The Northern California and Western Nevada Chapter of the American Concrete Institute has honored The Strand’s project team with a 2015 Construction Award for Architecture. The annual awards program celebrates outstanding concrete results. For the American Conservatory Theater, SOM transformed a derelict century-old cinema in San Francisco into a cultural venue by integrating architecture with engineering and using concrete in innovative ways.
The building’s exceptional use of concrete is most evident in the building’s beautifully restored facade. Decorative glass fiber reinforced concrete panels were cast from molds made from the existing relief and installed below the building’s canopy to extend ornamentation to the ground. The historic masonry was fragile and at risk of being damaged during an earthquake—The Strand and the adjacent building to the west were originally constructed without a seismic joint separating them. A hardened, reinforced concrete wall structure was built, designed to resist impact loads from the adjacent building and help preserve the restored facade.