The California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco has long been a hotbed for creative expression in the Bay Area. There, Studio Gang – also responsible for New York’s groundbreaking timber theatre – has completed a new mass timber building that offers artists and designers more space to explore.
The 82,000-square-foot addition contains art-making facilities, learning spaces, and terraces. The ground level has indoor and outdoor workshop spaces catered for large-scale fabrication and two large “maker yards” with additional workshops, helping bring natural light into the interior.
“The design intends to create a dynamic environment for art and design education while also inspiring new forms of making through unexpected interactions between disciplines,” according to Jeanne Gang from Studio Gang, who started working on the project in 2018 – before Covid.
From afar, the expansion is defined by its braced timber framed system, marking what Studio Gang said is amongst California’s first and most innovative exposed mass timber structures. The overall ensemble can be understood as a robust plinth topped by two pavilions where classrooms and studios are sited.
Studio Gang noted that the design reduces the new building’s embodied carbon footprint by about half what typical baseline buildings consume. The heaviest equipment was placed on the ground plane, reducing the structure necessary on upper levels and allowing for adaptation over time.
Above the base, two mass timber pavilions host classrooms, art studios, and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. These pavilions lead to a green terraced landscape that unifies upper and lower levels. This portion takes advantage of the Bay Area’s temperate climate, which is conducive to outdoor learning.
Self-shading facades and night-flush ventilation naturally cool the building, reducing energy consumption. Architects further noted that, in the future, the building will have infrastructure that will allow it to become a closed-loop, net-positive structure.
