Founders Hall opens new doors for CCA
With room to house about 25% of the college’s student population and a public dining hall, Founders Hall pushes CCA toward the goal of becoming a unified, fully residential campus.
Take a first-look tour of CCA’s newest housing and dining facility, Founders Hall.
Though perhaps one of the most unpredictable years in CCA’s 113-year history, 2020 also marks the beginning of the college’s firm grounding in San Francisco with the fall opening of Founders Hall and ushers in a new era of CCA as a fully residential campus.
Founders Hall, located at 188 Hooper Street, is part of the college’s larger campus expansion and unification plan, which will allow CCA students to live, eat, study, and form a community on their campus like never before. Only a small number of students are currently residing in the new housing due to COVID-19, but the residence has rooms to house 500 first- and second-year students, as well as graduate students on the fifth floor, when we return to campus. The building’s ground-level, 7,000-square-foot dining space, called Makers Cafe, is designed to accommodate the wide-ranging dining needs of our diverse campus community and neighbors.
“We’re really excited about this cutting-edge facility,” says Director of Campus Planning David Meckel. “Founders Hall is an important step in the unification of the college in a single urban campus, where it allows students to live where they learn.”
“Founders Hall is an important step in the unification of the college in a single urban campus, where it allows students to live where they learn.”
Director of Campus Planning
The Founders Hall Mural is a nod to the many makers who have called the college home.
Get to know the Founders Hall Mural
Another feature in the new residence hall is a colorful mural that greets residents and visitors as they enter the building. Depicting students, staff, faculty, and, appropriately, founders through a series of 27 archival photographs, the mural is a celebration of CCA community activities throughout the many eras of the college’s 113-year history.
A QR code next to the mural encourages viewers to use their smartphones to visit the Founders Hall Digital Mural Exhibit, created by CCA Libraries, to read stories behind each photograph from the CCA/C Archives. This interactive experience is an opportunity to look back on the power of art and design education, explore how culture (and the college!) has changed through the decades, and prepare for an exciting post-pandemic future and the making yet to come.
Legendary sculptor and Professor Emerita of Ceramics Viola Frey demonstrates pot throwing in a 1970 photograph included in the Founders Hall Mural. Frey, a CCA alum, was central to the college’s Ceramics program for more than 30 years.
