San Francisco, California
The George and Judy Marcus Hall for the Creative Arts is a new, state-of-the-art building for the campus of San Francisco State University designed by Mark Cavagnero and the team of Mark Cavagnero Associates with landscape architects SWA Group.
For its innovative design, The George and Judy Marcus Hall for the Creative Arts, San Francisco State University has recently been awarded a 2023 American Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The SFSU Liberal and Creative Arts (LCA) building includes all of the Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts (BECA) program, College of Liberal & Creative Arts offices, and interdisciplinary lecture spaces.
The project provides a flexible learning and production environment for teaching electronic media capture, editing, and broadcast and consists of a 4-story, 75,000 square-foot “bar” oriented north-south.
The ground floor houses highly controlled environments and acoustically sensitive spaces dedicated to specialized content creation including two multi-story television studios, along with a TV newsroom; radio station; video postproduction space; audio recording, production, and post-production space; and related classroom space for the BECA program.
The upper 3 floors are comprised predominantly of classrooms and offices.
The envelope consists of architectural cast-in-place concrete, insulated metal wall panels, and a low-energy aluminum curtainwall.
These systems have been strategically shaped to efficiently mitigate the marine micro-climate specific to the Lake Merced/SFSU campus area.
The cladding systems optimize the use of daylight and natural ventilation to reduce energy consumption while creating comfortable and sustainable learning environments.
This is achieved by a façade that creases and folds in response to solar orientation.
The architectural cast-in-place concrete provides mass for the acoustical isolation of studio spaces as well as primary lateral resistance for the structural system.
The material’s durability also aids against wear due to loading and high student traffic at the ground floor level.
Project: George and Judy Marcus Hall for the Creative Arts, San Francisco State University
Architects: Mark Cavagnero Associates
Design Team: Mark Cavagnero, John Fung, Federica Carrara, Mark Jewell, Simon Newton, and Andy Lau
Landscape Architects: SWA Group
Lighting Design: Auerbach Glasow
Project/Construction Manager: McCarthy Building Companies, Inc.
Client: San Francisco State University
Photographers: Henrik Kam Photography
