The building’s design and sustainable elements support this holistic approach, providing a positive connection to the community that helps normalize behavioral health care. Its human scale connects the building to the street, and the building materials have been purposefully selected to reflect the texture, color, and character of the neighborhood. A central atrium allows daylight to penetrate deep into the building, maintaining a calming connection to nature, and a new roof deck provides landscaped outdoor space for reflection and celebration. The building’s water system includes integrated storm management, lessening its impact on the environment.
The Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building is the culmination of UCSF’s long-standing vision to integrate physical and mental health, by eliminating arbitrary boundaries that have isolated psychiatry and the behavioral sciences from other medical disciplines that also advance brain health and treat brain disorders. That vision has led to the creation in the building of a five-story light-filled atrium, rooftop garden accessible to patients and staff, an extensive photographic art program created by groundbreaking artist Richard Misrach, and a community-based youth art program, all designed to convey hope for patients and families and demonstrate UCSF’s integral role in and commitment to the community. This OSHPD 3 building will receive its first patients in October 2021.