San Francisco
Dramatically framed by Morphosis’s glassy Federal Building looming behind it, the revived Strand theater, a gleaming red experimental performance space and education center for the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, clicks into its site on San Francisco’s Market Street like one of the final pieces of a complex puzzle.
Long neglected, the surrounding Central Market and Tenderloin districts have in recent years benefited from neighborhood regeneration efforts and the city’s economic boom. The Strand—which began its life on the Great White Way theater row in 1917 as the Jewel movie house, later became an adult cinema, and finally was abandoned in 2003—was becoming progressively more conspicuous: an eyesore along a rapidly emerging corridor.
An intensive restoration, renovation, and adaptive-reuse project breathes new life into this century-old cinema while providing a second facility for a 50-year-old nonprofit arts organization. But it is also a linchpin, nodding to the civic center and its cultural institutions across Market Street while knitting together the vibrant retail district to the northeast and the burgeoning residential and commercial development to the southwest—where Twitter and other tech companies are putting down roots.
Over 80 percent of the Strand’s steel and concrete structure was salvaged and reinforced, load-bearing systems were retrofitted, and seismic upgrades were made. To transform the 725-seat single-auditorium movie house to meet A.C.T.’s needs for live theater and performances, a Master of Fine Arts program, as well as youth classes and rehearsal space, SOM’s team of architects and structural engineers slipped three flexible spaces into the building’s carapace.
Visible through full-height storefront windows, and just beyond the sidewalk where the homeless still camp out, a crisp, white three-story lobby animates and is animated by the street life. “The idea was to open to Market Street and engage,” says design director Michael Duncan. “We wanted to connect and the Strand to become a meeting place,” adds A.C.T. administrative project manager Denys Baker. To create this grand entrance while reducing loads (the building sits along the underground BART and Muni rail systems), the team ripped out an existing floor. This welcoming space invites passersby in to linger at The Strand’s café, watch mesmerizing images cross an enormous LED screen, or climb up to one of the cantilevered steel balconies to gaze down at those below. Here, the interplay of activity inside and out is an improv theater in its own right.
Above this space, on the top level behind restored casement windows, a 120-seat black-box theater, paneled in thin strips of reclaimed wood, can accommodate multiple configurations for rehearsals, classes, and performances.
In the belly of the original cinema, the architects inserted a proscenium theater with movable risers for seating for up to 285 people. To bring the scale of this high space down and make it more intimate, while providing a framework for adapting acoustics, the team hung a series of perforated metal panels from the ceiling. And the proscenium serves double duty as a shear wall, stiffening the middle of the building. But care was taken to preserve the spirit of the old facility, and particular details have remained, such as graffiti backstage, which memorializes some of the less savory activity that took place during the Strand’s squatter days. “We wanted to honor each era of the building and expose its history, and not take all of the kinks out,” says Duncan, pointing to the original plaster walls (now painted a vibrant red), pilasters, and moldings, and noting that this had never been an ornate theater, always a workhorse. “But with the intervention, we wanted a contrast,” he says.
On a recent fall afternoon, the lobby buzzed as teenagers hung out after class, and the older set socialized over coffee. While serving as a marquee for this thriving arts program, the building has quickly become a beacon for the neighborhood and an emblem of its evolution.
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