The Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge will be situated prominently between the main Stanford campus and the Medical Center, creating a dramatic and welcoming new “front door” to the School of Medicine. 

An important symbolic and physical portal to neighboring Stanford schools and programs, the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge will be flanked by extensive and beautifully landscaped grounds which, along with an intimate rooftop garden, offer a combination of open communal and contained reflective spaces.

Learn more about our design objectives and view detailed site and floor plans in the Building section.

Named after Dr. Levi Cooper Lane, the Lane Medical Library, when dedicated in 1912, the 40,000 volumes that constituted the library made it the largest of any university medical libraries in the United States. Its dedication marked the completion of the first stage in the development of the Stanford University Medical Department.

Under the Deanship of Dr. Windsor Cutting and subsequently Dr. Robert Alway, the 1959 Palo Alto Campus of the Stanford Medical Center was planned. Noted architect of the period, Edward Durell Stone led the design. The new facilities consisted of three hospital and four medical school buildings interconnected by numerous arcades and open walkways. The same three-story height was maintained throughout and the concrete walls and columns of the new Center were patterned to simulate the rusticated sandstone-block surfaces of the “Quad”. Flowered patios and walks lent a garden-like atmosphere and a fountain-adorned entranceway created an impressive panorama on approaching the Center. These are photos from the design books of Stone.

The Fairchild Science and Beckman buildings, opening in the 70’s and late 80’s respectively were evidence of a growing campus responding to opportunities as they arose. For example, the founding of the Beckman Center represented an unprecedented expansion of the basic sciences at Stanford. With its establishment, the School of Medicine was able to house 20 new faculty members and create two new academic departments.

Designed by London based Fosters and Partners, the four-story glass and concrete building next to the Beckman Center will house both basic scientists and clinical researchers in an attempt to encourage a bench-to-bedside approach to medical research.

The James H. Clark Center was officially dedicated Oct. 24, 2003. The unusual new building with its curving architecture, transparent walls and open laboratory spaces has received nearly as much attention as the new approach to multi-disciplinary research that it is intended to facilitate. Still the Clark Center and the CCSR building, though beautiful new research buildings, were standalone buildings, without the intentional goal of making a campus.

The new School of Medicine campus is organized around three goals: creating a front door to the School; developing an unified and efficient academic core; and creating a vibrant Academic Walk that runs west from the Clark Center to Welch’s Gate on the western edge of the campus, connecting and integrating the campus, its buildings, landscape areas and cross campus routes.

The Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge, made up of two buildings connected by outdoor walkways and terraces is expected to be completed in its entirety by 2013.

The time is 2020 and the process of completely re-imagining the School of Medicine is complete. One unified campus composed of almost a dozen research science laboratory buildings and a state of art education and knowledge management center has been created.