At the center of Mandala Gates is a reference to Berkeley — ‘The City and Its People’, a large-scale collage created by Romare Bearden, a highly regarded artist whose art celebrated the Jazz Age. The artwork reflects Berkeley’s social fabric—especially its long-standing ethnic diversity and layered community history.

One of its most recognizable visual elements in this artwork is the group of overlapping profile faces. Those figures were intended to symbolize racial harmony and interconnected identity of all peoples. That motif later became especially influential in civic branding, ultimately inspiring the City of Berkeley’s official logo.

The Mandala Gates build on those ideas by translating them into a physical, architectural form. They reference key strands of local history—railroads, agriculture, and the many immigrant and cultural communities that have shaped neighborhoods over time—while also functioning as a visual threshold into city-owned space. The result is both commemorative and everyday: a piece of public art that also works as part of the streetscape and city identity.