INSEAD Garage, San Francisco, USA
for
role
status
year
GSA
Principal
Design
2018
Located in one of the principal tech hubs in San Francisco, the Dog Patch former manufacturing district, the historic building, offered an ideal container to house the INSEAD US satellite’s campus. The building itself was an unusual example of California Art Deco and sat in a soon to be designated Historic District and so it had the informal status as a kind of quirky landmark which gave it a welcome visibility in the neighborhood. The building shell consisted of board-formed poured-in place-concrete with integral concrete pilasters supporting widespan metal arched trusses that carried and exposed wood framed exposed ceiling. The historic status forced significant constraints on how the exterior would be treated. A number of similar buildings had been converted to office use but fell short of serving as models to emulate since they were executed as speculative developments.
Working with the constraints imposed by the historic designation and certain egress challenges imposed by the proposed uses in the context of the site configuration, the project reintroduces the traditional amphis within a flexible void that can be reconfigured to perform as breakouts serving the amphis or as large event spaces. This void is contrasted by the compact volume of the services spaces situated on two levels which house the Street Coffee Bar, Enclosed Meeting Spaces, Administrative Spaces, Faculty Shared Offices, Enclosed offices, Incidental Lounges and a Mezzanine Café.
