The Center for Impact announces winners of the 2018 IMPACT Award
HATCH Workshop and House9 each receive $25,000 to create affordable and sustainable living environments for artists and designers.
San Francisco, CA—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 and 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 and 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.”
HATCH Workshop aims to provide a holistic live/work/thrive space in Stockton, California, that offers training and education in fine crafts and design for students and the Stockton community while providing affordable housing, workspaces, and shop access for emerging artists and makers. The HACTH team is renovating a three-story, 35,000-square-foot former hotel in the heart of downtown Stockton that will serve as the main building with two floors of living spaces, gallery, storefront shop, offices, and an ADA apartment on the ground floor. Two warehouses adjacent to the hotel comprise an additional 15,000 square feet of space and will house the shop, studios, and a tool checkout center called “Toolburg” in honor of Stockton's old nickname “Tuleburg.” The HATCH team is also creating an open source manual derived from this project that will serve as a resource for the development of repeatable, similar affordable housing developments for artists and designers in the Bay Area.
“[We] feel very strong about their amazing community outreach and support,” stated the IMPACT Award jurors about HATCH Workshop. “The fact they’ve rallied the community and the city of Stockton to support their concept is impressive.”
The HATCH Workshop team consists of Rowan DiIoia (Furniture 2019) and Malachi Trent (Furniture 2018), with community partners Elazar Abraham, Hannah Craig, Ashley Gaddis, Josh Niemeyer, Nicole Patterson, and Phoenix Trent. For more about this project, visit hatchworkshop.org.
House9 is a project that aims to both maximize existing potential housing spaces and create new spaces for long-term use while maintaining affordability and environmental sustainability. House9’s concept revolves around Core9—a centralized unit that physically connects utilities, water, and communications into one module that acts as the house’s nerve center. The Core9 unit contains electricity, cabinets and storage, sink, fridge, toilet, shower, and a hydroponic grow space for fresh produce. The major innovation within Core9 is the water processing system that combines a water heater, grey water processing, and power management. Core9 can be installed into any existing space in order to make it habitable for future tenants. The long-term goal for House9 is to also develop an ecological, flat-packed micro-home around Core9.
Jurors stated that, “[t]he innovative design of the small living units [are] creative and dynamic and successful at providing vital affordable housing to the larger community. Their concepts made [us] think of what could be possible in creating affordable housing even in a bog-down bureaucratic system.”
The House9 team consists of a mix of CCA students and alumni, including William Felker (Interaction Design 2016), Weiwei Hsu (Interaction Design 2018), Jennifer Kim (Interaction Design 2018), Kelly Lei (Industrial Design 2018), Isamu Taguchi (Industrial Design 2017), and Weiwei Wang (Architecture 2019). Their current partners are the city and county of San Francisco, San Francisco Health Network, and Utopia. They are also working closely with Craig Wooster from Stone Edge Farm MicroGrid.
About the IMPACT Award
The annual IMPACT Award leverages the passion, creativity, and ingenuity of artists and designers in the field of sustainability and social impact. California College of the Arts prepares its graduates to be the next generation of socially responsible cultural leaders. The school functions as an incubator for artists, designers, and scholars, who learn from internationally renowned faculty and a rich landscape of community and technology partners working at the intersection of creativity and social innovation. Given the unique setting in the San Francisco Bay Area—the hub of global innovation—the academic experience is like no other, inspiring students to research, create, and innovate with the potential to shape the world around them.
About The Center for Art and Public Life
The Center for Art and Public Life acts to harness and sustain the ingenuity that abounds at CCA. Concentrating on positive social change as the catalyst, the Center builds strong sustained connections with the campus community and external partners, while actively expanding, assessing, and communicating the positive social impact of this work. The Center is a networked hub that dynamically connects CCA’s partners, students, faculty, and curriculum. Promoting engagement via evolving and innovative resources, expertise, processes, and technologies, we shape meaningful and transformative experiences for our diverse students and partners, who in turn deliver creative thinking, new approaches, and ingenious solutions.
About California College of the Arts
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts (CCA) educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. Benefiting from its San Francisco Bay Area location and faculty of expert practitioners, the college prepares students for lifelong creative work by cultivating innovation, community engagement, and social and environmental responsibility. Graduates are highly sought-after by the world’s leading companies, architecture and design firms, cultural and arts organizations, and more. CCA is creating a new, expanded college campus at its current site in San Francisco, spearheaded by the award-winning architectural firm Studio Gang, and will provide more student housing than ever before.