New benches in the making for the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive. (Photo courtesy of BAMPFA.)
When the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive reopens at its new downtown location on Jan. 31, the University of California, Berkeley, visual arts center will feature wooden furnishings revived from a previous life by a local master craftsman, ordained Zen Buddhist priest and designer of Buddhist temples. "I like trees of all kinds. I like to grow them, trim them, chop them and make wonderful new things with them," says Paul Discoe, an artisan and student of Japanese culture. Before his meditative work at BAMPFA, he designed the famed Zen centers in Tassajara and Green Gulch, California, as well as temples and even a temple-inspired home for tech mogul and Oracle chief Larry Ellison. Now Discoe's applying the finishing touches on seating for BAMPFA's airy new amphitheater, its store shelving and a reception desk, all made out of recycled hardwoods collected from campus and community locations - and bringing a bit more Zen to Berkeley in the process. The website for his Oakland-based shop, Joinery Structures , notes the eco-friendly business is based around "material, mindfulness and balance." "I like turning things that people think of as waste into something beautiful.
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