The University of Washington today announced the topping out of the new $230 million Population Health Building. The UW also has selected two artists whose work will help tell the story of the education and research that will take place within the new facility.

Construction of the eight-story building at the corner of 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Grant Lane began in April 2018. Workers today will “top out” the building — a term builders use to mark the completion of the structural parts of the building — by installing a girder signed by university dignitaries, the design-build team and representatives of the donor.

The event comes at the same time that the vision for the building’s interior is beginning to come to life. The selected artists, RYAN! Feddersen of Tacoma and Rachel Mica Weiss of both Brooklyn and Pittsburgh, will produce original pieces to align with the underlying vision for the building: to create an interdisciplinary center on campus for the study of population health and to be a home for the Population Health Initiative.

The building was made possible by a transformative $210 million gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in October 2017, and $15 million in earmarked funding from the Legislature.

Read the entire story at UW News.