IRVINE, CA — Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, architecture and engineering firm HED, and architecture firm The S/L/A/M Collaborative (SLAM) announce that construction is under way on a nine-acre health sciences complex at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

The site will include a five-story, 135,111-square-foot building for the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences and the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute and an adjoining four-story, 77,028-square-foot building for the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. Projected cost is $134 million and the facilities are expected to open in 2022.

"UCI is creating a national 'one-health' model for discovery, teaching, and healing that brings together the strengths of the disciplines of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and population health," said Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Steve Goldstein. "These two new buildings, part of our expanded health sciences campus, are designed to foster the creation of the diverse health care workforce of tomorrow. The facilities are built to enable interprofessional education and a future of team-based care that benefits from health care providers that operate in synchrony to support health and wellness."

"A future of wellness demands that we promote approaches that keep our patients healthy, and when they are ill, that our providers work together so care is readily-accessible, cutting-edge, patient-focused, and population-savvy," Goldstein said. "The integrative health institute is co-located so all our students incorporate its focus on the whole person, even when the provider is a specialist, and its commitment to finding new, effective, evidence-based practices to optimize well-being."

HED's and SLAM's higher education and health care studios brought expertise to the team. "The design is dedicated to supporting human health and the healing experience in a holistic way," said Martha Ball, Project Manager with HED. "This aspect of the project mission infused our process."

Design strategies for the new buildings on the UCI campus were strongly influenced by biophilia — the human tendency to interact with other forms of life in nature — and attention to wellness at all scales. Occupant access to light, air, views of vegetation and water, and other considerations, all support the overall mission of the complex and the schools.

The health science complex includes a 150-seat auditorium, a central courtyard that connects with the existing Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, landscape design elements that support activities such as yoga and tai chi, a Zen garden, and a 600-foot-long wellness walk that leads to the School of Medicine's Biomedical Research Center.

Susan and Henry Samueli donated $200 million to build this first-of-its-kind college of health sciences focused on interdisciplinary integrative health. The William and Sue Gross Family Foundation committed $40 million to UCI to establish a nursing school and assist in the construction of a new building to house it.