Joan and Sanford I. Weill Neurosciences Building | San Francisco, CA

The six-story, cast-in-place concrete structure provides clinical and patient treatment space on the first two floors, which are fully accessible to the public. This space includes diagnostic and treatment rooms, MRI machines, a pharmacy, and an infusion area, among other amenities.

Highly flexible research space is spread throughout the building’s four upper levels. Featuring an exterior that is clad in a glazed curtain wall and wrapped by an architectural screen that begins at the third floor, these upper levels create an architecturally distinct design block that is elevated over the open, transparent bottom portion of the building.

Leading-edge research spaces, flexible office pods and numerous other departments are housed in this area. A sixth-floor terrace to be used for donor events and other gatherings, offers sweeping views of the San Francisco skyline and the entire Mission Bay campus.

DPR SPW crews undertook $60 million of trade scope on the UCSF Block 23A project in San Francisco, including all concrete, drywall, ceilings, doors, frames and hardware. Self-performing such a large portion of work on the massive concrete structure not only helped control quality, but also on-site safety and productivity.

As a defining architectural focal point of the building, the SPW concrete work included the construction of hundreds of exposed concrete columns, seven six-story architectural concrete sheer walls and much more. SPW crews made extensive use of mockups and invested substantial time and effort to understand the many nuances of the design to meet the expectations of the owner, architects and donors, and to deliver the highest quality finish work.

Operating in a design-assist capacity, the DPR SPW concrete team played an integral role helping the project fit within the budget, integrating design revisions throughout the entire process, and developing customized and innovative concrete form systems never before used on a DPR project in this region.

DPR’s drywall group, working in a design-build capacity, developed a strategy to robotically prefabricate over 70 percent of the interior partitions, and nearly 100 percent of exterior framing to reduce the project schedule by approximately one month. DPR then collaborated with trade partners to rough-in the MEP leading to labor savings and reduced site labor constraints. Read more about how MEP and SPW utilized technical expertise at UCSF.