A museum dedicated to the design legacy of Charles and Ray Eames has moved a step closer to opening, with the publication of a master plan for its California home. The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity bought a former Birkenstock campus in Marin County a year ago, and has now shown how the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron will reshape the old warehouse site into a cultural venue of 185,000 square feet.

The scheme centres on a main hall joined to six galleries, alongside workshop rooms, a theatre and places to eat. A neighbouring office block will be reworked as a flexible gathering space. The institute presents the project as more than a storehouse for a celebrated design archive: it says the museum should actively influence what comes next in design, rather than simply preserving the past.

Charles and Ray Eames, the husband-and-wife team behind some of the twentieth century's most recognisable chairs, films and exhibitions, built a practice that ranged from furniture and architecture to photography and education. The institute was set up to carry that curiosity-led approach forward, and the new building is intended to give the public a permanent place to encounter it.

No opening date has been announced, but the institute expects the museum to attract some 200,000 visitors each year once it opens. The project adds to a run of new design-focused venues in California and reflects the continuing pull of the Eames name, whose work still shapes how homes, offices and museums look today.