Barbara and Gerson Bakar Research and Academic Building, UC San Francisco
National architecture, engineering, and design firm HGA pursues low-carbon, mixed-use buildings with positive community connections. It rejoined SPUR this year as a Guardian member. Former SPUR board member Jeffrey Till, a principal at HGA, serves on our Urban Infrastructure Council and co-leads our Planning and Architecture Council. He described HGA’s approach to making urban spaces resilient.
HGA works across healthcare, life sciences, workplace, civic, and mixed-use projects. How does that breadth influence the firm’s approach to design?
It strengthens our process. Our design teams bring specialized expertise to different kinds of work, and we actively share design knowledge across those teams to take full advantage of our diversity of skills. Lessons from one project type often inform another. Here in the Bay Area, conditions like microclimates, steep hills, high costs, and seismic risk are common across much of our work, so we keep knowledge flowing within the firm and do a lot of listening to clients and stakeholders. The result is a design approach that is locally relevant, cross-disciplinary, and supported by research.
HGA serves as executive architect for UCSF’s Barbara and Gerson Bakar Research and Academic Building. How did the team balance the needs of a major research facility with the goal of strengthening connections between the campus and the surrounding neighborhood?
We approached the building as both a high-performance research facility and a shared civic asset for the Parnassus Heights neighborhood. As executive architect in the design-build partnership of UCSF, HGA, Snøhetta, and Hensel Phelps, we helped align research, education, campus, and community goals from the start.
The building will serve as a research hub, connecting principal investigators and researchers in flexible, sustainable, and reconfigurable spaces that support multidisciplinary collaboration and innovation. HGA designed interior spaces to foster spontaneous interaction and to support community exchange, with classrooms that can be rented for community events and public engagement in global health. The Parnassus Avenue entrance, outdoor gathering areas, and a sheltered overlook with Pacific Ocean views strengthen campus-neighborhood connections. Beyond the building, campus-wide improvements expand publicly accessible open space through walkable streetscapes, street-level retail, new vistas, and a public promenade. Ongoing coordination with UCSF Community & Government Relations and quarterly community meetings helped shape decisions about access, public space, and building character.
How has HGA committed to AIA 2030, the American Institute of Architects’ challenge to achieve carbon neutrality in new projects by 2030, and to SE 2050, an initiative of the Structural Engineering Institute to achieve net-zero embodied carbon in structural systems by 2050?
To support AIA 2030, we created a custom software plug-in that allows us to test a building’s massing, orientation, and envelope options as early as predesign, so energy targets guide design rather than follow it. We also leverage change management strategies to engage project teams in reporting results, making HGA one of only a few large firms to report 100% of our projects for AIA 2030. For SE 2050, our interdisciplinary Embodied Carbon & Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Knowledge Community created The Embodied Eight, a guide to help teams integrate embodied carbon into decisions about structure, envelope, and materials. We compare structural systems, build an internal LCA database, and benchmark the embodied carbon of structures.
As technology, climate challenges, and work patterns evolve, what qualities will define successful buildings and neighborhoods?
Climate change and resiliency are long-term challenges. We have begun to respond by designing walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with low-carbon targets. Those strategies check a lot of boxes, and people are excited about the lifestyle they represent, but we need to go further, faster. Humans are wired for short-term responses to threats, and it’s much harder to respond to slow-moving threats like climate change. Communities that learn that response will succeed. The impacts of technology and changing work patterns are shorter term challenges. Buildings need longer lifespans and a looser, less specialized fit around their functions, allowing for rapid change while retaining value. More mixed-use density can help mitigate vacancy risk and maintain a lively buzz. We need to keep our focus on designing welcoming places that people want to be in and take care of. Those will endure.
What has your engagement with SPUR meant for you personally and professionally?
Where else can I geek out on urban policy and planning? I spent eight years on the SPUR Board of Directors, which was a real learning experience. I had underestimated the positive influence SPUR has on issues that matter to the Bay Area and to me. My involvement with the Urban Infrastructure Council and, more recently, the Planning and Architecture Council has given me a deeper understanding of how policy, infrastructure, planning, and design intersect in real time.