 I mean, I don't think it's the prettiest building on campus. I don't really like it. I think it's dead, like, it's so dead that it makes it, like, dreadful to walk in there sometimes. UC Berkeley is home to a variety of important and historic buildings, including Evans Hall, home to mathematics and economics departments. Constructed in 1971, Evans Hall has both shaped UC Berkeley's campus and its culture alike. In early 2022, it was announced that due to seismic insufficiencies, Evans Hall would be demolished to make a way for new and improved advising offices and classrooms. This comes after decades of poor seismic ratings and students' complaints about Evans Hall studying its poor architectural design and internal design. We had a chance to speak to passing students about Evans Hall's design and hear their thoughts on its imminent destruction. I don't really like it. I think there's so many really beautiful neoclassical buildings on campus, but then Evans is kind of just there. I think it's outdated, so there is some renovation things that could happen. I mean, I don't think it's the prettiest building on campus, but again, I don't know if it necessarily needs to be destroyed. It definitely feels very old and different compared to the other buildings on campus. You walk in there, the walls are concrete, so it's just like muted compared to like every other class. I love the library. The library is very, very nice, the math library. But overall, it's just kind of just been a place where I go to study. There's no like big meaning to it in my eyes. Complaints about Evans Hall are nothing new though. As like most things at Berkeley, there lies a great story to be told about this building. To unpack Evans Hall's impact on campus and the unfortunate story of his lead designer, we spoke to Betsy Rockwell, curator and head archivist of the Environmental Design Archives at the Berkeley College of Environmental Design. Post World War II, like I said, there was a major influx of new students, essentially sponsored by the GI Bill. So the campus population grew exponentially and the campus had to really figure out how to accommodate all these new students and to start expanding space for disciplines that were growing after the war, especially the engineering physical sciences and life sciences. So Evans was kind of a natural outcome of that particular form of planning, which is we want to create a little neighborhood right here around Hearst Mining Circle. We want to create, I think this was mathematics and physical sciences. And so Evans kind of just kind of puts a little bookend there to create a smaller more intimate space here. So that's one of the reasons, I think, why people have always been a little bit against Evans Hall. And if I look at a 1978 historic sort of historic buildings evaluation of all campus buildings, they're essentially like Evans Hall, what a mistake. It's so tall. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's so tall. It competes with the Campanile in terms of how you view the campus. And so it's not designed with the same level of quality as the other buildings as you can see. So I think that's probably one of the reasons why there is, even if people, even if people would privately admit they think the building is okay, sort of generally there is a feeling that it's always, you know, kind of has a bad reputation for kind of ruining the campus plan. While Evans Hall's design is a story in its own right, won't be foolish to cover the significance of its lead architect, Gardner Daley. One of Daley's sort of design, common design features was kind of an emphasis on the vertical. He was influential to a few other well-known Bay Area architects, sort of a very particular ratio of width to height that kind of gave a certain grandiose feeling to the architecture without being, you know, very imposing. It was kind of an elegant way of sort of drawing the eye up. So obviously Daley had done a lot of work for the campus. I'm sure you've been to the music buildings, but, you know, a much more elegant approach to a campus building. And so what I think what changed between Daley's prior buildings on campus and the design of Evans Hall is that Daley actually died, Gardner Daley died in 1967. It was actually quite a tragic story. He committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. His firm did carry on. So it was really his younger associates who I assume designed Evans Hall. The project had started before Daley died, but I think was carried out by his younger associates, who were talented architects, but, you know, it wasn't Daley. So while Evans Hall may be a boring looking building, its history is anything but. For KEL TV News, my name is Alex Rico and I'll catch you all next time.