Foster City, California, USA

Designed by HOK, the Campus at Lincoln Centre sets the stage for discovery and innovation in the Bay Area by creating a “machines in the park” approach to development.

Appointed by BioMed Realty, the Campus at Lincoln Centre has been recently awarded a 2023 American Award for Architecture Honorable Mention from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

A series of taught, tensile, silver buildings create a presence by defining a shared central green filled with site amenities.

Nestled within a natural lagoon and pastoral site in Foster City, the Campus at Lincoln Centre establishes a flexible and collaborative research environment inspired by the intersection of nature and technology in the Bay Area.

The campus buildings—two wings pivoting off a central support core, with
facades that 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 buildings envelop a central green within a larger park and are connected by a network of landscaped walkways, communal seating, and various outdoor amenities.

Building floor plate solutions were derived from a flexible laboratory planning module to allow for collaboration, growth, and flexibility in tenant planning, programming, and research initiatives.

The buildings’ 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.

Project: BioMed Realty Life Sciences Campus Building C
Architects: Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK)
Lead Architect: Paul Woolford
General Contractor: Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company
Client: BioMed Realty Inc.
Images: Courtesy of the Architects