Randall Museum

The Randall Museum is a treasured San Francisco community museum and free public use facility hosting numerous educational activities and programs, offering youth and adults opportunities for active involvement and recreation in an integrated program of arts and sciences.

The renovation of the 1951 William Merchant-designed concrete structure reorganized the program within the existing building footprint to provide the public with a state-of-the art, multisensory educational experience. The renovation includes exhibits for live animals, geology, oceanography, ecology, and display of native american basketry of the Coastal Miwok and Kashaya Pomo tribes. Program spaces include a science lab, STEM classroom, woodshop, ceramic and painting studios, staging areas, offices, income generating event space, and cafe.

Early in the design process, the team and stakeholders established high standards for occupant comfort and environmental health. All selected materials are low- or no-VOC content and the addition of localized fresh air systems increase interior air quality, effectively compensating for the absence of a central air system in the building. To increase indoor air quality, localized fresh air systems were incorporated to compensate for the absence of a central air system in the building.

The main feature of the redesigned exhibit spaces is the Live Animal Room. Enclosed by a “tree wall” crafted from laminated FSC wood columns, the enclosure serves as a home for numerous programmatic elements: avian habitats, study carrels, artifact display cases, and seating. The renovation introduced a new skylight over a cut in the floor plate below to daylight both the main entrance hall and the lower level – containing public circulation, geology, and oceanography exhibit spaces — which previously had no access to natural light. This move transformed the spaces below and led to expansions to exhibit spaces, art studios, and science labs / classrooms at the lower level.