Ribbon-Cutting Celebrates the Opening Of Mission Hall
Mission Hall, also known as the Global Health & Clinical Sciences Building, opened for classes in early September, and the spacious, sunny building is just beginning to hum with activity as students and faculty begin to make it their home. The ribbon cutting ceremony took place Oct. 1, though it may take several months for all to move in.
The seven-floor building will house some 1,500 professionals, pulling together all the faculty, staff and students working on global health, as well as the Office of the Chancellor. Located at the corner of 3rd and 16th streets – just across from the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay – the structure also will provide office space for many of the clinical faculty from UCSF’s School of Medicine who will take care of patients at the new children’s, women’s and cancer hospitals.
UCSF chose the building’s design after holding a competition among top architectural firms; this concept was selected for its environmentally-friendly use of natural light throughout, its intentional mix of quiet and collaborative workspaces and its structural focus on creating more opportunities for interaction.
In comparing the building’s energy usage against a baseline “typical” building, Mission Hall is 22 percent more energy-efficient than a building of similar size, according to the PG&E Savings By Design program.
A key goal was to create an effective working space that encourages the frequent and casual interactions so key to academic collaboration. One linchpin of this approach is the creation of three “town centers,” placed in spots that are a natural intersection of departments. Each town center contains a kitchen and seating area, and bathrooms and several meetings rooms are located nearby to send additional foot traffic through these hubs.
The building brings together for faculty who were previously housed separately from many of their colleagues in various offices across the city.
The overarching design of the building’s meeting rooms, conference rooms, and the overall flow is to maximize transparency and collaboration, while also including quiet spaces for privacy and concentration. Within the building, spaces are arranged to seamlessly shift from town centers to department “neighborhoods” and ultimately to scale down to individual desks and workspaces, so each department and person can form their own identity.
For visitors to the building, there are 50 guest workstations scattered throughout that are unassigned and open.
In addition to all the features for its occupants, the building will be LEED certified to the gold level, in large part due to energy and water savings built into the system.
For more information about Mission Hall, visit its Space@UCSF page.
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Fans can be the biggest energy use in a building. These unobtrusive floor vents save huge amounts of energy compared to standard overhead air ducts. By delivering the air from the ground up, the system doesn’t have to cool it as much, whereas overhead ducts must cool the air to 55 degrees so it will sink to the level of building occupants.
This first floor hallway connects the north and south ends of the building, and offers casual seating for eating or work.
The building contains three “town center” spots designed for faculty, staff and students share lunch, read or relax. The town centers are purposefully placed in areas of intersection between multiple floors and departments to encourage natural interaction and impromptu conversations among colleagues.
The building is designed to take advantage of natural light both for the lovely views and to help reduce electricity use, which is part of how it earned its gold level LEED certification.
The first floor is designed so that occupants can see through to all sides of the building from various points along the hallway and lobby. In addition to classrooms, study spaces, and casual tables and chairs, there will be access to laundry facilities, an ATM, and the offices of the audiovisual support team.
The many tall windows of Mission Hall gleam in the morning sun, and the newly planted trees offer some shade in the courtyard.
Philanthropist Chuck Feeney and his wife joined campus leaders for an Oct. 1 ribbon-cutting ceremony at Mission Hall, the new home of UCSF Global Health Sciences and clinical faculty offices. From left to right: Haile Debas, Chuck Feeney, Helga Feeney, Sam Hawgood, Mark Laret and Jaime Sepulveda.
The lower floors of the building contain various sized classrooms, each equipped with state of the art audiovisual equipment. Classes are already in session, though the building’s official ribbon cutting happens Oct. 1.
This study and meeting room offers multiple seating arrangements for a group meeting or solitary work. The left wall is a glass whiteboard where participants can sketch out ideas.
A conference room overlooks the sunlit front lobby. Two-story high windows let light flood the lobby, which overlooks a green space with outdoor seating and will eventually house a café.
Rows of “focus rooms” line the internal walls surrounding each department. The walls block any office sounds, and phone calls taken at one’s desk can easily be forwarded to these private rooms.
The department “neighborhoods” contain desks housed between low-rise walls to allow maximum natural light from the wall of windows. When additional quiet is needed, researchers can retreat to nearby “focus rooms.”