with Gensler of San Francisco, to develop plans for the campus’s first post-pandemic building, offering inventive, flexible environments for more than 1,300 faculty, students and staff to research, learn and collaborate across disciplines.

“In many ways, the Gateway is the crown jewel of our $6 billion Light the Way campaign,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ at the groundbreaking ceremony celebrating the initial phase of construction on the Gateway building. The event helped mark the start of Homecoming weekend, with students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and guests participating as university leaders discussed the significance of a new interdisciplinary space that aims to transform computing and data science at Berkeley and beyond.

Weiss/Manfredi’s design for this new campus landmark will incorporate classrooms, lecture halls, and convening spaces. Some spaces will allow for more focused gatherings ideal for group study sessions and collaborative research projects, while others are open to the public. The new building will also be home to the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), a new entity that tackles the technical, scientific, social, and human dimensions of the most urgent challenges. The program reimagines scalable solutions in biomedicine and human health, climate and sustainability, and human welfare and social justice. Learn more about the project here.