2006 SCUP/AIA-CAE Awards

Mission Bay Campus

University of California, San Francisco with Machado and Silvetti Associates

Click to view a pdf presentation of the project.

The UCSF plan was developed over many years, with a complicated process, and with multiple participants. To see that the master plan has been adopted and implemented is, indeed, a major accomplishment. Forty-three acres of underutilized industrial land were donated to UCSF by Catellus Development Corporation, and the City and County of San Francisco.

UCSF decided to create a second major academic site at Mission Bay to accommodate future growth. To promote life sciences and biotechnology development in the Bay area and help jumpstart a master plan for the new campus, a not-for-profit public benefit corporation, Bay Area Life Sciences Alliance (BALSA) was formed by local business leaders. They sponsored an international design competition which was won by a design team who then prepared the master plan and design guidelines. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the Mission Bay Redevelopment Plan for a 303 acre area in the middle of which the UCSF campus site is located. Local political support was key to accomplishing the necessary agreements and plans.

One important concept of the Master Plan was to integrate the campus with the planned development around it, and with the downtown development to the north, since the campus was to be both located in and function as the heart of a new larger urban community. The plan sought to preserve the view corridors, establish pedestrian level zones with retail uses, thoughtful building bases and accessible open spaces, and connection with a planned light rail transit station.

The master plan was of exceptional quality because of its comprehensiveness, organization, clarity of concepts, supportive illustrations, and overall content. Implementation is in process with nine of the twenty-two proposed buildings and two of the seven open spaces having been built. Modifications have become necessary; the plan's flexibility allowed these changes. Student housing was included at Mission Bay. Another change is the construction of a central utility plant.

The organizing concept for the new site at Mission Bay was to arrange campus land uses and buildings programmatically around a variety of biosciences research programs to reinforce academic activities and operational relationships. The intent was to also ensure that campus development would be compatible with its physical surroundings in use, scale and density.

The planning process proved to be invaluable in establishing a consensus around a sound program and in producing a both pragmatic master plan for building design and construction purposes, and a vision for the capital campaign. The Master Plan was clearly instrumental in accelerating development of the new campus.