The Robert Day Sciences Center is a multidisciplinary sciences building for Claremont McKenna College’s that features laboratories, classrooms, and a mix of thoughtfully designed collective spaces for events and informal gatherings. Positioned at the intersection of the campus’s traditional mall and a diagonal promenade connecting the opposite corner of the of the campus, the sciences center serves as a hub for research, studying and socializing. The design arranges the various laboratories, classrooms, and smaller program into pairs of long bars flanking the central atrium and feature social stair linking the various floors of the building.

Each level’s bars rotate 45 degrees relative to the one below, resulting in a dynamic multilevel space where students, faculty, and community members can see across the different program spaces of the building as well as out to the campus beyond. This rotated configuration creates an array of indoor and outdoor terraces, alternatively looking into the atrium’s social spaces at the heart of the building and outward to the campus and surrounding mountains. The pairs of program bars straddle the broad pathways of the main mall and the diagonal promenade that enter the building at the first and second levels, connecting the two different elevations with the feature social stair.

The building’s bars are stacked to create shaded overhangs, resulting in substantial cantilevers that are accommodated by the building’s distinctive truss system. These diagonal trusses run along the long edges of the bars, creating an instantly recognizable identify for the project and framing integrated seating for break-out meetings or individual study. Refined wood finishes and the building’s many indoor-outdoor connections to beautifully landscaped terraces and surrounding campus create a uniquely warm and inviting sciences building. Construction is in progress and the building is slated to open in 2025.