UC Berkeley’s new East Asian Library

The C. V. Starr East Asian Library on the University of California’s Berkeley campus opened in March 2008. Designed by Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, the building occupies a site on the north edge of the Memorial Glade that is part of the campus’s landmarked Classical Core. Yet, while honoring its context, the architects have created a building that has more in common with the tenets of Modernism than those of Classicism.