Arizona State University Health Futures Center
The ASU Health Futures Center is a 145,200 square foot teaching and research building in Phoenix whose undulating shaded facade was generated with a custom parametric tool built on Dassault Systemes technology, cutting annual solar heat gain by 35 percent.
Project Overview
The Health Futures Center is a three-storey building on Arizona State University's campus in northeast Phoenix, adjacent to Mayo Clinic Phoenix and developed as a joint ASU and Mayo Clinic undertaking. CO Architects was programming and design architect, with DFDG Architecture as architect of record. The building covers 145,200 gross square feet and looks out toward the McDowell Mountains.
It houses the ASU College of Health Solutions, the ASU College of Nursing and Health Innovation and the Fulton Schools of Engineering entrepreneurship and innovation programmes, alongside Mayo Clinic programmes, in a mix of research, teaching and meeting space. The premise is interdisciplinary: put medical, nursing, engineering and health-solutions people in one building next to a working clinic and the collaboration follows.
A Facade Shaped by the Desert
Phoenix imposes an unusually harsh solar environment, and the facade is the building's primary response. The east and west elevations are formed as a trapezoidal profile that undulates horizontally across the elevation, with glazing angled toward the north. The geometry does the shading: by turning the glass away from low east and west sun and self-shading through the fold of the wall, the design reduces annual solar heat gain by 35 percent while keeping daylight in the interior.
The wall is finished in an ecru external insulation and finishing system rather than precast concrete, which keeps the mass of the sculpted profile without the weight and cost of a precast envelope.
Parametric Design and a Custom Tool
The undulating profile means the geometry of every window opening and every wall angle varies along the elevation, and each variation changes the shading performance. CO Architects addressed this by building a custom tool with Dassault Systemes technology, using 3D Generative Innovator to model the window opening geometry and wall angles directly. Tanner Clapham, Associate Principal at CO Architects, describes the benefit as being able to assess the feasibility of design adjustments in real time.
That is the crux of the case study. Shading geometry, daylight, view, buildability and cost are all coupled on this elevation, and a parametric model is what allows a change to be tested against all of them at once rather than sequentially.
Prefabrication
DPR Construction and its subsidiary Digital Building Components were involved from schematic design onward. Facade components were prefabricated and assembled in jigs to raise accuracy and productivity, with studs ordered cut to size so that less shaping work happened in the field. Bringing the fabricator into the design phase is what allowed the geometry to stay complex while the assembly stayed simple.
Key Facts
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Business Impact
- 35% less annual solar heat gain
- 145,200 sq ft ASU and Mayo Clinic
- Prefabricated non-repeating facade
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Tools Used in the Case Study
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User Experience
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Why this tool/tech was selected
Why a Dassault Systemes Parametric Toolchain
CATIA and the wider Dassault Systemes platform come from aerospace and automotive engineering rather than from architecture, and they appear on building projects for specific reasons. This project shows most of them.
Surface geometry at manufacturing precision
An undulating trapezoidal wall is a continuously varying surface, not a set of repeated bays. Dassault's modelling kernel was built to describe exactly this kind of geometry to the tolerances a manufacturer works to, which is a different requirement from the one a general building modelling tool is designed around.
A custom tool rather than a generic one
The important detail is that CO Architects did not simply use a product; they developed a custom tool with Dassault Systemes using 3D Generative Innovator. The design problem here is narrow and specific, generating window opening geometry and wall angles along an undulating profile, and a purpose-built tool encodes exactly that logic. Once written, every subsequent variation is generated rather than modelled.
Real-time feasibility testing
Clapham's description of the benefit is precise: the team could assess the feasibility of design adjustments in real time. On a facade where geometry determines both solar performance and cost, the value of parametric modelling is not the final model but the speed of the loop between changing the geometry and knowing whether the change is affordable and whether it still shades.
Design geometry that reaches the fabricator
With Digital Building Components prefabricating panels in jigs and studs ordered cut to length, the fabricator needed dimensionally reliable geometry for every varying component. A model built to manufacturing standards transfers directly into that workflow, which is what makes prefabricating a non-repeating facade practical.
Performance and form developed together
The 35 percent reduction in annual solar heat gain is a product of geometry. Parametric modelling is what lets a team iterate the shading form against performance targets rather than designing a shape and then testing it once.
Challenges the Client Faced before
Phoenix solar loads
Low-angle east and west sun in a desert climate is the hardest shading problem in North American practice. Conventional glazing on those elevations produces unacceptable cooling loads and glare in teaching and research spaces.
Daylight without heat
Simply reducing glazing would have solved the heat problem and ruined the interiors. The building needed generous daylight and views to the McDowell Mountains while rejecting solar gain, which are directly opposed requirements.
Continuously varying geometry
An undulating trapezoidal profile means no two window openings or wall angles are quite the same. Documenting and building that variation without a parametric workflow would have been prohibitively slow.
Cost control on a sculpted envelope
Complex facades are expensive, and this is a publicly accountable university project. The choice of an EIFS finish rather than precast, and the decision to prefabricate in jigs, were both about keeping a geometrically ambitious envelope inside a realistic budget.
An interdisciplinary brief
Bringing health solutions, nursing, engineering and Mayo Clinic programmes into one building, adjacent to an operating clinical campus, imposed planning requirements around shared space and adjacency that the envelope had to accommodate.
The previous method used
The conventional approach to solar control on a building in this climate is to design a straightforward wall and then apply shading to it: brise-soleil, fins, deep reveals or external louvres sized by a consultant after the elevation is set. Shading becomes an added system with its own cost, fixings and maintenance burden.
Where the wall itself is sculpted, the conventional documentation route is to draw a limited number of typical bays and repeat them, accepting a coarser, more repetitive elevation because the drawing effort for continuous variation is prohibitive.
Both routes separate the performance analysis from the geometry. Someone models the shading, reports a result, and the design either passes or is revised, with each cycle taking days. That pace limits how many options can realistically be explored.
Time / Money saved & the Business Impact.
A 35 percent annual reduction in solar heat gain
The headline published outcome is that the facade geometry reduces solar heat gain by 35 percent annually. That figure is delivered by form rather than by an added shading system, so it comes without a separate installation cost, without additional fixings and without a maintenance regime of its own. In a Phoenix cooling climate that reduction flows straight through to plant sizing and running costs for the life of the building.
Design changes tested in real time
The custom parametric tool let the team assess the feasibility of design adjustments as they were made. The practical return is the number of options that can be examined within a fixed fee: a loop measured in seconds rather than days means the elevation that gets built is a considered choice rather than the first workable answer.
Prefabrication despite non-repeating geometry
Facade components were prefabricated and assembled in jigs, with studs ordered to size, which raised accuracy and productivity and reduced work in the field. Achieving that on an envelope where the geometry varies continuously is the direct payoff of a model built to manufacturing precision, and field labour is the most expensive and least predictable part of a facade package.
Early contractor involvement
DPR Construction and Digital Building Components joined at schematic design. On a geometrically ambitious envelope that is what keeps the design and the means of making it aligned from the start, rather than discovering during tender that the elevation cannot be built to budget.
Recognition
The building received a 2023 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum, a Special Mention in the 2023 Architizer A+ Awards, a 2022 AIA Arizona Distinguished Architecture Award of Merit and a 2021 ENR Southwest Award of Merit.
Institutional outcome
For ASU and Mayo Clinic, the return is the collaboration the building was designed to produce: health solutions, nursing and engineering programmes co-located with clinical partners on a shared campus.
Customer Quote
Tanner Clapham, Associate Principal, CO Architects: a custom tool developed with Dassault Systemes 3D Generative Innovator modelled the window openings and wall angles, letting the team assess design adjustments in real time.
Additional Information
Project credits
Project: Arizona State University Health Futures Center. Location: northeast Phoenix, Arizona, United States, adjacent to Mayo Clinic Phoenix. Client: Arizona State University with Mayo Clinic. Programming and design architect: CO Architects. Architect of record: DFDG Architecture. Contractor: DPR Construction, with facade prefabrication by Digital Building Components. Size: 145,200 gross square feet over three storeys. Occupants: ASU College of Health Solutions, ASU College of Nursing and Health Innovation, Fulton Schools of Engineering entrepreneurship and innovation programmes, and Mayo Clinic programmes.
Facade and technology
Trapezoidal profile undulating horizontally across the east and west elevations with north-angled glazing, finished in ecru external insulation and finishing system. Annual solar heat gain reduced by 35 percent. Geometry generated using a custom tool developed with Dassault Systemes, using 3D Generative Innovator to model window opening geometry and wall angles.
Awards
American Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum, 2023; Architizer A+ Awards Special Mention, 2023; AIA Arizona Distinguished Architecture Award of Merit, 2022; ENR Southwest Award of Merit, 2021.
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