Lick-Wilmerding High School
San Francisco
Pfau Architecture

In one stroke, Pfau Architecture saves a precious view and preserves the main green in this inventive urban campus solution

© Tim Griffith

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By Lisa Findley

When industrial arts education boomed in the late 19th century, outgrowing the capacity of the apprenticeship system, private technical schools filled the gap. Today’s Lick-Wilmerding High School is the result of the merging and radical evolution of three such schools. With it’s motto "Education of the Head, Hands, and Heart," the unique school integrates technical and fine arts with rigorous college preparation for its 380 students.

By the late 1990s, Lick-Wilmerding faced a complex problem. It desperately needed 19,000 square feet of new studio facilities, as well as an enlarged theater and cafeteria. Its mostly outdated 1950s campus on the semiurban southern edge of San Francisco sits on a sloping site, bounded by private land to the west, city streets to the north and south, and the commuter-packed 280 freeway on the east. However, a large grade change allows restful views over the freeway to the hills beyond. As a result, the campus had developed over the years into a horseshoe of buildings, with its open end toward the view and its center occupied by a usually soggy lawn thought of as the heart of campus. Given the attachment to the lawn, there was only one logical place to build additional facilities: two stories over the faculty parking lot on the freeway side, thereby closing off the end of the horseshoe. With this solution as a master plan, the school resigned itself to losing the treasured view and began a competition for the new building.

Among the five short-listed competitors was Pfau Architecture of San Francisco. Known for its fresh viewpoint, the firm proposed an eye-opening solution that allowed the school to have both the large open public space and the view. It was, according to associate school head Ann Maisel, "a radical departure from the master plan that both could be executed and captured the imagination of everyone involved. We had to go with them."

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Location:
San Francisco

Gross square footage:
26,000 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$11.5 Million

Owner:
Lick-Wilmerding High School

Architect:
Pfau Architecture Ltd.
630 Third St. Suite 200
San Francisco, CA 94107
P: (415) 908-6408
F: (415) 908-6409
www.pfauarchitecture.com