The De Young Museum in the News: View articles from local news organizations following the history of the new Museum and broad spectrum of viewpoints on the project's site, design, funding, and impact on the city of San Francisco Case Study Process: View the case study team's minutes from meeting with various parties involved in the project Internet Resources on the De Young: Follow links to web sites which provide additional facts and opinions about the Museum, including the web site of the project's owner, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
  Who Was Involved: View a list of parties involved in the design and construction of the Museum as well as the members of the case study team What Were the Team's Milestones: View assignments for the UC Berkeley Building Stories (A229B) and Internship (A128) classes What was Found: View the case study team's initial findings regarding the key issues defining the project

 

Fall 2002 Department of Architecture
UC Berkeley

 

The decision was made at the beginning of Construction Documents to phase both the CD's and Construction. This decision was made jointly by the Owner, Prime Architect, Construction Manager, and City of San Francisco due to a number of factors:

1. CITY REQUEST: San Francisco's Department of Buildings requested that the permit set be issued in a series of packages to allow city officials to manage the review process.
2. SCHEDULE: COFAM needed to maintain their originally-projected construction completion date in order to limit the extensive "soft" costs associated with storage and administration of their vast art collection. Swinerton Builders recommended that drawing packages involving materials and processes with long lead times be issued in advance of other packages to maintain this completion date. Swinterton further advised the team that several large state projects (which the contractor was involved with) were going to bid in the near future and that it would be necessary to bid the de Young quickly so as to get the project's steel order to the mill.
3. COST / INFLATION: Rising construction costs, due to a booming economy, during the late-1990's put pressure on COFAM to move quickly. Unless the Museum began construction on time, COFAM feared that the 5-7% annual inflation rate of construction costs would drive the Museum's budget beyond the scope for which COFAM could raise funds.
4. POLITICAL MOMENTUM: COFAM felt the need to project the public image that the Museum's design and construction were proceeding without impediment. The project eventually developed considerable public support. Because the Museum was such a high-profile project and was still receiving considerable criticism, the Museum's Board felt that any display of weakness could harm their fundraising efforts.
5. DESIGN EXCELLENCE: COFAM wanted to allow as much time during CD's to ensure Herzog & deMeuron's design intent was maintained and that Fong & Chan were able to live up to their reputation for providing extremely high-quality documents. The Owner realized that the tight schedule would not allow this to happen, while maintaining the completion date, unless the project were phased.

Construction Documents were broken down into several packages:

1. HAZARDOUS MATERIALS REMOVAL AND DEMOLITION (began late 2001, complete in early 2002). This process had to be coordinated with the closing of the Museum, relocation of collections into long-term storage, and later closing of the Asian Art Museum. The Asian Art Museum remained intact after the majority of the de Young was demolished so that the Asian's space could be used as storage.
2. EXCAVATION AND SHORING (currently underway, mid-2002)
3. ISOLATION BEARING SYSTEM (prototype bearing in development and testing, mid-2002)
4. STRUCTURAL STEEL (bid returned to Fong & Chan on 9/27/02)

Phasing