The University of Washington will soon welcome the brand-new Hans Rosling Center for Population Health, a modern and stunning facility that will serve as a major hub for the campus. The 300,000-square-foot building was designed by the Miller Hull Partnership to provide space for researchers, students and faculty to work and study together.
In 2016, the University of Washington announced its Population Health Initiative. This program is designed to address population health around the world from multiple angles. The university hopes the Hans Rosling Center will bolster this initiative by facilitating education and research.
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Created thanks to a gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and support from citizens of Washington state, the Rosling Center will become the new home for the UW School of Public Health. The offices of the Population Health Initiative will be located here as well.
On track for LEED Gold Certification, the building will have a 47,000-gallon cistern on-site that will provide over 300,000 gallons of water a year. Additionally, the building’s facade helps reduce the building’s carbon footprint and provides a foundation for a low-impact mechanical system in the future.
The building includes working and learning spaces, conference rooms, instructional spaces, computing laboratories, collaborative group work areas and offices. There are also many common areas, including dining areas, kitchens, wellness rooms and gender-neutral bathrooms.
The center is named after Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician involved in public health work. His work inspired Bill and Melinda Gates, who suggested his name for the building.
“Where others saw statistics, Hans saw the chance to tell an incredible human story about our progress against poverty and disease. A data geek through and through, he used numbers to educate, to entertain, and to share his special brand of big-hearted, evidence-based optimism,” said Melinda, co-chair of the Gates Foundation. She added that the building is “a fitting tribute to an extraordinary man.”
Photography © Kevin Scott
