Honorable Mention: American Architecture Awards 2023
BioMed Realty Life Sciences Campus Building C | Foster City - California | 2022

Architects: Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK)
General Contractor: Hathaway Dinwiddie
Client: BioMed Realty

SIZE: 240,000 sq. ft.
SERVICES: Master Planning, Entitlements, Programming, Architecture, Interiors, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design
DESIGN COMPLETION: 2022

The final phase of the BioMed Life Science Campus sets the stage for discovery and innovation in the Bay Area by creating a “machine in park” approach to development. The last of a series of taught, tensile, silver buildings creates presence by defining a shared central green filled with site amenities. Nestled within a natural lagoon and pastoral site in Foster City, the BioMed Life Sciences Building establishes a flexible and collaborative research environment inspired by the intersection of nature and technology in the Bay Area.

The building’s architectural character is a modern vernacular utilizing high-performance materials reflective of a 21st century contemporary life sciences campus. The building—two wings pivoting off a central support core, with one wing rising above the campus skyline, crowned by a roof terrace above the central green below. Building facades bend, fold and curve as they shift around the volume—are clad in silver, tectonic frames that shift from 5.5 feet to 11 feet in bay widths.

These frames begin taught to the building face curving out to 18 inches in depth. This combination of width and depth shifts as they move around the building, tightening and deepening then widening and flattening as they respond to their solar orientation. A layer of cascading frit patterning atop the glazing mitigates glare and heat gain and adds a fine grain of visual texture. The building floor plate was derived from a flexible laboratory planning module allowing for collaboration, growth and flexibility in tenant planning, programming and research initiatives.

The building’s large, open laboratories, office spaces and floor-to-ceiling windows maximize access to daylight and views of the Bay and central quad, while providing open areas for a variety of workplace and laboratory configurations. Campus amenities such as running and walking trails, waterside boathouses for kayaking and other watersports, and outdoor boccie and basketball courts provide a connection to nature and encourage physical activity.