Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, The Robert Day Sciences Center at CMC in California breaks ground and is expected to be completed in 2024. Featuring an open auditorium, labs, research spaces, and multifunctional roofs with 360-degree views of Mt. Baldy, the building will serve a community of 1,400 students. By literally stacking disciplines together in a Jenga-like composition, the framing of a column-free bar will serve as a multilevel gathering hub of collaboration and a crossroads for scientific thought and also stimulate the rest of the liberal arts students to take a deeper interest in the sciences and vice versa.
The architecture of the new Robert Day Sciences Center maximizes multidisciplinary integration and interaction. Each level of the 12500 square-meters building is oriented in a different direction, delivering the flow of people and ideas internally between the labs and the classrooms as externally between the center and the rest of the buildings. The strategic location, at the intersection of two main roads eastern edge of Claremont McKenna College- 40 min away from downtown L.A.- creates a solid gateway to the campus.
Home to the newly-funded program of integrated scientific research into neurology, genealogical studies, and climate change, the program includes labs and classrooms stacked in a Jenga-like structure to provide a flexible gathering space. The building's structure is designed as a stack of two volumes– a wood-clad truss – with each pair rotated 45 degrees from the floor below. The voids of the rotated blocks create a central atrium at the heart of the building that provides direct views into classrooms and research spaces from all levels. Upon entering, students will find themselves in a full-height atrium with open spaces that invite collaborative activity – embodying the center's architectural and educational approach.
Surrounded by public spaces, such as "The Mall" on the west side of the building and the "Art Square" and "Sciences Garden" for educational experiments with plant species – the exterior will be an extension of the gathering atrium. In addition, aiming for LEED Gold, approximately 800 square meters of solar panels will provide between 200 - 230 megawatt energy production per year.
The new Robert Day Sciences Center and Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences represent a step on the large path "to tackling the world's biggest challenges, such as health, climate, and misinformation," says Leon Rost, Partner, BIG. The confluence of distinct disciplines, from sciences and computation to the humanities and social sciences, addresses big thematic priorities in scientific discovery and application.
The Robert Day Sciences Center is BIG's latest U.S.-based higher-education project, following the University of Massachusetts Amherst Business Innovation Hub, completed in 2019. Bjarke Ingels Group is also working on designing a new education Campus on the Island of Esbjerg, Denmark, and on the National Juneteenth Museum in Texas alongside the architect-of-record, African American-owned design firm, KAI Enterprises.
