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University of Utah Health
Building More Than a Medical School
Aug 19, 2026
Modern medical education needs more than classrooms and laboratories around which to build a curriculum. It needs a hive, a hub that itself conforms to new, more rigorous and engaging modes of learning. Creating that kind of medical school on a steep, constrained site within an already complex health sciences campus presented both an ambitious vision and an unusual design challenge.
Mehrdad Yazdani, design lead and director of Yazdani Studio of CannonDesign, and Celestia Carson, principal at VCBO Architecture and the project’s architect of record, embraced the complexity of translating that vision into a distinctive new home for the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. Here, they reflect on the choices that shaped the building, the challenges that became opportunities, and how they envision the space shaping medical education for years to come.
Architects Mehrdad Yazdani and Celestia Carson tackled the challenge of building the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine in an already complex health sciences campus. Photo: CannonDesign.
What’s it like to see the building completed after so many years of work?
Celestia Carson: It’s all the emotions. There’s pride and relief at the same time. I began working on the programming back in 2017, and the University of Utah had been working toward a dedicated home for the school of medicine for years before that.
It’s been a long, evolving project, with many phases and a tremendous number of people involved in bringing it to completion. It’s a beautiful building, and it’s pretty exciting to finally see it ready for students.
What did you learn from being in the finished building that you couldn’t get from drawings, models, or digital walkthroughs?
Mehrdad Yazdani: As architects, we always imagine a building as we’re designing it. We sketch it, plan it, model it, and virtually “walk” through it on a computer. But there’s always this question of whether we have truly imagined how the specific spaces will be experienced and how they’ll make people feel.
One of the biggest surprises to me when I walked through the completed building was how well the promenade and the sense of connectivity work throughout the building. You have to experience this building and really discover it. Even the first time you walk through, you may not connect all the dots until you experience it on multiple levels. The seven floors are linked through stairs and double-height spaces, a connectivity that was integral to the idea of the building.
The west side opens to the Salt Lake Valley, giving students many of the best views. Classrooms occupy the upper west elevation and admissions interview rooms overlook the valley. Photo: CannonDesign.
What did you want the building to accomplish?
Carson: From the beginning, the university wanted to create a home for the school of medicine. The school was located in a large, aging structure and never had a dedicated facility of its own.
The new building needed to reflect the school’s prestige and quality of education, accommodate future growth, and provide state-of-the-art facilities for medical education, simulation, gross anatomy, and formal and casual gatherings.
During programming, we met with faculty, staff, students, university and state representatives, facilities, security, food service, and many others. Everyone brought different requirements. We had to organize those needs into a cohesive building that could stand apart while still belonging on the campus.
Yazdani: We perceived the school of medicine as more than simply a collection of classrooms, public spaces, and laboratories. The building needed to support the formal work of medical education while also creating spaces and opportunities for a stronger sense of community around it. We saw the building as a hub for innovation, a place that encourages connectivity and collaboration among faculty, students, and interprofessional disciplines.
That idea guided the design of the promenade and the forum. The promenade connects the building’s entrances, floors, and programs, while the forum provides a place for lectures, receptions, and other gatherings. Its connection to the courtyard also allows indoor and outdoor activities to work in unison. Together, those spaces support both planned events and chance encounters where people exchange ideas and engage more fully with the academic mission of the building.
The promenade (pictured here) was designed to encourage community, connectivity, and collaboration among, faculty, students, and interprofessional disciplines. Photo: CannonDesign.
What does that idea of connection look like in practice?
Carson: One thing we’ve learned in our higher education work is that food, technology, and need for human interaction consistently bring people together, so we designed spaces that could support those connections.
The cafe is a good example. It sits along a major pedestrian route linking the academic and clinical sides of health sciences, so it can serve people from across the campus. The cafe then connects to the central forum, which sits just outside the primary learning studios and can support everything from everyday student activity to conferences and larger events. It also connects to medical simulation rooms and the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.
These interconnected spaces help make the building both a home for the school of medicine and a gathering place for the wider health sciences community.
The multi-story forum provides a place for lectures, receptions, and other gatherings. Its connection to the courtyard also allows indoor and outdoor activities to work in unison. Photo: Paul Richer.
What made the site so challenging, and how did those constraints affect the design?
Carson: The site was the largest challenge. The new school was originally expected to occupy the site of the old medical building. But that 640,000-square-foot building remained occupied and required extensive abatement before demolition. It became clear that it couldn’t be removed quickly enough.
The alternative site contained a major utility corridor and hospital delivery route. The team had to create a new road, reroute utilities, work across four stories of grade change, connect below ground to the library, and remove part of the nursing building’s parking structure. Almost every edge had to respond to something already there.
Yazdani: The site drops nearly 40 feet from one side to another, and many of the spaces between buildings on the health sciences campus are steep landscaped areas that people can’t easily use or move through. That could have made the building feel fragmented, but we saw an opportunity to create something more active and connected.
We developed a cascading landscape with a ramped walkway that links two campus levels and provides shaded outdoor space. What might otherwise have become leftover space between the nursing school, and the medical school now supports the forum and strengthens movement across campus.
The slope also shaped the interior. Exterior paths, stairs, double-height spaces, and the forum connect the building across several levels and create both physical and visual continuity. As people move through it, they can begin to understand how the different floors and programs relate to one another. The project’s greatest constraint became one of its most intriguing opportunities.
What looks simple in the finished building but was difficult to accomplish?
Yazdani: One of the most noticeable parts of the exterior is the S-shaped “ribbon” that weaves through the building. It visually reduces the building’s scale to be more comfortable at the pedestrian level. It defines important spaces, like the forum and other public areas, as it winds in and out of the building’s mass.
The ribbon, along with the shifts between solid walls and glass, breaks the building into smaller, more understandable parts, allowing people to understand where the building opens up and where people are meant to gather.
And it gives the school of medicine a clear identity. The Eccles family and Eccles Foundations, primary donors to the project, wanted a building that would stand out on the health sciences campus, and the ribbon creates a recognizable image without being purely decorative.
Carson: Achieving that simplicity required a great deal of coordination. The ribbon had to respond differently to the structure, roof, drainage, and exterior walls behind it.
Also difficult, was the building exterior’s use of a limited palette of glass, metal, and lightweight concrete panels, all organized around a repeating five-foot grid. Maintaining that pattern around every corner, window, and change in elevation was challenging but gives the building a clean, orderly appearance.
What makes this building different from other projects you’ve worked on?
Yazdani: What distinguishes it is the proximity to other health sciences facilities, research programs, clinical care, and related disciplines. Medical schools are sometimes separated from the health campus or from the places where research occurs.
Here, the simulation center connects beneath the Health Sciences Walk toward innovation spaces near the library. The building also connects with nursing, research buildings, the hospital, and clinical facilities.
It is not an isolated structure. It’s location, circulation, shared spaces, and programs work together to make the building a central hub.
Carson: I have been with VCBO for 26 years and have worked primarily in higher education for about 18 of those years. This building is unlike any other I have worked on.
The university, Eccles family, and other donors placed a high value on design, which gave the team room to pursue its architectural quality in a way that isn’t always possible.
It’s also closely tied to this site. The west side opens to the Salt Lake Valley, and the university deliberately gave students many of the best views. Classrooms occupy the upper west elevation, and admissions interview rooms overlook the valley. The thinking was that this is the students’ building, and they should have some of its best spaces.
What are you most interested to see once students begin using it?
Carson: I’m especially interested in the gross anatomy lab. Unique, vertically rotating tables allowed the university to expand capacity without creating an oversized room, while airflow modeling helped the team design a cleaner, more efficient ventilation system. Placing the lab on an upper floor also gives students a little daylight and a sense of the weather and sky, creating a more comfortable learning environment. I’m excited to see how it performs.
Yazdani: Architects have the incredible opportunity to create spaces where discovery happens, and our team has been fortunate to be part of that around the world and on the University of Utah campus. This building will empower students to heal people, build healthier communities, create new pathways for medical education, and so much more. I’m excited to read about all the incredible achievements the University of Utah advances thanks in part to this building.
A view of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at dusk. Photo: Paul Richer.
Bringing the Space to Life
Construction might now be done, but the building still isn’t quite complete. Its life is actually only just beginning. While architecture can influence how people move, gather, and interact, it’s the people who will occupy a building who finally give it meaning. It’s now time for the students, faculty, clinicians, and staff to move in and bring these spaces to life and determine how fully the building becomes the home and the hub its architects imagined.
Mehrdad Yazdani, MArch
Mehrdad Yazdani is a principal within CannonDesign’s global practice and the director of the Yazdani Studio. Yazdani has deep experience designing complex projects across the globe. Named by Progressive Architecture as one of the world’s top emerging architects in 1990, his design philosophy is focused on maintaining an environment of exploration, tempered by a realistic sense of each client’s needs and pragmatic details. His buildings are responsive to context, climate, and culture while achieving enduring value with a conscientious respect for client budgets and schedules. Mehrdad’s work has garnered more than 120 major design awards and has been featured in national and international publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Dezeen, Fast Company, and Businessweek. His work has been exhibited around the world and is held in the permanent collections of MoMA and SFMOMA. Yazdani received a Master of Architecture at Harvard University’s School of Design.
Celestia Carson, MArch, AIA, LEED AP
Celestia Carson is a principal at VCBO Architecture with more than 25 years of experience leading complex educational and institutional projects. A trusted partner to higher education clients, Carson brings a collaborative, systems-focused approach to campus planning and the design of health science, life science, engineering, and technology environments. Her work includes the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah, where, as project architect, she helped translate an ambitious vision for the future of medical education into a highly complex, collaborative learning environment. Her extensive university portfolio also includes the James LeVoy Sorenson Center for Medical Innovation and the Cardiovascular & Neuroscience Tower program at the University of Utah, along with significant planning and building projects for Utah State University, Utah Tech University, Utah Valley University, and Weber State University. Carson received a Master of Architecture at the University of Utah.
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