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June 3, 2009, 02:52 PM ET
U. of California at San Francisco Opens Lab Building Designed by Rafael Vinoly
A new cancer center at the U. of California at San Francisco is winning praise for its interiors. (Photography by Michael O’Callahan)
The University of California at San Francisco has opened its Helen Diller Family Cancer Research Building, designed by Rafael Viñoly, on its Mission Bay campus. The reviews of the 164,000-square-foot lab building are mainly positive so far.
John King of the San Francisco Chronicle says that too many institutional architects regard their discipline as “two inches thick” — that is, that architects just pay attention to the skin of a building and little else. Mr. King must have mentioned this to Mr. Viñoly during his tour of the building.
“If you are willing to take the position that the two inches of the facade is your only concern, you might as well quit,” Mr. Viñoly replied. “The two inches are the pits. Who cares?”
The lab building is not just a two-inch-thick work, but Mr. King says that the building is more successful inside than out.
The travertine-clad south wall rises straight from the sidewalk. At the other end, the structure steps down toward a future park — a six-block east-west strip that planners envision as common ground merging the residential north of Mission Bay with the medical world to the south.
Don’t count on it.
The ground-floor space facing the future park doesn’t beckon neighbors with shops or a cafe. Instead, there’s a metal grill that hides boilers, generators, and the like.
That mechanical equipment cannot be hidden in the basement, like it is in most lab buildings, because the Diller center sits on a landfill.
The interiors, on the other hand, feel “airy” and “intimate.”
Interior Design magazine was also impressed with the interiors: “The laboratory wing’s travertine walls stand in stark contrast to the office wing’s metal and glass cladding, which simultaneously reflect a difference in function while conveying the transparency and openness necessary for new discoveries.”
The $135-million building was supported with a $35-million gift from Helen Diller, who is the wife of Sanford Diller, a real-estate magnate. The gift was one of the largest in the history of the institution.
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