California College of the Arts Campus Expansion
Location
San Francisco, CA
Status
Completed 2024
Client
California College of the Arts
Type
Educational, Cultural
Size
82,305 sf new construction
Sustainability
Targeting carbon neutrality and net-zero energy
Studio Gang’s new building at the California College of the Arts (CCA) expands on the school’s San Francisco campus, establishing a vibrant indoor-outdoor environment for learning and making that strengthens relationships among varied people, ideas, and creative practices.
Bringing fresh energy to the neighborhood, the building strengthens CCA’s existing connections with San Francisco’s design and innovation district and the wider creative ecosystem of the Bay Area.
The building physically extends the existing main academic building, introducing new functionality and biodiverse green space to the heart of the CCA campus.
Founded during the Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the 20th century, CCA has grown to encompass 34 art and design disciplines, from jewelry, ceramics, and textiles to metal arts, architecture, and animation. Conceived as a creative ecosystem where different disciplines can productively interact and overlap, the building physically extends from CCA’s existing main academic building, providing new art-making facilities, learning spaces, and green spaces that support its diverse community.
The building’s concrete ground level is a hub of indoor-outdoor workshops for more physically intensive art-making practices and fabrication. Organized around shared materials and equipment, this level’s open, flexible plan makes the different programs easily visible and accessible to one another, promoting interdisciplinary interaction and providing adaptability as new needs, mediums, and technologies develop.
Emerging from this robust base, two mass timber pavilions house classrooms, art studios, and exhibition galleries. Leading onto a green terraced landscape that unites the building’s lower and upper levels, the pavilions are among the first exposed mass timber structures in California. Their deep balconies allow the CCA community to enjoy San Francisco’s mild climate, providing exterior circulation as well as informal learning, working, and social spaces. Their natural materiality and expressive diagrid structure make the lateral and gravity loads of the building visible and speak to the college’s ambitious sustainability goals.
Maker yards allow workshop activities to spill outside. They also bring daylight, fresh air, and views from above into the fabrication spaces, enhancing student well-being and a healthy art-making environment.
Reinforcing the school’s creative ecosystem, the lower level is organized around shared equipment and materials, encouraging interaction and collaboration among different disciplines.
Maker yards allow workshop activities to spill outside. They also bring daylight, fresh air, and views from above into the fabrication spaces, enhancing student well-being and a healthy art-making environment.
A sectional perspective reveals the design parti: distinct yet complementary ground and upper levels, connected by a green terraced landscape and open-air courtyards.
Carved out of the concrete lower level, two large maker yards enable abundant fresh air and natural light to penetrate deep within the interior. Other passive design strategies, such as self-shading façades and night-flush ventilation, naturally cool the building to dramatically reduce the size and energy demand of mechanical systems. With the infrastructure in place to enable a closed-loop, net-positive building in the future, the building’s design is dedicated to supporting healthy, resilient spaces for students, faculty, and visitors.
Through a welcoming new streetscape and programs that seek to increase the impact of art in the wider community, the new building enhances CCA’s connection to San Francisco’s design and innovation district as well as the wider Bay Area and its strong environmental, entrepreneurial, and creative cultures.
Framed by diagonal seismic braces, the pavilions’ deep balconies shade the interior spaces, improving energy performance while extending art-making and social spaces outdoors.
Design strategies serve both environmental and experiential purposes, taking advantage of San Francisco’s mild climate to lower the project’s carbon footprint and enhance student comfort.
Project Team
Dovetail Construction Project Management, owner’s representative
TEF Design, associate architect
Atelier Ten, sustainability consultant
Arup, structural engineering and acoustics engineer
MEYERS+, MEP/FP engineer
Surface Design Inc., landscape architect
Lotus Water, civil engineer
Pritchard Peck, lighting designer
Public Design, wayfinding and signage
Coffman Engineers, code, fire, and life safety consultant
Thornton Tomasetti, thermal and waterproofing consultant
Urban Design Consulting Engineers, dry utility consultant
Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, general contractor
The biodiverse garden landscape creates habitat for wildlife and an inviting outdoor environment for students, faculty, and visitors, enlivening this formerly hard-scaped corner of San Francisco.
Related
San Francisco Chronicle — "Timber! SF’s next architectural trend could be eco-friendly buildings made of wood"
“Touted by boosters as an eco-friendly alternative to concrete and steel, with a tactile warmth that theoretically makes for a more nurturing workplace, large buildings of structural timber have developed a cult following. . . The most visually striking of the projects will be the one at California College of the Arts.”
California College of the Arts Wins Mass Timber Building Competition
The Governor’s Forest Management Task Force and the Office of Planning and Research announced California College of the Arts as a winner of a first-ever competition designed to highlight a category of engineered wood products known as mass timber.
