https://www.cca.edu/ en Mon, 10 Sep 2018 16:38:46 -0700 Tue, 11 Sep 2018 12:50:59 -0700 https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/09/10/graphic-design-student-mark-buenafe-wins-prestigious-bill-moggridge-award By Pooja Vijay Kumar and Laura Ng Graphic Design Senior Mark Andrew Buenafe has been selected to receive the 2018 Bill Moggridge Award—a $10,000 award to cultivate the next generation of designers—for his critical yet empathic reaction to the journey toward citizenship in “The Naturalization Process”.    “I’m still wrapping my head around the fact I won this award,” said Mark. “I see it as both a motivator and an opportunity to keep designing and making things that interest me. I’m truly honored to have been given the award and can’t express enough gratitude.” Born in Muscat, Oman, and raised between the Philippines and Honolulu, Mark discovered his love for graphic design when his sister gave him a spare copy of Adobe CS4. His parents worked overseas at separate university hospitals, split across continents for decades, until his grandfather, a WWII veteran, successfully petitioned to reunite the family in Hawaii. On American soil, it took six years of continued residence to finally qualify to apply for U.S. citizenship. Mark took the oath in 2017. The relief that followed this arduous process unfolded in the studio.  Mark cites Keetra Dean Dixon’s "Objects of Codependency" as an inspiration for his project’s identity and visual language to impart the complexity immigrants face to get the same rights and responsibilities as those who are natural born U.S. Citizens. His idea moved toward Interdependence, where two participants need to work together to understand each step of “The Naturalization Process.” The project resulted in six nested envelopes, containing interdependent pieces that represent the years he endured going through the process himself.  “I see the action/performance of taking the envelopes out from each other as tedious and a little unnecessary. But that's the whole point of it. To evoke a small fraction of frustration to whoever is going through the envelopes,” with contents that allude to USCIS documents:  The Civics Test Booklet, designed to require the participation of two people by opening in different directions—one person reads the questions and the other responds.  The N-400 form, encrypted with two layers of ink—one red and one blue, needing a separate piece of red acetate film to decrypt.  The invitation itself has two pieces that slide into one another to understand the Oath Taking Ceremony. “The only requirement was to create a system or kit of parts,” said CCA faculty Mary Banas of her studio’s open prompt for the project. “Designers are empathetic and critical, and Mark is both, so he knew how to translate the emotions and nuances of [his] experience into this beautiful piece that speaks volumes about a difficult process. The most important thing we can arm design students with is the power and place to exercise that criticality.” “I’m still trying to figure out how to do this,” said Mark. He plans to create a platform that would celebrate migrant writers, artists, designers, and creators in general that could include a publication, an exhibition space or even both, or to gain firsthand experience traveling to different countries to understand the history of visual language across geographies.  By deliberately not restricting how recipients can use the award, the late Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO, and Award sponsor Techmer PM, want to give next-generation designers an open platform for their creativity.    Graphic Design Professor Bob Aufuldish will serve as faculty mentor through the Award year.  Although the final design format is yet to be determined, Mark is considering shifting his focus from small intimate interactions to scalable, immersive experiences “to effectively amplify not only my own voice, but those who are never heard. . . . I want to use the award to continue to grow as an artist and designer and use what I discover to find better ways to tell stories that empower and cultivate an empathetic culture.”  Mon, 10 Sep 2018 16:38:46 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/07/31/cca-presents-robust-line-fall-events-and-exhibitions The California College of the Arts is proud to present a robust line-up of public programming to the San Francisco Bay Area. This fall, CCA will have a number of affiliated events for the much-anticipated Global Climate Action Summit, including the official launch of the award-winning Architectural Ecologies Lab, which exemplify the college’s commitment to sustainability. On the frontlines of social justice, CCA presents its Creative Citizenship in Action series that will host two Town Hall discussions and hold an exhibition in the CCA Hubbell Street Galleries in conjunction with For Freedoms—a nation-wide platform for civic engagement, discourse, and direct action for artists spearheaded by artist Eric Gottesman and CCA alumnus Hank Willis Thomas. CCA welcomes Hank Willis Thomas back to campus in October for a week-long residency. This semester also marks the 20th anniversary of the CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts which will celebrate the occasion with a game show-themed extravaganza with games, prizes, and more. Additionally, CCA continues its Architecture Lecture series, Fine Arts Visiting Artist series, MFA in Writing Reading series, and launches the new “Design Is” series—all of which brings award-winning artists, designers, authors, scholars, and alumni to engage and inspire Bay Area audiences. All CCA public events and exhibitions are free and open to the public.  For the full list of CCA Public Events, please click here. For the full list of CCA Public Exhibitions, please click here. PLEASE NOTE: These documents will be regularly updated as details are confirmed. Events and exhibitions for November and December will be announced as the semester progresses. ​ Tue, 31 Jul 2018 12:41:39 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/07/13/cca-architectural-ecologies-lab-wins-2018-rd-award-architect-magazine Architectural Ecologies Lab (AEL) was recently recognized by Architect Magazine with a 2018 R+D Award for the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab. This project, housed within AEL, has dedicated years of research to biofouling—the phenomenon in which surfaces placed underwater attract plankton, fish, and other sea life, which can erode structures and impair movement for vessels. Biofouling is typically thought of as a problem to combat, but the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab saw it as an innovative way to replenish coastal ecosystems. Led by CCA architecture faculty and AEL co-directors Adam Marcus, Margaret Ikeda, and Evan Jones, the Buoyant Ecologies team partnered with marine ecologists and fiber-reinforced polymer manufacturers, in order to research underwater surfaces and identify materials, textures, and eco-friendly shapes that best promote aquatic life. AEL and the Buoyant Ecologies team worked with scientists from the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and with Kreysler & Associates to develop their prototypes. This fall, the AEL team will launch the Float Lab into the San Francisco Bay. They are working with the Port of Oakland to deploy the floating breakwater in Oakland's Middle Harbor Shoreline Park as a research field station and ecological education demonstration project. “We are proud of the research being conducted by CCA’s Architectural Ecologies Lab,” states CCA interim dean and professor of architecture Lisa Findley. “In particular, the forward-thinking work of the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab offers insights into coastal infrastructures, eco-friendly materials, aquatic ecosystems, and the value of collaboration with scientists and fabricators. The team and their work are well deserving of this recognition and it further distinguishes CCA’s Architecture Division as leaders of new architectural models for addressing changing environments.” AIA juror Randy Deutsch remarked, “The research that this team took was in-depth, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and collaborative. That and how they displayed the results over time was over-the-top impressive.” To read the full story Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab Aims to Save Communities Above and Below Water, please click here. Fri, 13 Jul 2018 12:30:43 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/06/08/center-art-public-life-announces-two-winners-25000-impact-award-2018 California College of the Arts is proud to announce Hatch Workshop and House9 as the two winning teams of the college’s annual IMPACT Award, presented by CCA’s Center for Art + Public Life. This CCA-wide competition for students, alumni, faculty, and staff provides a $25,000 award to each winning team, as well as a robust network of resources and partnerships to enable teams to complete their projects over the course of one year. Jurors for the 2018 IMPACT Award included Chuck Collins, Lydia So, Maria Jenson, Vallie Brown, and Neal J. Schwartz, CCA associate professor of Architecture. The 2018 IMPACT Award is generously supported by Thurlow Washam, Werner & Eveline Schnorf, and the IMPACT Fund. Each year, the IMPACT Award focuses on a specific concept to directly address a pressing social or environmental challenge. This year’s theme, Home: Creative Thinking in Affordable and Sustainable Living Environments for Artists & Designers, seeks solutions to affordable housing issues faced by creative professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area. While Hatch Workshop and House9 offer distinctly different approaches, they both offer promising results with lasting environmental and social impact. Center for Art + Public Life Director JD Beltran observed, “The selection acknowledges the work and ingenuity of these two incredibly talented teams. We hope that this award will not only augment their creative practices in developing solutions that have lasting impact, but will also serve as a platform to connect the work of the CCA creative community in this field to a wider audience.” To read the full press release with descriptions of the winning projects, click here.  Fri, 8 Jun 2018 09:22:35 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/04/27/cca-faculty-receive-2018-idec-community-service-award Faculty members Shalini Agrawal and Chris Treggiari received the 2018 IDEC Community Service Award from the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) for their work with the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center (MNRC) in San Francisco. This award recognizes their work engaging the community experiencing homelessness in the Mission neighborhood to collaborate on creative placemaking solutions with their Interior Design Advanced Interdisciplinary Studio class, Activate Open Engagement, with support from the chair of Interior Design Cathrine Veikos. The Interior Design Educators Council is a national organization that recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service in the larger international design community. This year’s awards committee noted the "[t]errific initiative here for a population of great need. It's encouraging to see outreach to those who are the least powerful in a community." The IDEC Community Service Award honors significant contribution of community service by an individual or group at a national, regional, and/or local level associated with the discipline of interior design. Shalini Agrawal is trained as an architect and has over 20 years of experience facilitating multidisciplinary workshops between participants of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic statuses. She is co-founder of the nonprofit Archi-treasures in Chicago, where she created and facilitated the community engagement programming, and is founder and principal at MAC Studio Landscape Architecture in San Francisco, a practice that engages communities in design of their landscape. Agrawal oversaw all community-based programs and partnerships as director of the Center for Art and Public Life at California College of the Arts and received the AIASF Community Alliance Award in Education. She is associate professor in Diversity Studies, Interior Design, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Individualized Studies. Agrawal is a contributing author to the publications Design for Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity and Public Interest Design Education Guidebook. Chris Treggiari's artistic practice strives to connect a wide range of people and neighborhoods by highlighting diverse community identities, shared histories, and personal stories through participatory, mobile platforms that encourage exploration from the viewer. Treggiari's work has been on view at such venues as the Venice Biennale 2012 American Pavilion; the Torrance Art Museum; the Getty Museum; Berkeley Art Museum; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; the San Jose Museum of Art; the Oakland Museum of California; and the ZERO1 Biennial. He has received grants from the Puffin Foundation; the San Francisco Arts Commission; the Creative Work Fund; the Arts Commission of San Jose; the Seattle Center Foundation; and the Zellerbach Foundation. He was 2013–2015 scholar-in-residence at Center for Art and Public Life at California College of the Arts. Fri, 27 Apr 2018 11:43:33 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/04/26/two-cca-architecture-teams-win-2018-cote-top-ten-students-awards Two teams from CCA’s Architecture division were announced as winners in the fourth-annual Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten for Students awards. This design and ideas competition is the industry’s best-known award program for sustainable design excellence and is organized by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). Student projects were evaluated using the same 10 measures that are featured in the professional COTE Top Ten Awards: integration, community, ecology, water, economy, energy, wellness, resources, change, and discovery. The student projects were additionally asked to focus on zero-emissions, adaptation, and resiliency. Known Unknowns: Dead Ends Aren’t Dead, submitted by CCA students Bianca Lin, Joshua Park, and Wilson Fung with faculty sponsor Janette Kim, transforms cul-de-sacs in East Palo Alto into a network of interconnected structures that promote collaboration among residents and build resilience against sea level rise. Their project proposes to retrofit existing houses with three new architectural typologies: a “nucleus” that houses residential and commercial spaces in free-standing buildings; a “chromosome” that houses shared public functions in smaller pavilions; and a “membrane” that serves as a flexible surface, or scaffold, to link buildings to each other and provide seismic stability across them. Dis/Placement, submitted by CCA students Nicholas Scribner and Clare Hačko with faculty sponsor Evan Jones, constructs a terrain to create a floating offshore community that is also designed to leverage water catchment and storage, a response to the quickly eroding land of the Maldives. Each module of the terrain is scaled to the individual family; however, public and private space within the units are divided to privilege the collective. Sleeping quarters are bunks in the lowest volume of the module, leaving the entire first floor for collective use and the second floor for an elevated kitchen. The adjustable panel walls allow for the cultivation of larger collectives and blur traditional ownership distinctions. Teams receive $2,000 per winning project, as well as a stipend to send one student to the AIA Conference on Architecture in New York this June, where the winning projects will be on display. As part of this year's collaboration between the awards program and Architecture 2030, the students will also be offered paid summer internships at firms in the U.S. and Canada that specialize in sustainable design. To read more about these awards and the individual projects, click here. Thu, 26 Apr 2018 13:23:20 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/04/16/fashion-experience-2018-debuts-11-collections-emerging-designers The CCA Fashion Experience 2018 will debut 11 professionally juried thesis collections from graduating students in the school’s Fashion Design program this May. The students will present their work through both fashion show and—for the first time—installations that frame their collections with artistic vignettes and speak directly to their design narratives. Utilizing street-cast models, the show will reflect the diversity of the Bay Area as well as global contributions to fashion. “We are proud to celebrate these newest voices in the fashion world with a cutting-edge, interactive installation experience,” says new program chair and pioneer of sustainable fashion design Lynda Grose. “This year’s Fashion Experience addresses the relationship between fashion, culture, and social identities while debuting this next generation of audacious designers.” The free and public event will kick off with a presentation of the collections and will then open up into individual showcases with the designers and their models. Audiences will also be invited to experience and interact with the student installations—providing deeper engagement with both the designers’ collections and their processes. To learn more about the event, visit: cca.edu/fashion2018 For the full press release, click here. Mon, 16 Apr 2018 16:12:20 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/04/16/celebratory-exhibition-brings-together-work-graduating-students-across-disciplines This May, California College of the Arts (CCA) presents its annual Commencement Exhibition—an expansive and interdisciplinary showcase of work by graduating students across all disciplines on the college’s San Francisco campus. Including works by both undergraduates and graduates, the exhibition will feature architecture, design, fine art, screenings of works by students in the college’s Film program, and a reading room where the audience can preview written works ranging from novels to poetry to comics and more. In addition, CCA will award $3,000 to six students to create new, site-specific installations for the exhibition. Winners will be announced in mid-April for the May exhibition. “The Commencement Exhibition is a terrific moment of pride for all of us here at the college,” says Stephen Beal, president of CCA. “It commemorates the diverse and extraordinary work of our students and brings our community, parents, and neighbors together to celebrate the creative talent that will fuel our society’s future and shape its culture.”  In addition to the exhibition on CCA’s San Francisco campus, select programs—including Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, and others—will hold celebratory events at major arts and design exhibition spaces in the surrounding South of Market, Potrero Hill, and Dogpatch neighborhoods. Partner organizations include the Minnesota Street Project, SOMArts, Heron Arts, Astro Studios, and PCH Lime Lab. For a full list of event times and locations, visit: cca.edu/2018 For the press release, please click here. Mon, 16 Apr 2018 15:44:40 -0700 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/03/08/43-emerging-artists-cca-debut-work-minnesota-street-project This spring, 43 emerging artists from CCA’s Graduate Program in Fine Arts will debut their work in a two-part exhibition at Minnesota Street Project.  Organized as part of the CCA curriculum by a team of faculty that includes Glen Helfand, Jackie Im, Ranu Mukherjee, and Astria Suparak, the annual MFA Thesis Exhibition culminates the graduate students’ two years of work within the program and marks their transition to the public stage in a professional gallery setting. The exhibition is free and open to the public and features two Saturday opening reception events on March 31 and April 14, 3-6pm. “This year marks the first time we are presenting the entire cycle of MFA thesis exhibitions at one location: Minnesota Street Project (MSP), a Bay Area organization that is quickly becoming an international platform for artists today,” says Fine Arts Associate Professor Glen Helfand. “It is an invaluable opportunity for our students to showcase their work to the public, and is likewise an ideal opportunity for the Bay Area community to see the work of an exciting group of emerging new talents.”  Students featured within the exhibition hail from across the country as well as from across the globe, including China, Iran, Brazil, Turkey, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan, and more. Their work includes a wide range of genres from textiles to painting, sculpture and installation, as well as photography, glass, works on paper, social practice, and more.  The opening of the MFA Thesis Exhibition at Minnesota Street project also comes as CCA’s MFA Fine Arts program is strengthening its relationships with San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood -- the heart of one of the most vibrant contemporary art communities in the city. For five years, beginning in September 2018, studios for the students in the Graduate in Fine Arts program will be moving to the American Industrial Center, just a few blocks away from MSP.  To read the full press release, click here.     Thu, 8 Mar 2018 13:18:26 -0800 CCA News Feed https://www.cca.edu/news/2018/02/16/graphic-design-students-create-bart-etiquette-posters Last week Bay Area Rapid Transit revealed newly designed posters to combat bad behavior and encourage positive rider etiquette.  The posters, which have been making news headlines across the area (from KRON4, to KTUV, SFGate, and more) were designed by CCA Graphic Design students as part of their participation in a new studio class offered at CCA called TBD*. The studio, pioneered by undergrad chair Rachel Berger and professor Eric Heimen, provides students with real-world experience by working on design commissions from local nonprofits. See the full collection of designed works created and read more about the students's experience here. And read more about our Graphic Design program here.    Fri, 16 Feb 2018 11:34:34 -0800 CCA News Feed