22 July 2025

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Envisioning UCSF School of Dentistry’s Future Home

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What does the American dental school of the future look like?

The question—always worth pondering—has taken on new urgency at the UCSF School of Dentistry, as the University’s plans for Parnassus Heights will provide the school with the opportunity to re-imagine its space. 

To get there, the school has engaged the design firm of Valerio Dewalt Train to begin a process of research, including interviews and observations of many of the school’s stakeholders as well as contemporary thought leaders outside UCSF, to assess where people think the school and the profession will be heading, and what the school’s physical needs of the future may be. 

“We’re a research-based design firm,” says Anthony Valerio, a senior associate with the firm. “We like to gather the data points that lead you to understanding what question you're trying to answer with architecture.”

While Valerio Dewalt Train won’t necessarily be designing any new buildings, it will use the data it gathers to develop “a vision for the school’s physical presence,” Valerio says.

Through touring the school’s existing space and talking to students, faculty, staff and alumni, as well as thought leaders both in and outside of the dental profession, Valerio Dewalt Train will try to synthesize what a new dental school might look like. It will gather feedback both in interviews and through surveys.

“We're going to bring all of that data into one place and then try to formalize it into a vision for the future of the school's physical presence,” Valerio says.

The consultants will focus on the school’s physical plant, while leaving any curriculum decisions to the administration and faculty. The timing is perfect, as the school has embarked on a curriculum redesign with implementation slated for academic year 2026. 

New Opportunities

UCSF’s Comprehensive Parnassus Heights Plan (CPHP) has drawn the most attention for the new hospital at the east end of the avenue, planned for a 2030 opening, and the Parnassus Research and Academic Building, now under construction at the center of the campus. But many more changes are in store for the more than 100-year-old campus, creating a world-class space befitting the quality of the research, patient care and education that occurs with its walls.

On the west end of campus, the School of Dentistry’s clinics building has outlived its usefulness and, should it remain open, would need major mechanical, structural and functional upgrades, according to Michael Reddy, DMD, DMSc, dean of the school. The second phase of the CPHP, scheduled to begin after 2030, calls for extending Fourth Avenue through the spot where the dental clinics building now stands, connecting to a promenade that will give the campus a more open, accessible feel. 

The change gives the dental school the chance to reimagine not only what space it occupies, but how it interacts with its siblings in the schools of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. Reddy relishes the chance to think outside the box about potential new approaches. 

“Does the new dental school share education space with medicine, nursing and pharmacy?” Reddy asks. “Is there a center where everyone goes to learn patient simulation? Are the clinical facilities part of an ambulatory care facility across from the new hospital?” 

Reddy could envision, say, a sterilization center on the ground floor that prepares patients for a dental visit on another floor, or an orthopedics visit on a floor above that. He also can imagine a world where UCSF establishes its clinics throughout the city, making it easier to reach underserved populations. 

In addition, the pandemic has upended notions of how space is used, with the rise of distance learning, telecommuting and telemedicine. Do so many people need individual offices? How much parking does a project need to provide? How should instructional spaces adapt to meet new ways of learning?

Posing the questions 

Those will be among the issues Valerio Dewalt Train will explore. “We want them to look at, what are the education spaces? What are the research spaces? What are the clinical spaces? Do they make sense for the next 50 years?” Reddy asks. 

The firm was founded by Anthony Valerio’s father Joe in Chicago in the 1980s, and it opened offices in Palo Alto in 2007 and San Francisco in 2014. Officials in Chicago got to know Alicia Murasaki when she worked at the University of Chicago, where Valerio Dewalt Train was working on a visioning project for the university’s renowned Lab School. 

That familiarity led Murasaki, now UCSF’s assistant vice chancellor and campus architect, to bring Valerio Dewalt Train on board to help with the School of Dentistry process. 

In the Lab School project, Valerio spent a couple of weeks on campus, shadowing people and observing how they used existing spaces. It interviewed a variety of stakeholders, and also sought opinions on the future of education from leading thinkers like Malcolm Gladwell and Sir Ken Robinson. 

“We don't answer the question until we have all the data,” Valerio says. “It’ll be interesting to learn people's opinions of how things work, and whether or not there are elements that need to change, or can change, or shouldn't change. I'm excited to see how the data shakes out.”

The approach appeals to Reddy. He has his own ideas, but no preconceived notion on the results. 

“We're going to engage people from health care and from outside of health care,” in addition to students, alumni, and many others inside UCSF, Reddy says. “What does the future look like? I don't know what it will actually be. But it is sure to reflect the innovation, boldness and forward-thinking approach that is part of UCSF’s DNA.”

The School of Dentistry doesn’t have a firm deadline to make any decisions, so Reddy wants to proceed thoughtfully. “We have six to eight years,” Reddy says. “Let’s think hard about it.” 

A complete document outlining a strategic program that represents how the school wants to organize its spaces, functions and people is expected in October. This will serve as a roadmap to ultimately inform the development of future architectural designs.

Author: Dan Fost

Source: https://dentistry.ucsf.edu/