Designed by the San Francisco office of SmithGroup, the new five-story, 434,000-gsf facility is the first structure to be completed on the UCSF Mission Bay campus. The campus is the anchor of the entire Mission Bay project, San Francisco's largest urban development since the building of Golden Gate Park. The city's Mission Bay development covers 303 acres of land between San Francisco Bay and Interstate 280.

Once fully occupied, the building will house approximately 950 faculty, students, and staff. Most were previously located at UCSF's Parnassus Heights campus, which over the years has expanded its research and teaching programs and become severely squeezed on space.

Unique to UCSF Genentech Hall is the fact it locates graduate-level studies and health sciences research close to local industry, in the middle of an urban center.

The building will contain research programs in structural and chemical biology and molecular, cell, and developmental biology. It will also house the Molecular Design Institute and the Center for Advanced Technology.

Genentech Hall consists of two main laboratory wings, north and south of the spine. Each wing is divided into two laboratory suites with shared conference areas. The main spine through each floor connects all the laboratories. At the entrance to each laboratory area, a commons room with comfortable seating and small kitchen offers a more intimate space to use common reference materials, share information, provide for informal conferences, and break for coffee or lunch.

The entire building supports collaborative interaction. All visitors and researchers must pass or go through the break area, further encouraging communication and collaboration.

The first floor, sufficiently stiff for NMR, mass spectrometry, and x-ray crystallography equipment (250 microinches ps), also contains a vivarium, the grand lobby, and a 261-seat lecture auditorium.

In the laboratories, user-adjustable tables are incorporated into the benches and accessible fume hoods and sinks are readily available. Large windows in laboratories, offices, and conference areas allow for a large amount of daylight into the building. A ghost corridor separates the open benches from high-use shared support spaces including fume hood rooms, tissue culture rooms, and controlled temperature rooms on the biology floors. The fifth floor is devoted to chemistry where hoods are grouped near shafts and are never placed so that researchers are working back-to-back.

The vivarium occupies 11,330 sf and can house up to 6,000 cages of mice and other small mammals for biomedical research. A BSL-3 laboratory is part of the vivarium and includes a decontamination lock for the decontamination of large objects. The cage washing facility is capable of serving the resident colony as well as cages from two adjoining animal facilities now under construction, up to 24,000 cages. The vivarium ventilation and exhaust systems are separate from the building general and laboratory systems, and is serviced from an interstitial floor directly above it.

An outdoor amphitheater, adjacent to the campus green to the north, and adjoining plaza encourage informal social contact. Inside, the atrium provides the central focus on every floor, and features a bookstore, coffee café, and the primary circulation stair. Elevators open onto an open lounge/conference space at each floor, furnished with display boards, seating, and marker boards to encourage and support discussion.

Administrative areas include offices, a library, and a bookstore. Logistical support spaces include areas for environmental health and safety and facilities and material management. As the first complete building in Mission Bay, Genentech Hall houses one of two campus Main Distribution Frames. The backbone of the data/telcom system consists of 75,000 feet of single mode and multimode fiber cable, with Cat 3 voice riser cable. The data system is planned to accommodate 100 percent increase in capacity during the next 10 years because of expected growth in computational resources and networked lab equipment.

All functions are located above grade because of existing soil conditions. The 43-acre UCSF Mission Bay campus transforms land once occupied by old warehouses and rail yards.

The exterior wall is composed of travertine with punched windows, glass curtain wall, and architectural louvers. Zimmer Gunsel Frasca Partnership served as exterior design consultant on the project.

Project Information
Building Owner:		University of California, San Francisco
Owner Contact:		Russ Akre, Project Manager
Building Location:		San Francisco, CA UNITED STATES
Project Type:		New Construction
Principal Building Function:		Biomedical research and teaching
Project Delivery Method:		Individual Bid Packages
Project Timeline		Dec 1997 Planning Start Jan 1998 Design Start Jan 2000 Construction Start Nov 2002 Completion Last known status: Completed
Project Cost:		$159,091,000
Cost Per Sq. Ft:		$367
		About These Cost Figures
Building Information
Project Includes:		Biomedical Chemistry Education Education: Biomedical Education: Chemistry Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory: Biomedical Research Laboratory: Chemistry Laboratory: Teaching Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Office: Researcher Research: Biomedical Vivarium
Total GSF:		434,000
Total NSF:		247,963
Efficiency:		57%
Building Population:		950
People Density:		457 gsf/person
Building Services:		Compressed air, carbon dioxide, vacuum, natural gas, deionized water, process chilled water, precess steam, nitrogen, helium, oxygen
Special Equip:		NMR, Mass Spectroscopy
Office Size:		175 NSF
Power Req:		Overall: 40 watts/nsf Lighting: 1.7 watts/nsf Equipment: 18 watts/nsf
HVAC Req:		2.8 cfm/nsf
Structure/Foundation:		Deep pile foundation with a lateral force-resisting system of steel eccentrically brased frames and first-floor shear walls.
Laboratory Parameters
Lab Module:		10' 6
Casework Mat'l:		Modular Wood Casework, Epoxy Tops
Fume Hoods:		161 6' and 8'
Biosafety Cabinets:		68
Project Team
Consultant		Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP
Vertical Transportation		Syska Hennessy Group
Profile Created 03/17/2003
Last Updated 04/04/2006
About the Reported Cost Figures The cost figures reported are supplied by the firms that submitted these projects for publication, which in most cases are the designers or builders. Whereas these sources are intimately familiar with their projects, they may not be fully aware of the owners' finally-realized and recorded costs. In some cases, costs are truly and completely accounted for, and in others they represent a near approximation of the final costs. Costs have not been adjusted for year of construction, nor has any attempt been made to make regional cost adjustments. Further, costs are not comparable on any kind of detailed standard costing model. Hence, it is possible for the cost of one building to include a steam boiler, while the cost of a comparable building might not include the boiler, if steam is being supplied from an already existing campus grid. Or, in another case, a building might include excess boiler capacity to supply steam to another building. Some submittals include fees or unusual site improvements as part of the construction costs, which others do not.