New Science Building Does Little for Public

The new Clinical Sciences building at UC San Diego is among the best of the new structures on campus.

Although some controversy accompanied the sleek and thoughtfully designed work by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson, the hoopla had nothing to do with the building’s form.

Erickson, who also designed the bayfront San Diego Convention Center, caused a stir throughout Southern California when he closed his Los Angeles office last June because of financial difficulties. He was dismissed from the $26-million, 60,000-square-foot Clinical Sciences project during construction, after failing to pay some of the subcontractors.

The architect may be suffering business woes, but there is no questioning his able hand in the design of this building, which is used for some of the university’s most important research into AIDS, sleep patterns, memory and aging.

The building, which opened in September, is at the southern edge of the La Jolla campus and is configured in clear, no-nonsense fashion: a cylindrical mechanical and circulation tower flanked by two laboratory wings.

Three-story openings through the base of this four-story cylinder provide views through the center of the building. Pedestrian bridges cross through the core, connecting the three- and four-story wings.

The building’s exterior is covered with gun-metal gray aluminum panels and tinted green glass. These materials are molded into forms so sleek and seamless that the building appears to have been extruded in one piece from some kind of gigantic, futuristic mold.

By phone from his office in Vancouver, where he has just merged his practice with the firm of Aitken Wregglesworth Associates, also of Vancouver, Erickson explained how the Clinical Sciences building’s simple layout evolved.

“One of the most critical issues on all laboratory buildings is fume exhaust,” Erickson said. “We decided to make (the mechanical-circulation core) the feature of the building, the place where people would collect between the labs. This gave us an opportunity to hide all those ugly vents. What we try to do in all buildings is turn something that looks to be a handicap into an asset.”

Compared with college buildings that serve a wider variety of students, the Clinical Sciences building comes off as sterile and cold. This was mostly out of necessity.

The cylindrical core tower makes a grand, inviting gesture, but, once you are beneath its soaring, dramatic forms, there is no obvious means of entering the building. This, of course, is by design. Because of the sensitive, often hazardous nature of the research that occurs within, this building was meant to keep the public out.

Inside, the new building represents the current state of laboratory design, according to Dr. Ruth Covell, an associate dean in the UCSD School of Medicine who has been a driving force in the design of campus labs. The building features flexible, open, naturally lit lab bays that encourage interaction and camaraderie among research teams.

Researchers assigned to older buildings on the campus often toil in smaller, more private labs that receive no natural light, Covell said. Despite the poor work environment these provide, scientists often become emotionally attached to these cloistered research dens. When their grant funds run out or staff changes are made, they leave reluctantly and with bruised egos.

In the new building, researchers are assigned identical work spaces along rows of lab benches in each sizable, open lab bay. Covell predicts that scientists won’t become so possessive of these uniform work stations, and therefore won’t mind being reassigned.

In other UCSD lab buildings, administrative offices are tucked in dark corners, or clustered at the ends of floors, separate from the labs. Within the new building, offices ring the perimeter of each lab bay, separated by glass walls that allow a visual connection between workers and administrators, furthering the sense of a communal mission.

After Erickson was dropped from the project, at least one significant change was made to his original design. He had specified bright yellow cabinets beneath black lab countertops, but the yellow fixtures were unavailable, according to Covell. So the university substituted gray.

Custom carpets designed by Erickson--gray with groups of yellow pin stripes--were almost scrapped by one campus administrator, but Covell insisted they be installed. These add a welcome splash of color, but without the yellow cabinetry to provide a bold accent stroke, the labs still look as bland and institutional as most other labs, which is a shame considering the fresh statement made by Erickson’s building.

It’s also too bad that several of the building’s new tenants have brought in conservative, traditional furnishings that don’t fit the high-tech flavor of the building.

The irony of this building is that it calls so much attention to itself, but is intended only for the use of a select few. The plaza beneath the building’s cylindrical tower is its most significant public offering. But this bare, concrete space has none of the richness of the building itself.

Plans call for additional buildings next to this one, completing a ring of buildings around a public plaza that Covell hopes will eventually include a partially underground eatery.

Until new buildings arrive and the large public space is defined and refined--which won’t be for several years--Erickson’s project makes a striking visual addition to the campus, but one that doesn’t offer any practical benefit to the majority of students.

In fact, the lack of inviting public public space here is symptomatic of the campus’ overall lack of unity and use of public spaces that tie it all together.

Erickson put campus planning into proper perspective.

“Every time they build, they shouldn’t be so concerned with individual buildings as with creating pleasant, meaningful spaces in between where people can assemble and appreciate the wonderful setting of the campus,” he said.

Overall, a new campus master plan, drafted by Skidmore Owings & Merrill and adopted in 1989, has not yet had the desired effect of knitting the patchwork campus together.

During the past three years or so, the university has added several buildings by internationally known architects. Charles Moore and his associates from Moore Ruble Yudell designed one lab building (in 1990) and are at work on another. The prominent San Francisco firm of Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz designed both the Price Center (1989) and the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (1990).

The IRPS building extends rudely into an important pedestrian promenade, but the Price Center’s inviting plaza is a valuable new public space, as are two spare, stone and gravel terraces behind Moore’s building, designed by Moore in collaboration with New York artist Jackie Ferrara.

Unfortunately, the space around Erickson’s new building doesn’t yet make such a significant public contribution.