Honorable Mention: International Architecture Awards 2024
AIA San Francisco and Center for Architecture + Design Headquarters | San Francisco, California, USA | 2023

Architects: Aidlin Darling Design
Lead Architects: Joshua Aidlin and Roslyn Cole
Design Team: Tory Wolcott Green, Tammy LePham, Peter Larsen, Min Hyoung Choe, Patricia Samartzis, and Poap Panusittikorn
General Contractor: BCCI Construction Company
Client: The American Institute of Architects San Francisco & Center for Architecture + Design
Photographers: Richard Barnes Photography

In moving to the ground floor storefront within the historic Hallidie Building, the AIASF and the Center for Architecture + Design gained new visibility to the public, extending the reach of both organizations and profoundly extroverting their programs. To capitalize on this visibility, the client-architect team deliberately expanded the program for the Headquarters to provide a café, gallery, lecture hall, public meeting rooms and office space, creating a cross-pollinated design center.

Accretive finishes within the historic building were removed to expose the raw concrete ceiling ribs and columns of the long and tall cathedral-like space. Newly inserted program elements serve to reinforce the primacy of the concrete shell, with the lecture hall volume set within the concrete bay and felt acoustic baffles mirroring the rhythm of the concrete ribs of the ceiling. The selective addition of a raised concrete floor mitigates the 2 foot level change that originally bifurcated the space longitudinally, encouraging movement through the space and creating spaces for gathering and viewing of artwork within the gallery.

Light from a newly inserted skylight rakes over a living wall at the back of the space, introducing biophilia into the urban environment and further encouraging visitors to experience the Center. The making of the Center was a true barn raising with a large outpouring of support by the design/build industry to ensure that the Center would be built; in-kind donations raised more than half of the necessary funding for the Center. As strong advocates for the Center, the design team recruited elite artisans and makers to donate their work to the Center, which showcases a wide range of design disciplines while achieving an unusually rigorous level of craft for a non-profit institution. By highlighting many design disciplines, the Center is raising the region’s cultural awareness of all aspects of design for all demographics. With its location in Downtown San Francisco, which has been severely depleted by the pandemic, the Center also serves as a catalyst to reoccupy the urban center of the city.