Biomedical Sciences Partnership Building

The Biomedical Sciences Partnership Building (BSPB) accommodates clinical and translational research organized into Centers of Excellence. It is the second phase of an academic medical and research complex for the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine on a newly master planned biomedical campus in downtown Phoenix. Conceived as a second phase to the CO Architects-designed Health Sciences Education Building, BSPB advances the urban desert vernacular established by its predecessor. Inspired by the deep recesses of desert cliff dwellings, its sloping, shifting, self-shaded south façade rises 10 floors above the vegetated canyon wash, resembling desert escarpments. Solar exposure is mitigated by sectionally carving the building to create self-shaded conditions. Incisions are employed along east-west orientations to provide indirect daylight into the building, while offset, planometric undulations along the north-south facing elevations create overhangs optimized with fins. Borrowing from the self-shading folds of the saguaro skin, copper panels are pleated to form the building’s striated texture. The innovative recycled copper cladding system functions as a sunscreen, mitigating the extreme temperature differences between exterior and interior. The four story Portico is the public, community interface to a largely secured building with access to ground floor seminar space and exterior courtyard.