ZGF Designs a New Center for Mental Health at University of California, San Francisco
2022 Best of Year Winner for Healthcare
It’s your time to shine: Submissions are now open for Interior Design’s 2023 BoY Awards, recognizing standout projects, designers, architects, and manufacturers around the globe.
For centuries, architecture has reinforced the stigma of mental illness. Dreary treatment facilities with sterile interiors and small windows can look more like prisons than hospitals. This bright, 173,000-square-foot research and treatment center—home to UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences—by ZGF turns the institutional typology on its head. With large windows and white-oak floors, the biophilic design reflects the fact that access to daylight and nature shortens hospital stays and improves patient outcomes. The building also aims to promote transparency and normalize mental healthcare, encouraging more people to seek help. “The space is meant to signal to patients that they are safe, they are welcome, and that they matter,” associate principal Mirjana Munetic says.
Visitors enter into a five-story atrium that draws the eye up to the skylight, where painted metal baffles filter daylight to the ground floor. The walkways around the atrium have 6-foot-high glass guardrails that enhance the sense of openness while also providing protection for patients. Waiting rooms, traditionally hidden, are adjacent to the atrium, sending a message that behavioral health patients should be visible. With a rooftop garden and an extensive art program—including landscape photographs by Richard Misrach—the resulting environment is calm, with a sense of hope.
read more
Awards
Interior Design’s 2022 Best of Year Award Winners
See Interior Design’s 2022 Best of Year Award winners, representing the best A&D projects and products from across the globe.
Projects
Perkins&Will’s Expansion of UVA Health’s Emergency Department Earns IIDA Accolades
The diagnosis was clear: UVA Health’s emergency department was seeing 60,000 patients a year, a figure 50 percent higher than its intended capacity. Tasked with devising a solution was longtime collaborator Perkins&Wil…
Projects
FAAB Architektura Conceives of a Cutting-Edge Fertility Clinic in Wrocław, Poland
Based in Poland, Invicta takes a holistic approach to women’s fertility, offering patients a full suite of diagnostic services and state-of-the-art treatments—from gynecology and genetics to IVF and psychology—unde…
recent stories
Projects
Joseph Duclos Arrives in Paris With a Timeless Boutique
Joseph Duclos, a high-end boutique carrying a 21st-century collection of handbags and accessories with roots dating to the 18th century, arrives in Paris.
Projects
Sustainability Spotlight: The Biennale Architettura in Venice
For the 18th Biennale Architettura, in Venice, Italy, designers, artists, and curators from 63 countries explore decarbonization and decolonization.
Projects
Experience Tranquility at Alba Thermal Springs & Spa in Australia
Structural elements reign supreme at Alba Thermal Springs & Spa, where Hayball pivots a dynamic sensory journey around a core of sculpted tranquility.