Site Visit to CALA in Somerville
CALA’s inner courtyard, filled with native plants and pollinators.
As part of the Climate Beacon Conference, a contingent of us took a field trip to see CALA (Community Architecture Landscape Art), a retrofitted brutalist former public school building in Somerville, MA that has been transformed into a sustainable, “inclusive urban village" with space for living, working, and gathering. A lot of people talk about “adaptive re-use” but CALA, designed by Sebastian Mariscal Studios, has actually done it beautifully, interweaving public space, flora (and fauna!), public murals, green energy, and collaborative living inside a single complex.
We started our tour with landscape architect Eden Dutcher in the adjacent public park, which was once a parking lot but had been redesigned as part of the CALA vision into a flowing, dynamic green space that now featured 100s of new plantings. The public park provided a beautiful threshold space between the surrounding neighborhood and city and the building itself.
From this park, one entered the building’s courtyard, filled with a whole new set of different plantings. Whereas the park is maintained by the City of Somerville, the courtyard plantings and green roofs are looked after by Recover, who were brought into the project early and now provide a vital ongoing service and growing expertise around the living nature of the building. Jonas Herbst-Rubio, who cares for CALA’s green roofs along with Kristin Neill Stierwalt, noted the interplay between the plants and animals in the public park and the courtyard. He pointed to a pile of red berries that had been stashed by a squirrel in the courtyard. “These were brought from the park for safe keeping,” he said.
CALA is filled with levels: the highest roofs feature a large PV array, while lower levels are filled with green roofs and plantings.
The cement facade of the building has been removed, providing light and air into the interior spaces. Passageways have been carved out and levels removed. Despite all of these interventions, the spirit of the building’s previous life as a school has been preserved and celebrated in places. Walking thought the space, one sees little bits of evidence of this history, a kind of living archeology.
The archeology of the building’s previous life as a school has been preserved, like the echo of this stairway.
We visited some of CALA’s commercial spaces, including Turkel Design, which featured large fold up garage doors that opened onto the park, creating a natural stage space where musicians would often come to play impromptu concerts. We also walked through Commonwealth Clayworks, a pottery studio that offers classes and studio membership.
The building offers 48 rental units (20% affordable), ranging from studio to 3-bedroom townhouses. These are unique living opportunities as they are nestled within a miasma of public, semi-public and private spaces, encouraging a range of uses by both residents and neighbors. The architects also did an amazing job of incorporating various levels into the design, including a sunken courtyard and an elevated courtyard that overlooks the park and the street. There are all kinds of secret nooks and crannies on the site, encouraging quick conversations or a moment of solitary contemplation.
CALA is also a living art collection, an “urban museum.” Each year the building sponsors a different muralist to fill a new wall, including a multilevel masterpiece by Lapiztola . The building consists of 4320 total square feet across 70 different future murals. The collection grows.
The density of the living space, mixed with a green roof and courtyard space that captures 85% of the rainwater, as well as the extensive photovoltaic array, and re-use/redesign of a legacy brutalist building made of cement make CALA a truly inspiring model for our future cities.