In fall 2011, CCA faculty member Amy Campos and a group of Interior Design students worked with Dolores Shelter Program (DSP) as part of an ENGAGE at CCA course. Their brief: to generate ideas for the renovation of DSP's homeless shelter on South Van Ness in the Mission District of San Francisco.

The facility's residents are in great need of an empowering and supportive sense of place, hope, and safety, and the aspiration was to facilitate this via better space planning and organization, and the creation of more durable and usable furnishings and storage.

What began in 2008 as a visit by CCA President Stephen Beal to the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing is now blossoming into a productive relationship between the two schools. This fall CCA enrolled six more undergraduate students from CAFA’s International Foundation Course; they join the first four students who began their studies at CCA in fall 2010.

In the first foray into faculty exchanges, David Hisaya Asari (Graphic Design) and Lynn Marie Kirby (Film) spent spring break 2011 at CAFA. An IFC instructor visited CCA in August. And Furniture faculty member Christopher Loomis is in Beijing now teaching for the semester.

What inspired this relationship between the two schools and what are the plans for the future?

Laying the Groundwork

In October 2008 President Beal was invited to participate in a forum on international art education, as part of CAFA's 90th anniversary celebration. He was impressed with the 4,000-student institution and its leaders, many of whom have ties with U.S. institutions. President Pang Gongkai was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Vice President Xu Bing, well-known artist and recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “genius” award, lived and worked in New York for more than 10 years. Dean of Design Min Wang completed his graduate work in design at Yale and worked for more than 20 years in the United States, including a stint at Adobe before forming his own firm in San Francisco.

Model Making (The Architecture Brief Series)
Princeton Architectural Press, 2011
Paperback, 160 pages, $24.95

Megan Werner (Interior Design faculty) is the founder of zDp Models, a San Francisco-based model-making firm. Her client list includes Microsoft, SOM, Renzo Piano, Gensler, IDEO, and Stanford University. Here she presents the nuts and bolts of model making in the latest addition to Princeton Architectural Press's Architecture Briefs series. In 33 "concept blocks" she explores a wide range of possible types, including laser-scored acrylic models, basswood topography models, acid-etched metal blocks, peeled paper blocks, D-print models, cement pour blocks, and many more. Model Making includes handy appendices on materials, tools, tips, and techniques, as well as a glossary of design concepts.

The only collection of its kind at any art school in the country, the CCA Materials Library is an interdisciplinary space where students explore texture and engage imagination. Within its walls, fashion students envision constructing purses from heavy-duty conveyor belt textiles. Film students see high-performance sailcloth and imagine large-scale video projection screens. The idea is to inspire through tactile experimentation, and it's a pretty awesome place. Check out the video tour above. Many thanks to CCA alum Jake Sollins for taking us through the archive!