Siegel & Strain with John Northmore Roberts & Associates Landscape Architects was one of five finalists selected by the University of California for an “Ideas Competition” to envision the new Berkeley Global Campus, a 10,000 person, 5.4 million sf research and education center, a “safe harbor,” where issues of global significance will be explored and future global leaders trained.

The 135-acre San Francisco Bayfront site in Richmond, CA is a rare partially intact ecological continuum of intertidal zone, freshwater stream and drainage swales, wet meadows, native grassland, and oak woodlands. The interlinked system established a framework for our design. Development is clustered in the less-sensitive upland areas, and ecological uses are concentrated in the more-sensitive water-related zones. Gathering spaces, pathways, and fingers of vegetation interweave the zones.

Looking to the future, this plan accommodates climate change and sea level rise by maintaining a continuous ecological buffer by connecting the central low-lying open space directly with the bayfront intertidal zone and by establishing first floor elevations above projected 2100 flood levels. Constructed barrier islands and expanded tidal marshes will protect the site from storm surge and coastal erosion.