Emerging Technologies - Roofs Meant to Be Seen

A stop on College of San Mateo Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Look up at Building 19, Emerging Technologies, across the mall. Built as the Engineering and Electronics building, it is one of the best places to see Warnecke's folded-plate roofs, where the concrete roof is creased into peaks and the triangles meet the tall glass below.

Those roofs weren't just for people on the ground. Because the campus climbs in terraces, people on the higher levels look down onto the lower buildings, so Warnecke treated the rooftops as a design surface in their own right. Some buildings have folded plates like these, others saddle-shaped hyperbolic paraboloids. A local writer at the time compared the effect to music.

Inside, Building 19 houses the Business and Technology Division and labs and classrooms for computer science, drafting, electronics, engineering and architecture. If you're interested in a technical career, this is where many of those classes meet.

Getting here: Continue north on the mall for about a minute. Building 19 is the long building on your right.

Did you know?: By 1965, two years after the move here, day enrollment topped 8,100, making CSM the largest community college in Northern California.

Photo op: Stand back on the mall and frame the zigzag roofline of Building 19 against the sky.

More on Wikipedia: College of San Mateo · Paraboloid

Emerging Technologies - Roofs Meant to Be Seen

Stops on this tour