1st appeared 19 October 1998

Mission Bay's First Building Taking Shape

Although the plans for the 43-acre Mission Bay campus are constantly evolving -- building exteriors and land use plans change faster than we can report them -- many of the interior design principles have remained the same.

The design for the inside of the first building, now known as Building 24 but previously conceptualized as two separate buildings (A & B), is nearly finalized. Laboratories, hallways, offices, lecture halls and corridors were all designed around one basic idea -- interaction. The floor plans reflect input given by UCSF faculty, whose top priority has been the ability to interact with each other and who have contributed a tremendous amount in the campus' planning process.

"The faculty were very involved every step of the way in everything from exterior design to the interior of the labs," said Allan Long, Senior Planner in Campus Planning. "They have to be -- the building is going to be theirs." The objective of all this faculty participation, Long said, is to create better space at Mission Bay than the faculty now have.

Some examples of faculty design ideas that will be implemented at Mission Bay:

• Faculty are very pleased with the recent full-floor lab renovations of the Health Sciences East and West towers on Parnassus and pretty much superimposed that design onto the footprint of the new building, Long said. However, they suggested that the corridors be located on the inside of the labs instead of on the outside, in order to foster interaction among principal investigators, create attractive interaction spaces, and facilitate the exchange of information between researchers and staff, Long said.

• Like the Principal Investigator offices in HSW 12, PI offices in Building 24 will be located in pods or clusters. However, the office pods and labs for each group will be spread out horizontally instead of vertically. "Studies have shown that the best interaction is on a horizontal plane," Long said. In fact, Building 24, which will be five floors and 385,000 gross square feet, is larger than the 16-floor Health Sciences towers and almost the size of the Medical Sciences building on Parnassus.

• Also, the labs will be located in the building's perimeter, letting in direct sunlight, and support areas will be located in the interior. Although the labs are designed to be generic, each lab will be designed for some flexibility to allow for adaptability and future change, said Long.

Faculty also assisted the architects and planners in improving lecture halls and other shared spaces. For example, they gave input on the auditorium being built in Building 24, which will be similar to room 225 in the Nursing building. The lecture hall will be redesigned to improve lines of sight, seating, and audio visual equipment. Also, the new building will have more conference rooms, located between banks of lab benches.

Building 24, to be constructed at the corner of Sixteenth and Owens streets, will house approximately 938 people, including 48 principal investigators. The occupants will be from two umbrella research groups -- Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCD) and Structural and Chemical Biology. It is not anticipated that the exact occupants will be named or assigned space until shortly before occupancy, Long said.

The planning process for the Mission Bay campus has been "very collegial -- which is the UCSF modus operandi," Long said. Several committees have been formed on campus to oversee the various aspects of the project and each group slated to move to the building has direct interaction with the architects during the current schematic design process, which will continue through November.

"The architects are meeting three times with all the users, all the groups," Long said. "Everyone sits down with the architects to discuss their needs in schematic design."

The groundbreaking of Building 24 is expected to take place Sept. 1999 and the estimated finish date is Sept. 2002, with move-ins beginning Nov. 2002.

UCSF employees are invited to attend a town hall meeting this Wednesday to hear an update on the development of the Mission Bay campus. To be held from 12:10 to 1:30 p.m. in Health Sciences West, room 300 on the Parnassus campus, the meeting will be broadcast to San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center's Carr Auditorium, Mission Center Building's 4th Floor Commons and the UCSF/Mount Zion Executive Board Room.

Speakers include Zach W. Hall, vice chancellor for research, Bruce W. Spaulding, vice chancellor for University Advancement and Planning and Robin Jones, assistant vice chancellor, campus planning. A representative from the architectural firm SMP/SHG Incorporated will speak about the design of Building 24.

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Previous Daybreak stories on Mission Bay

Source: Paula Murphy, Daybreak editor

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