"Cellular Origami" is the name of IwamotoScott's design for the new facade for UCSF's 3rd Street Garage in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood that was produced in response to an invited design competition. The competition brief was focused on creating a new facade to transform UCSF's 3rd Street Garage, which had its earlier facade made of channel glass removed a number of years ago.
The project was initiated to both bring a stronger identity and sense of brand to UCSF's campus edge, and to create a dialogue with the high-profile new architecture rising directly across 3rd Street including the new Warriors NBA Arena (Chase Center) and new Uber HQ.
Cellular Origami borrows its name from the name of pioneering DNA editing research being carried out at UCSF. The design takes inspiration from the spiraling form of DNA strands, here transformed, flattened and re-folded to form of an array of anodized metal panels.
The panel array creates a dynamic pattern of varyingly angled 'petals' that have constantly changing intensities of reflected daylight throughout the day. At night, given the wealth artificial light emanating from Chase Center Plaza's jumbotron screen across the street, it was decided to borrow that light, catch it and reflect it back into the public realm - thus elimnating the need to add lighting (and energy use) to the 3rd Street Garage facade.
