The de Young Museum is an approximately 291,000-square-foot fine arts museum located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The facility combines a three-level main museum with a distinctive 144-foot education and observation tower, providing permanent and temporary exhibition galleries, a café, museum store, auditorium, conservation facilities, classrooms, library, administrative offices, and educational spaces. The tower culminates in a public observation level offering panoramic views across San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. The building’s copper-clad design and integration with the surrounding landscape were developed to connect the museum closely with its Golden Gate Park setting.

CMI provided HVAC systems supporting the museum’s diverse exhibition, conservation, educational, administrative, and public spaces. The project required mechanical infrastructure capable of serving environments with substantially different occupancy and environmental requirements, from art galleries and conservation laboratories to classrooms, offices, retail, food service, and assembly spaces. The main museum also incorporates an advanced seismic base-isolation system designed to reduce forces transferred to the structure during an earthquake, requiring careful coordination of building systems within the highly specialized facility.