The planning study for the Health Sciences West District establishes a roadmap for future growth that builds on the strategic vision for the UC San Diego Campus as a whole, which challenges us to “think boldly to identify and implement the unprecedented solutions that are necessary to ensure our continued level of excellence.”

The university’s west campus sits on a bluff, with a history of being an inwardly focused suburban development. Its existing structures stand alone, with no clearly identifiable front or back doors. The spaces in between them don’t easily connect them. As the university enrollment has grown, the campus has had to seek new development opportunities to meet that demand and the growing curriculum needs that go with it.

The Perkins Eastman study charts a path toward a more outward and connected/inter-connected urban future for the campus. It proposes a new academic quadrangle, courtyards, and green space to create a relationship between the campus’ existing buildings, which will allow for outdoor learning in this famously temperate climate. A new student dining pavilion further anchors campus life, creating a stronger community among health-sciences students, faculty, and staff.

The study also identifies successive new building opportunities to intermingle/infill with existing structures to form a social heart of the district. Key elements of the planning study that broadly support this ambition include the following:

• Reinforcing the Myers-Gilman “front door” across the street from the planned Triton Pavilion and University Center
• Establishing Villa La Jolla Drive as a new “address” for future development
• Creating a new “pedestrian-first” public realm throughout the district with improved North-South and East-West connections and opportunities for more engaging social-gathering hubs
• Leverage the adjacency to the new trolley station(s), with a pedestrian gateway at Osler Lane on Villa La Jolla Drive
• Identify and maximize opportunity sites for future development that promotes the vision and goals of the strategic plan as well as that of this planning study to be engaging, well integrated and forward thinking.