Academy of Arts & Sciences (San Francisco)

The Academy of Arts and Sciences sits on a distinctive site at five hundred fifty-five Portola Drive that hugs the edge of a steep canyon in the Diamond Heights neighborhood. The building was designed in the late nineteen sixties for a high school, but it famously faced trouble almost immediately after construction. Engineers determined the structure was unsafe because it was slowly sliding into the canyon below. The school closed for a full year while crews shored up the foundation and stabilized the slope to keep the campus from shifting further.