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Pacifica Radio – KPFA 94.1 FM

Berkeley, California 1991

The Pacifica Radio/ KPFA 94.1 FM building provides an efficient, economical, and memorable home for two venerated Berkeley institutions. As community-based and listener-supported radio producers, Pacifica and KPFA depend on professional staff, as well as a diverse group of volunteers and contributors, to facilitate their day-to-day operations.  Accordingly, the design process engaged all the stakeholders by way of consensus-building meetings and extensive personal interviews. The resulting schematic renderings were used to galvanize a significant capital campaign and give new focus, energy and identity to both organizations.

The facade evokes a temple in its simple three-part, symmetrical composition.  We recall that during the design process, some voices criticized the design of the facade for being too “historicist” and not being enough “of our own time,” ie a design that would evoke the chaotic, asymmetrical, modern, challenging, or uncomfortable condition of our own moment in history.  However, such an approach was not of interest to us.  We hindsight, we believe we made the right call. The iconography of KPFA as a temple has a certain logic for Pacifica KPFA embodies a set of values and beliefs as deeply held by its adherents as any religious order.

KPFA’s previous digs, a ramshackle warren of rooms above Eddie’s Soda Fountain on Shattuck Avenue, had terrible acoustics— and worse equipment.  The new building would be a state-of-the-art facility with a fairly complex mix of sound studios, mixing rooms, conference spaces, and offices.  Through completely counter-intuitive, Pat Scott, General Manager during the period when we were designing the building, directed us to place the most sound-sensitive rooms adjacent to and visible to the large central atrium and stairway.  She wanted her staff to see the guts of the operation as they moved about the building and never to forget that they were in the building to create great radio content.  We also recall, with delight, that the building, at its inauguration, was dubbed “The People’s Cadillac”.

David Trachtenberg was the licensed Project Architect for this project while an associate at Abrams Millikan & Associates.

Cutsheet for Pacifica Radio

Owner: Pacifica Radio, (Patricia Scott, GM)
Architect: Denny Abrams, Rick Millikan, David Trachtenberg (Architect of Record for Abrams/Millikan & Associates)
Structural Engineer: Tipping and Mar
Landscape Architect: The Miller Company
Mechanical Engineer: Van Mulder
Acoustical: Wilson Irhig Associate
Builder: Oliver & Company
Building Photographs: Gareth Tyrnauer
Bensky/Ellsberg Photograph: Scott Hess