Casualty of the Economy - Berkeley Art Museum's new building by Toyo Ito

It was reported today by San Francisco Chronicle that UC Berkeley is scaling back the design for the new Berkeley Art Museum downtown building, designed by Toyo Ito. The main culprit is the economic downturn.

How sad.

Toyo Ito hopes that the design will materialize in some way in other museums, while Cal hopes to work on the building on the designated spot and convert it into the new museum, to replace the much beloved seismically unsound old building.

It hurts a lot.