Seattle, Washington, USA
The Miller Hull Partnership along with Site Workshop landscape architects create the Hans Rosling Center for Population Health, a hybrid facility designed to respond directly to the mission of the University of Washington’s Population Health Initiative—a 25-year vision to address the most persistent and emerging challenges affecting human health, environmental resilience, and social and economic equity across the globe.
The project won a 2021 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The 290,000-square-foot building supports this goal by bringing related yet disparate specialties together in the pursuit of global health and a world where all people can live healthier and more fulfilling lives.
Three porous ground floors nestled into the sloping site invite people into public spaces from all directions.
This move is intended to serve as an interdisciplinary call to action: all disciplines have something to offer in solving the interrelated issues related to population health.
Collaborative areas, gathering spaces, classrooms, and a café are layered into these ground floors to both highlight and foster engagement beyond the four walls.
Researchers, data analysts, health practitioners and university faculty in the areas of public and global health are located in this facility.
A set of workspace types are organized into neighborhoods to encourage engagement within existing teams: shared enclosed offices, open workstations and drop-in workspace allow for a range of environments, use durations, and grant fluctuations.
Also critical to expansive collaboration are opportunities for engagement between various interdepartmental teams: social kitchens adjacent to an interconnecting stair, enclosed and open meeting spaces foster chance encounters and social osmosis.
A signature investment in campus architecture, the building anchors a prominent gateway entry to campus, with indoor and outdoor accessible connections into campus.
A generous porch expression gives rain cover to a connecting stair inviting people to experience the building and its public environments.
These connections also dissolve a former barrier between a historic campus and an upcoming innovation district.
Up close, the building’s stone, precast and delicate fins provide texture, materiality, and human-scale sympathetic to neighboring structures.
From afar, the fins of the west façade transform to express a more macro gesture, implying movement and conveying a spirit of innovation.
Project: The Hans Rosling Center for Population Health
Architects: The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP.
Landscape Architects: Site Workshop
Client: University of Washington
Contractors: Lease Crutcher Lewis
