Swiss architects chosen to design UCSF hospital
The Swiss architects who turned heads with their metalclad de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park have been selected to design an even larger project — a new hospital for UCSF not far to the south in Parnassus Heights.
The firm, Herzog & de Meuron, will take the lead role in what is envisioned as a nearly 1 millionsquarefoot facility that is part of a larger remake of the densely built campus. The target completion date is 2030, and the number of beds would increase from 475 to 675.
Health care isn’t an obvious specialty of the internationally lauded firm, which also designed the gabionwalled Dominus Estate winery in Napa Valley. But much of Herzog & de Meuron’s work in Switzerland involves medicine and technology, and it also has designed a hospital in Denmark that will be built with a cloverleaf form around an expansive garden.
“This is a firm that really does understand the healing environment, and the process necessary to get there,” said Stuart Eckblad, UCSF’s vice president in charge of major projects.
The process doesn’t just involve design issues.
UCSF and the Inner Sunset neighborhood have long sparred over the size of the institution, which has been locked in place in terms of square feet since 1976. Now — with an entirely separate campus in Mission Bay nearly complete — UCSF seeks to remake the campus to improve the landscape connections to Mount Sutro while adding enough space to house thousands of additional employees. Opponents already are raising concerns about the impact on traffic and the nearby housing supply.
The choice of Herzog & de Meuron adds another twist.
The de Young, which opened in 2005, is rightly acclaimed as one of the best new American museum structures of the 21st century. But the stark contemporary design, with perforated copper walls and a 144foot observation tower, stirred attacks and lawsuits from neighbors and others.
But Eckblad emphasized that no physical concept for the planned hospital exists yet
— and no design work would likely begin before 2021, after several community meetings.
During the interview process to select a design team, “the way they presented themselves to us made it clear that they aren’t coming in with preconceived ideas,” Eckblad, an architect himself, said of Herzog & de Meuron. “We’re really thinking about creating a place for healing and wellness and recovery, not just a hospital, and they talked about these issues without us having to ask questions.”
The price tag for the overall hospital project will likely top $3 billion, since it will include such costs as dismantling older structures and doing seismic upgrades to one of the current hospital buildings. The Helen Diller Foundation already has pledged $500 million to the hospital project alone.
Besides Herzog & de Meuron, the design team includes HDR as architect of record. The latter firm has a San Francisco office and has done extensive hospital work in California, including the colorful outpatient building at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland.