Berkeley Chess School

Berkeley Chess School was founded in 1981 as an after school program by Elizabeth Shaughnessy, the 1970 Irish Women’s Chess Champion. It has grown today to teach 7,000 children a year in the Bay Area, and has produced an unmatched three grandmasters. The founder's primary goal, however, has always been to empower children by teaching them chess, a predictor of future success in STEM subjects. The school teaches for free where students would not otherwise have access to after-school programs, holds low-cost summer camps, and classes through the year.  BCS has been using teaching chess as a tool toward greater social equity for 40 years. We designed a simple addition that gives their existing building a prominent presence on a main thoroughfare in Berkeley. Designed to be inexpensive to build, a storefront wall uses ordinary tinted and translucent panes of glass to create the image of a chessboard. Visitors, students and teachers enter the building behind the chessboard window, metaphorically and literally entering the world of chess.