The California College of the Arts (CCA) is closing. On January 13, in a statement, CCA president David Howse said the 120-year-old San Francisco institution will conclude operations by the end of the 2026–27 academic year. “After nearly two years of working to resolve the college’s underlying financial challenges, we know this is the necessary step to take,” Howse noted.
CCA has entered an agreement with Vanderbilt University, which will “become the owner of the campus and will establish undergraduate and graduate programming, including art and design programs, at the campus.”
CCA’s student body numbers roughly 1,300 students. Its architecture division, which offers Bachelor and Master of Architecture programs, has a combined total of approximately 250 students. Keith Krumwiede is dean of the CCA’s architecture division.
News of CCA’s closure comes after the completion of a mass timber addition designed by Studio Gang and Surfacedesign in late 2024. The building is on CCA’s campus in San Francisco’s Design District, north of Potrero Hill and just west of Mission Bay.
As per the agreement with CCA, Vanderbilt University will own CCA’s campus, Howse shared. Currently there is no information as to how it might use, improve, or sell the existing buildings.
Architecture at the California College of the Arts
In 2022, CCA announced the creation of the M. Arthur Gensler Jr. Center for Design Excellence, which was created to encourage diversity within the architecture industry. The center began with $4.7 million in funding from Gensler, Amazon, Z SUPPLY Foundation, and one anonymous benefactor.
The center held its first symposium in 2023. There is no news currently about how this work might continue.
Beyond Krumwiede, CCA has a distinguished faculty of architecture educators, including Neeraj Bhatia, James Graham, Janette Kim, AN contributor Vivian Schwab, Craig Scott, Antje Steinmuller, and Emmett Zeifman, among others. Irene Cheng previously taught at CCA before joining Cooper Union as an associate professor.
Bhatia, in a 2024 interview with Palmyra Geraki in AN, shared about the uniqueness of teaching architecture from within an art and design school: “Being in a school of art and design in the Bay Area is like being in a school of activists, because artists on the whole are much more politically motivated and tend to clarify their politics through their work. Being in the vicinity of art practitioners daily reminds all of us that we don’t need to accept the systems we inherit—that we can push back. The generation that’s coming out of school is eager to think about how the discipline can have more agency. I’m really inspired by that energy and by the idea that the role of an architect is almost that of an activist, and an advocate simultaneously that of a designer.”
The U.S. architecture community is now reacting to the news online.
David Gissen, who was a professor at CCA for 12 years, told AN: “CCA was an incubator, if not the incubator, for young architects and historians of architecture to develop their ideas. The concepts and projects we developed with our students have gone on to influence the pedagogy at numerous other institutions. Our work will live on in history, like so many other small design schools.”
AN Interior Top 50 architect and recent Best of Design Awards juror Barbara Bestor of Bestor Architecture shared her thoughts on LinkedIn: “Very sad to lose this wonderful school in our California design school firmament. I’ve always loved visiting and lecturing there – and as a SCI-Arc alum and board member I have always felt kinship with it’s scrappy urban approach to design education. RIP CCA.”
Vanderbilt’s Expansion
Vanderbilt University was founded in Nashville in 1873. Its Department of History of Art and Architecture offers an undergraduate Architecture and the Built Environment degree, in addition to a minor. Beginning in the 2027–28 academic year, Vanderbilt will establish undergraduate and graduate art and design programs, and other forms of programming in San Francisco.
Today, Vanderbilt operates satellite locations in New York City and West Palm Beach, Florida. Approximately 1,000 Vanderbilt students will be at the school’s new San Francisco campus.
Vanderbilt also plans to operate a CCA Institute at Vanderbilt that will include, among other things, the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts, which was established in 2013. It will also maintain CCA archival materials and serve as a vehicle for CCA alumni engagement. Through these activities, Vanderbilt will honor CCA’s longstanding creative mission and maintain a strong presence for art and design education in the Bay Area.
According to Vanderbilt officials, the “new campus also will educate artists, makers and designers whose work bridges creative expression and technological innovation, preparing graduates to translate ideas into cultural, civic and real-world impact.”
“Students will gain immersive learning experiences rooted in one of the world’s most dynamic urban environments,” Vanderbilt’s announcement continued. “Academic programming is in development and will undergo the appropriate accrediting bodies’ review and approval processes.”
CCA’s closure arrives not long after the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was shuttered in 2022. The former SFAI campus today hosts California Academy of Studio Arts, a new experimental arts center designed by Jensen Architects, Laplace, and Page & Turnbull.
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