Architecture Division announces a series of three pop-up architecture exhibitions
On view May 18–July 10, 2021, at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.
For immediate release—Tuesday, May 18, 2021—California College of the Arts’ Architecture Division is proud to partner with Hudson Pacific Properties, co-owner of the Ferry Building with Allianz, to present a series of three pop-up exhibitions of architectural work by CCA students and faculty at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. On view May 18–July 10, the three exhibitions explore Bay Area histories and futures, social justice and territorialization, and ecology and climate change, reconsidering our relationships with architecture in a rapidly changing world.
“We are pleased to be supporting emerging local artists while showcasing thought-provoking pieces of art for the community surrounding the Ferry Building to enjoy,” said Jane Connors, general manager of the Ferry Building.
Each pop-up exhibition challenges long-held architectural norms by presenting work through three large-scale multimedia projections, visible from the storefront windows on the south and southeast sides of the Ferry Building. Displayed inside one of San Francisco’s most iconic public spaces, the multifaceted exhibition series grounds itself in ideas of making, un-making, and re-making. Together, the three exhibitions ask viewers and makers alike to reflect on how past architectures move the many concepts of “us” into the future.
"CCA Architecture is thrilled to collaborate with Hudson Pacific Properties this summer to showcase forward-thinking architectural work from our community," says Keith Krumwiede, dean of Architecture for CCA. "These three pop-up exhibitions explore the ways our students and faculty are imagining life after the challenges of the last year, anticipating society's needs, and considering new ways to gather in a post-pandemic world. We're excited to share this thoughtful work at the Ferry Building."
Unsettle + Sanctuary 2121: Future Visions for the Bay Bridge (May 18–June 3)
The first pop-up exhibition in this series, running May 18–June 3, presents a selection of work by 2021 CCA Master of Architecture graduates that looks to the future following a year of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thinking through ways architecture can bring people and their environments together, this selection of work considers how we can gather when there are so many variables in the time ahead. The exhibition also includes work from CCA’s advanced architecture studio, Sanctuary City, led by CCA Professors Jason Kelly Johnson and Carlos Sabogal, which takes on the anti-monumental by studying the Bay Bridge. In their studio, faculty and students reconsider and imagine alternative possibilities for bridges within urban culture as both functional sites for transportation and symbolic sites of connection and relation. Read more about this upcoming exhibition.
Urban Works: Working on the Urban (June 4–24)
The second exhibition, on view June 4–24, highlights work from the Urban Works Agency, one of CCA Architecture’s four research labs, which leverages architectural design to affect social justice, ecological vitality, and economic resilience. Read more about this exhibition.
How We Hear Now (June 25–July 10)
The final exhibition, on view June 25–July 10, will feature How We Hear Now, a participatory, collective artwork created by The ECOPOESIS Project, a multi-year initiative led by the Architectural Ecologies Lab and MFA in Writing program at California College of the Arts. How We Hear Now explores the many audible changes in our environments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more about this exhibition.
About CCA Architecture
Architecture students at California College of the Arts are challenged to be creative and visionary. Across four academic programs and four research and teaching labs, they design with aesthetic, social, and environmental issues in mind, producing work that links image to identity, form to performance, and order to equity.
CCA believes that architecture and interior design are critical cultural practices that can and should serve the common good. Architecture at CCA is an arena for the free and open exchange of ideas about the future—of our buildings, cities, and planet—and a laboratory where these ideas are tested through speculative architectural research. CCA Architecture students challenge conventional ideas at every turn in an innovative culture of making that weds discipline-specific skills and knowledge to emerging technical and conceptual methods.
Learn more about CCA Architecture and the division’s four teaching and research labs at cca.edu/architecture. You can also find stories by and about CCA Architecture students, alumni, faculty, and friends at Scaffold, along with recordings of past events.
About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. Benefitting from its San Francisco Bay Area location, the college prepares students for lifelong creative work by cultivating innovation, community engagement, and social and environmental responsibility.
CCA offers a rich curriculum of 22 undergraduate and 11 graduate programs in art, design, architecture, and writing taught by a faculty of expert practitioners. Attracting promising students from across the nation and around the world, CCA is one of the 10 most diverse colleges in the U.S. Last year, U.S. News & World Report ranked CCA as one of the top 10 graduate schools for fine arts in the country.
Graduates are highly sought-after by companies such as Pixar/Disney, Apple, Intel, Facebook, Gensler, Google, IDEO, Autodesk, Mattel, and Nike, and many have launched their own successful businesses. Alumni and faculty are often recognized with the highest honors in their fields, including Academy Awards, AIGA Medals, Fulbright Scholarships, Guggenheim Fellowships, MacArthur Fellowships, National Medal of Arts, and the Rome Prize, among others.
CCA is creating a new, expanded college campus at its current site in San Francisco, spearheaded by the architectural firm Studio Gang. The new campus design will be a model of sustainable construction and practice; will unite the college’s programs in art, crafts, design, architecture, and writing in one location to create new adjacencies and interactions; and will provide more student housing than ever before. For more information, visit cca.edu.
About the Ferry Building
Since 1898, the Ferry Building has stood as the gateway to San Francisco. This iconic landmark, located on San Francisco’s waterfront on the Embarcadero, serves as a destination for Bay Area residents and tourists alike, attracting roughly 8 million visitors annually. The first-floor marketplace, opened in 2003, is home to nearly 50 restaurants, cafés, and retail shops offering a variety of foods, beverages, groceries, goods and wares, and sweet treats celebrating the best of the Bay Area. The magnificent, second-story Grand Hall houses 193,000 square feet of world-class office space, and the building and its plazas are adjacent to a thriving transportation hub. The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, operated by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA), is held at the building three times each week. For more information, visit ferrybuildingmarketplace.com.