Updated design of UCSF Health Helen Diller Hospital.
Founded in 1891 with the establishment of the Colleges of Dentistry, Medicine, and Pharmacy nestled into the landscape of Mount Sutro, UCSF’s Parnassus Campus benefits from a dramatic location adjacent to nature, overlooking the surrounding city and Golden Gate Park below. The architecture of the new UCSF Health Helen Diller Hospital will integrate the campus and hospital into the landscape of Mount Sutro and the fabric of the city around it. Additionally, the new building will promote connectivity within the campus by stitching together the existing Moffitt and Long buildings to form one hospital, facilitating a seamless experience for patients, visitors, and staff and a holistic healing environment for all.
The Street, the Terrace and the Mountain
The three distinct horizontal layers of the building correspond to different programmatic functions within the hospital. This specific massing establishes unique relationships with the surrounding natural and urban context. The base, containing many of the most critical clinical functions, is shaped to create a welcoming entry and human-scaled experience for pedestrians along Parnassus Avenue. At the midsection of the project, the volume is inset to create the Sutro Terrace, a communal space with restaurants and cafes and a large garden that visually connects the nature of Mount Sutro to the new hospital. The tapered, mountain-like form of the upper volume contains patient rooms that gradually step back to reduce the perceived scale of the new hospital from the street below, while the façade’s articulation breaks down the scale of the building and makes a direct reference to adjacent campus buildings and the surrounding neighborhood.
Healing habitat
Warm interior materials, welcoming shared amenities, access to green space and extensive views of nature create the best environment for patients to heal and for staff to recharge from the stress of daily hospital life. The integration of landscape at ground level will help revitalize Parnassus Avenue with broad planting areas, creating a calm pedestrian zone between the busy street and vehicular drop-offs. On the 6th floor Sutro Terrace overlooking the city, headlands, ocean and bay, a landscape with carefully selected vegetation will provide a place for patients, family, staff and visitors to relax and recover.
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547 UCSF Health Helen Diller Hospital
San Francisco, California, USA
