By way of a plugged-in tipster, the latest rendering of UCSF’s proposed Medical Center at Mission Bay. Design by Anshen + Allen and watercolor by Al Forster.
UPDATE: A plugged-in reader gets you oriented:
While another suggests the video (bottom on the page).
WTF is that surface parking lot doing right in the middle? Why doesnt the plan for mission bay specifically prohibit surface parking lots?
Insane.
^^^^
LOL, I saw the rendering and thought, wait until the anti-surface parking contingent sees this. A+A and Mr. Forster are probably going to wish the composed that rendering differently.
I believe the parking lot was set to be used for later development.
I don’t drive, but there are lots of good reasons for hospitals to have a broad expanse of surface parking nearby; among other things, it can serve as a triage area in a natural disaster. UCSF at Parnassus drives me crazy: Who puts an emergency room at the top of a steep hill?
(I realize they got the land free from Sutro back when it was pretty much a suburb, but still.)
The parking lot is phase II of the development but I’m sure it will be at least a decade before that is built out.
It’s a pretty rendering, but it takes a minute to orient yourself. The vantage point is essentially from on top of 280 at the mariposa exit looking northeast.
You can find 3rd street via the streetcar visible in the bottom right of the picture. 16th Street is above the parking garage in the bottom left (the garage doesn’t exist yet). Just across the street from there is the block containing the majority of the already-built UCSF campus. Most of what is east of there doesn’t exist yet.
I made a simple little annotated version so you can orient yourself. I’m going to try to inline it in my post, but if SS won’t let me, you can see it [above].
[Editor’s Note: Cheers and thanks for plugging in.]
You can see a fly thru video here that gives you a much better perspective on where you are: http://missionbayhospitals.ucsf.edu/
Bleh. San Francisco continues in its headlong effort to replicate San Ramon. Or maybe Pyongyang.
I’d take Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel over a Victorian or Edwardian any day.
Notice how they are completely considering the Parking lot side as the front of the building, and Third street is hidden in all the renderings. Previously (probably still) there wasn’t even an entrance to the building at the only street crossing on third street making getting to the the waterfront and light rail as a pedestrian a very long walk. It is wierd how years of planning is leaving 3rd street lined with parking garages and back sides of builings.
Endlessly boring rectangular buildings. How about a few curves or something a little different?
While this is just a conceptual rendering, I think it holds promise for a good urban solution to a very complex building type. Hospitals are EXTREMELY complicated buildings to design. Departmental adjacencies, circulation and patient wayfinding are critical for success.
The proposed surface parking lot makes sense in the initial stages of design, because that open space will ultimately be used for future expansion and growth. Relax..it’s ok.
3rd street is a major transportation corridor and garages and tall building edges are appropriate at this location.
I’ve been living on Potrero and watching Mission Bay for 12 years; my disappointment grows with each new stage of its unfolding. The new parks along the waterfront are making that a more pleasant area to walk or bike in, but the built areas do nothing for me.
This campus looks very reminiscent of the buildings immediately north of 16th St. – the same generally massing and beige stone cladding. It’s somewhat nondescript but not especially offensive.
To complainers of surface parking and architecture, this is a hospital. Would you rather them to have taken the money out of the stem cell fund or surgery center so that they can build an underground hidden garage and give us a multi million Renzo Piano design? It’s a hospital people, in my opinion hospitals and schools should be able to do whatever the hell they want with THEIR land. Save your energies for another battle.
well..sort of…
but nothing wrong with a Renzo Piano design if it’s within the budget.
otherwise: nimbys, whiners and complainers! go away.
The parking lots are slated for development anyway – it’s just in later phases.
If the parking lots are slated for development then its not an issue. I dont care what you do onsite though – you dont get to have an entire block of surface parking in SF.
What other city hospitals front on an entire block of surface parking?
I don’t think undergroud parking is economically viable considering seismic requirements. I used to work in Mission Bay and watched several building go up. Every one of them is supported on concrete piers drilled and filled – some 80 feet or more deep through the muck to bedrock. The soil in that area is not stable.
I like the use of solar panels.
“Most of what is east of there (3rd street) doesn’t exist yet.”
East of third has several buildings already occupied. Gap Old Navy’s ~1000 employees have been there for a couple of years, Fibrogen’s Corporate offices just moved there in early December (the building with the wedge cut out of the middle by the water-best seen in the video behind the Cancer Hospital), and Radiance is just visible on the waterfront at the back by the pier. Pfizer has broken ground on their space, roughly between Radiance and the hospital, to be occupied in early 2010.
It also looks like they included the barely visible Bay Front park behind Fibrogen. Just to the right out of the picture is the new Cruise ship dry dock where the Star Princess parked in October.
The west side of 3rd has seen the removal of most of the scaffolding on block 4, around Fourth and Mission Rock streets. The 192-unit, eight-floor market-rate apartment complex — located at 555 Mission Rock — will also feature about 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, some of which will be reserved for at least one restaurant and is slated for completion in February 2009. They are currently working on the paving the last stretch that connects 4th street in front of this complex to 4th/King by the bridge. This will finally offer direct access to UCSF via 4th.
I also like the solar panels – should make good use of all the sunshine in Mission Bay when the rest of SF is in fog.
Is there a general height restriction in this area? Everything seems to be the same height.
Sorry, Angle, I should have been more specific. I meant east of 4th st.
Excluding the hospital, I see at least 4 UCSF buildings that do not exist (most of those are a parking lot currently). Facing the hospital on third, I see 6 more that are currently occupied by a cement mixing plant.