Marin’s Famous Birkenstock Building Just a Got a New Owner—the Eames Institute

That pointy-roofed midcentury building you can’t miss on a stretch of 101 north of San Francisco finally got a new owner. The Eames Institute just announced it has purchased the Birkenstock building—a famous Marin structure called such for having served as the company’s distribution centers for years—and its surrounding complex with plans to turn it into an internationally renowned art and design museum.

"To share my grandparents’ vision with the world is the honor of a lifetime," Llisa Demetrios, granddaughter of Ray and Charles Eames and the chief curator of the Eames Institute, said in a statement. "Ray and Charles’s boundless curiosity for solving problems through design has been at the core of the Eames Institute’s mission, and this expansion will allow us to share those gifts with our community on an even larger scale."

The institute says the renovation of the 88.5-acre site and its campus, which holds the Birkenstock building and an adjacent warehouse, will include spaces for showcasing the Eames family archive, art exhibitions, maker workshops, and educational programming, though it did not specify what kinds. The grounds will also include green spaces as well as dining and retail.