Hoover Middle School Addition & Renovation – San Francisco, CA
The Hoover Middle School modernization, 2,500 square-foot addition, and accessibility upgrade provides a welcoming new accessible entry to the San Francisco and school community through an elevator and playfully-glazed corridor adjacent to the school’s existing music building auditorium. Prior to the improvements, access to the school’s main entrance required pedestrians to ascend a steep driveway with a 27-ft change in grade. The addition acts as a backstage for performers and provides entrances to the auditorium at the middle and front, creating equitable access for this community with a strong focus on its music and performing arts curriculum.
The project includes a re-designed parking lot drop-off with access to the new elevator, a new entry gate, drought-tolerant plantings around the school entrance, a canopy connecting the music building with the main school building, a new easier-to-find entrance to the school’s main office, and numerous upgrades to classrooms, toilet rooms, gymnasium spaces, and hallways throughout the 121,500 square-foot school designed in 1952 by Ernest Kump on a ‘finger plan’ principle, with dispersed buildings arrayed over a steeply sloping hillside.
Respecting and working in conjunction with the simple forms of the concrete buildings designed by Kump, the addition and interior modifications provide a lively and welcoming counterpoint that strengthens and improves the building’s original design.
Work completed prior to Sorensen Partners | Architects + Planners as Architectural Staff at Gelfand Partners Architects. Drawings and photographs copyright 2009-2012 Gelfand Partners Architects.
