A new higher-ed project from BIG has broken ground on the campus of California’s Claremont McKenna College.

The 135,000-square-foot Robert Day Sciences Center provides facilities for a newly-funded program of integrated scientific research into neurology, genealogical studies, and climate change while spearheading a series of improvements aimed at preparing the 76-year-old school for its "next chapter."

In keeping with this notion, BIG positioned the structure as a gateway to the rest of the campus’ academic buildings. A pair of rectangular block volumes stack on top of one another, outlined along their edges by wood-clad trusses and bookended by a transparent glass curtain facade. Each individual volume is rotated 45 degrees away from the floor below it to enable a sky-lit central glass-covered atrium filled with open spaces that engender collaboration between students and faculty. 

BIG’s founder explains: "The architecture for the new Robert Day Sciences Center seeks to maximize this integration and interaction. The labs and classrooms are stacked in a Jenga-like composition framing a column-free, open internal space with the freedom and flexibility to adapt the ever-evolving demands of technology and science."

"Each level of the building is oriented towards a different direction of the campus, channeling the flow of people and ideas internally between the labs and the classrooms as well as externally between the integrated sciences and the rest of the campus. It is our hope that the building will not only provoke new conversations between scientists but that it may also stimulate the rest of the liberal arts students to take a deeper interest in the sciences and vice versa. The analytical embracing the experimental — rationality intersecting with creativity.”

Further inside, the design separates classroom and lab spaces around the edge of the floorplan, which includes a cafe and open auditorium in its sociability-charged center. A grand staircase leads to its atrium, and the structure is completed by a series of eight rooftop outdoor terraces that can function as either outdoor classrooms or study spaces with views of the surrounding campus and new public spaces called "The Mall," "Art Square," and "Sciences Garden" all located below. 

Some 9,000 square feet of solar panels help direct the project toward its LEED Gold target. BIG hopes its delivery will offer a follow-up to their 2019 UMass Amherst Business Innovation Hub. The design team says they are aiming for a completion date somewhere in 2024.