The Eames Institute, which counts the Airbnb co-founder as a founding donor, has filed plans for a 185,000-square-foot design museum on the former Birkenstock campus while saying little about how much of its money comes from him.
For most of its seven years, the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity has been one of the Bay Area’s lower-profile cultural nonprofits: a ranch outside Petaluma, a collection of more than 40,000 objects from the studio of Charles and Ray Eames, an architecture bookstore in Jackson Square. Last week it stepped into the open.
On Tuesday, the institute submitted a master plan to the City of Novato for a museum on the former Birkenstock USA campus along Highway 101, an 88.5-acre property it bought for $36 million in 2025, The Press Democrat reported. The design, by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron with the San Francisco firm EHDD and the landscape architects Field Operations, would turn a 1960s warehouse with a folded concrete roof into a 185,000-square-foot museum. Construction is targeted for 2028, subject to city approvals, with first openings in 2030.
The project has also drawn new attention to the institute’s best-known supporter, Joe Gebbia, the Airbnb co-founder who now serves in the Trump administration as the country’s first chief design officer. Forbes’s real-time billionaires tracker put Mr. Gebbia’s net worth at about $9.1 billion on Nov. 2, 2026.
What is planned
According to the plan as described by The Press Democrat and Dezeen, the warehouse would hold a great hall nearly 400 feet long and 120 feet wide, six galleries, woodworking and ceramics workshops, a 275-seat theater and a cafe and restaurant. A 120-foot stainless steel bridge would link it to a 45,000-square-foot former office building, to be converted into a pavilion, and the grounds would be reworked into 10 landscapes inspired by Marin County.
The buildings themselves have a design pedigree. Dezeen reported that the warehouse and office were designed by Jan Lubicz-Nycz and John Savage Bolles in 1965 for McGraw-Hill, with an original landscape by Tito Patri, and that Birkenstock’s American operation occupied the campus until 2019.
The institute projects about 200,000 visitors a year, 85 to 120 jobs and about $14 million a year in visitor spending, The Press Democrat reported. It has not announced a construction budget or a capital campaign.
“We have an extraordinary opportunity to rethink what a museum can be in the 21st century — not simply a place that preserves the past, but one that actively helps shape what comes next,” John Cary, the institute’s founding president and chief executive, said in the announcement. Llisa Demetrios, the chief curator and a granddaughter of Charles Eames, said she hoped visitors would “leave feeling inspired not just by what they’ve seen, but by what they might make or discover themselves.”
A patron in the background
Mr. Gebbia, who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, has described the Eameses as a formative influence. “‘Discovering the Eames’ as a young art student changed the trajectory of my life and their work continues to have a profound impact on me to this day,” he said when the institute announced in 2022 that he had provided its initial funding, Designboom reported.
How much he has given since then has never been disclosed. The institute’s own tax returns, compiled by ProPublica, show contributions of about $165 million from 2021 through 2024, including $63.4 million in 2024 alone, when the nonprofit reported net assets of $134.4 million. The returns do not name donors.
The San Francisco Standard reported on Sunday that Mr. Gebbia gave $106 million in 2022 to a donor-advised fund run by the American Endowment Foundation, and that the foundation gave the institute $63.2 million in 2024, nearly all the contributions the institute reported that year. The Standard said it could not confirm how much of that money came from Mr. Gebbia. Donor-advised funds let contributors take a tax deduction when they give and recommend grants later, without the recipient’s filings naming them.
Asked by The Inquirer about Mr. Gebbia’s role and the cost of the museum, the institute replied through its public relations firm, BerlinRosen. “The Eames Institute is an independent 501(c)(3) public charity, supported to date by hundreds of donors and members who believe in the transformative power of design. Joe Gebbia is one of those donors,” the statement said. It added: “Final cost is still being determined for the Museum.”
The statement said the campus “will include immersive art exhibits and experiences, high-quality design education and programming, makers spaces and workshops, events, retail and culinary offerings, and new accessible public open space.”
Politics in the design world
Mr. Gebbia’s public profile has changed since the institute’s founding. A longtime Democrat, he volunteered with the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025 and was then named by President Trump to lead the National Design Studio, an office created to overhaul federal websites and services; the administration has said the goal is to make government easier for Americans to use. He also sits on Tesla’s board. The Standard reported that he gave $8 million in October to the campaign for Proposition 39, the voter identification measure on Tuesday’s California ballot.
That shift has stirred debate in architecture circles. The critic Christopher Hawthorne, in a series of posts in his newsletter, Punch List, has criticized Mr. Gebbia’s posts on X and argued that “at the very least, the Institute should clearly communicate to those partners, and to the interested public, where its relationship with Gebbia stands and how it sees that relationship evolving.” An institute spokesperson told The Standard that “Joe’s views are his own and do not reflect the Eames Institute.”
Mr. Gebbia has said his own politics changed largely over immigration and border enforcement, according to a 2025 interview cited by The Standard.
What it means for Marin
For Novato, a city of about 50,000, the plan would put an internationally designed museum on a prominent stretch of Redwood Boulevard and reopen a long-private corporate campus to the public. The institute already operates in the North Bay: it bought 193 acres at the former World College West campus near Petaluma for $20 million in 2024 and runs a ranch in Sonoma County, The Press Democrat reported.
The plan still faces Novato’s review, including environmental analysis. The city’s planning division and Docomomo US/Northern California, a group that advocates for modernist buildings, did not respond to requests for comment sent Sunday. The Inquirer’s questions about Mr. Gebbia were directed to the institute; Mr. Gebbia was not reached directly.
For more on the Bay Area’s largest fortunes, see The Inquirer’s survey of San Francisco’s 100 wealthiest families.
Pilar Ashcombe covers San Francisco society and the public lives of its billionaires, from galas, museum and opera boards and art collections to landmark homes and the city’s old and new fortunes, for the Inquirer’s Billionaires desk. More from Pilar Ashcombe
