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Genentech Hall at the University of California at San Francisco earned a special mention from R&D Magazine in their Lab of the Year 2003 competition and Best New Office/San Francisco from the San Francisco Times Best Real Estate Deals.
The $160 million biomedical research facility is the first building completed at University of California San Francisco’s (UCSF) new campus at Mission Bay. Clark Construction Group, LLC of Oakland, Calif. served as the general contractor.
The 435,000-gross-square-foot, five-story Genentech Hall is part of a new 43-acre research and teaching campus, which is the focal point for a new research park that allows private medical research corporations to create opportunities for public/private research collaboration. Research functions include molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry, chemistry, structural biology, and the Center for Advanced Technology.
Designed by SmithGroup of San Francisco, the facade is clad in travertine stone and a full height glass curtain wall incorporated into a lobby atrium that also features a dramatic open stairway. From the stone and wood paneled walls of the lobby, visitors and researchers can enjoy the light from the five-story glass atrium. Large windows in laboratories, offices and conference areas also allow daylight to reach far into the building.
Flexible Laboratory Space
Since the needs of science never remain static, Genentech Hall is designed to enable quick and flexible changes to laboratory configurations and services.
Two main laboratory wings are located north and south of the spine of the building. Lab and office space is configured in “neighborhoods” with common areas that serve as hubs and gathering places. The hope is that this informal contact will lead to an exchange of ideas that will ultimately lead to new ways of doing science.
Over 11,000 square feet of vivarium space is found on the first floor and is served from an interstitial floor directly above it. This service floor houses the dedicated HVAC equipment
and ductwork, as well as the plumbing and electrical systems, which are continually monitored by a building automation system. This system allows individual adjustment of air temperature and pressure for every room in the vivarium.
The vivarium can securely house up to 6000 cages of small mammals for biomedical research. The facility is divided into two separate and parallel suites of holding rooms that can be accessed and serviced independently. These parallel corridors with cage rooms allow a number of biosecurity levels to be operated simultaneously. Its ventilation and exhaust systems are separate from the general building and laboratory systems to prevent a potential backflow of contaminated air.
A Deep Pile Foundation
Due to the seismic conditions in San Francisco and the poor quality of soil in Mission Bay, the Clark team created a deep pile foundation, with a lateral force-resisting system of steel eccentrically-braced frames and first-floor shear walls. The ground slab is thick enough to span between pile caps, should differential settlement of the ground occur. A crawl space separates the ground slab from the first floor slab. This allows first floor drainage lines to be accessible.
The upper laboratory floors required sufficient stiffness to limit vibrations that may effect sensitive equipment such as 400x optical microscopes, electron microscopes, microbalances and optical balances. Typical lab floors and beams are built to limit vibrations from a typical walker to 2000 micro-inches per second.
Additional team members included Zimmer Gunseul Frasca Partnership of Portland, Ore., exterior design consultant; Rutherford & Chekene of San Francisco, structural engineer; Gayner Engineering of San Francisco, MEP engineer; and Earl Walls Associates of San Diego, laboratory consultant.
2003 marks the 37th annual Laboratory of the Year (LOY) competition, sponsored by R&D Magazine and SEFA, the Scientific Equipment and Furniture Association. Genentech Hall will be featured in the June issue of R&D Magazine. The San Francisco Business Times has been honoring the Best Real Estate Deals for more than a decade.
Clark Construction Group, LLC is headquartered in Bethesda, Md.
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