BERKELEY, Calif.—Three years after the University of California Berkeley chose a forward-looking design by Tokyo architect Toyo Ito for a new home for its Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the school has announced that it will abandon the plans.

The distinctive design, projected to cost $143 million, was to replace the institution's current, seismically endangered home, completed in 1970. According to museum director Lawrence Rinder, the decision is a result of the global economic downturn. As of this month, about $81 million had been raised toward a $200 million capital campaign, and "the gap was too great, looking forward," he said.

The university has instituted cost-cutting measures since the downturn, including requiring faculty furloughs, reducing course offerings, and raising tuition.

Rinder says the university hopes to announce a revised plan by January; one alternative would be to renovate the existing building on the proposed site of the new space, a defunct printing plant. "What will not change," according to Cal Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau, "is our shared goal of building a dynamic, welcoming and seismically safe new museum at the corner of Center and Oxford streets."

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle.