Émile Bénard

Henri Jean Émile Bénard (June 23, 1844 – October 15, 1929) was a French architect and painter.

Bénard was the winner of The Phoebe Hearst International Architectural Competition and the Berkeley Campus in 1899 with his project "Roma." The competition and his design led to the current University of California, Berkeley Campus Architecture.

Bénard was born in Goderville and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Bénard's design for the campus architecture won the competition for successfully addressing all of the concerns that the competition's jury had. Bénard's scheme won unanimous praise for having successfully addressed all of the jury's concerns. The elevations were judged to be excellent in scale and proportion, with the drawings done beautifully. The only weakness noted was that some of the buildings in the upper part of the plan were too far from those with related departments, making some rearrangement necessary. In the end, the jury declared Bénard the architect to be entrusted with the execution of the work.

Bénard's plan was appropriately code-named "Roma" for the competition. The plan conjured a city of Parisian buildings organized along a sloping esplanade. The axis continued off campus by way of a preexisting approach known as University Avenue, which led straight to the bay. His east-west axis included a square, treelined esplanade and formal garden. His plan contained many different sizes and shapes of buildings, with domes, courts, towers and different roof styles, instead of rows of buildings of the same size and shape. His plan made elegant use of Charter Hill, with stairs and buildings working their way up to a monument at the top. Moreover, unlike most of the other plans, and unlike the campus today, it afforded a view of the hill from strategic points in the central campus. Like the other plans, Benard favored a formal instead of topographical layout. He left the southwest corner of the site (where Haas Pavilion, and Edwards Stadium are today) as forest.

Emile Bénard declined to be appointed supervising architect, and in 1901 the position was offered to John Galen Howard, the fourth-place winner of the competition. Although Howard was directed to execute Bénard's plan without any substantial departure, he made small alterations until the plan was more his than Bénard's. However, Howard was loyal to the Beaux-Arts character of Bénard's plan.

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