The first phase of new campus development at the California College of Arts is an adaptive reuse of a former engine repair facility. In the school’s open design studios and lower floor exhibit galleries we reinterpreted a standard off-the-shelf industrial framing system for use as a partitioning system.

The system forms a super-economical and versatile armature for providing visual partitioning, pin-up and writing surfaces, power and data distribution, and indirect lighting. The effect created is one of a field of multiple sky-lit workshops, each sheltered by the armature’s branch-like framing.