UCLA Eye Research Facility
Image courtesy of Shimahara Illustration/Richard Meier & Partners Architects.
LOS ANGELES — UCLA is planning a major addition to the Jules Stein Eye Institute’s surgical and research facilities, unveiling plans for a $115.6 million research and patient care facility, the Edie and Lew Wasserman Eye Research Center.
The six-story, 100,000-square-foot building will be situated opposite the Doris Stein Eye Research Center on Stein Plaza. Half of the building’s space will be devoted to eye research and the other half to the David Geffen School of Medicine’s neurosurgery department and Institute of Urologic Oncology.
Richard Meier & Partners Architects of New York is designing the facility. A consortium of the Wasserman Foundation, the Jules and Doris Stein UCLA Support Group and JCS LLC, known as ELW Building Company, is contributing $58.6 million to the project. The David Geffen School of Medicine and the Jules Stein Eye Institute will fund the remaining $57 million in project costs, which will go toward site preparation, tenant improvements and equipment.
The Wasserman building will unite UCLA’s neurosurgery faculty, surgeons and clinicians, who are currently spread across eight buildings.
“We are designing a conference room to resemble an IMAX theater, with full 3-D demonstrations of surgeries,” says Neil Martin, profession and chair of neurosurgery at UCLA. “It will allow our trainees to be immersed in the anatomy of the skull, brain and spine.”
The Wasserman center will feature a prototyping room where new software, three-dimensional video displays and more will be developed and tested for future operating rooms and intensive care units, and where residents can simulate complex surgeries. A telemedicine control room will allow faculty to continuously monitor patients across the street at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and six miles away at the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, and to consult with colleagues and patients around the world.
Site preparation is expected to begin this summer, with construction scheduled to take place from November 2010 through October 2012. After tenant improvements take place for various departments, the Wasserman building will officially open in March 2014. No contractor had been chosen by press time.