Project Name: Robert Day Sciences Center

Location: Claremont, California, United States

Design Team: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group

Total Floor Area: 135,000 sq ft (approx. 12,500 m²)

Completion: 2025

Photography: Laurian Ghinitoiu

Feature:

Project -- Robert Day Sciences Center, designed by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, stands as an innovative spatial solution that reimagines interdisciplinary learning through radical architectural geometry nestled in Claremont, California. This 135,000-square-foot facility is strategically positioned on the eastern edge of Claremont McKenna College campus, where its design concept derived from the vision of facilitating exchange between computer science, data science, and life sciences, highlighting the possibility of breaking down traditional academic silos through architecture in contemporary higher education environments.

The project's most compelling design achievement lies in its revolutionary "rotating stacked volumes" design concept. Rather than adopting conventional laboratory configurations, the architects established each level rotated 45 degrees from the floor below, creating dynamic architecture that maintains relationships with various academic environments. From the project's initial conception, this rotation marked the conceptual genesis: a sciences center built from the inside out, where each opening maintains a direct relationship with collaborative spaces and natural light.

The architectural narrative unfolds through sophisticated volumetric configuration, distributed over multiple levels but with remarkable spatial richness. The main volume's south side features rooftop terraces and deep eaves with direct relationship to the campus landscape, seeking transparency and openness to the surroundings. The center creates a Piranesian social space through full-height atrium, visually connecting students and faculty from all floors.

The facade treatment demonstrates contemporary design refinement--simple yet effective, enhancing the functionality of rotated volumes through board-formed glass fiber reinforced concrete panels, providing warm texture to the whole while ensuring durability and fire resistance. The strategic positioning of openings not only meets lighting and ventilation requirements but also provides visual focus points that reinforce the collaborative character of the sciences center.

The material expression embodies profound dialogue with sustainability. Robert Day Sciences Center is conceived as an architectural gesture that pays homage to California climate and the essential connection between built materials and natural light effects, showcasing the maturity and innovation of contemporary American higher education architecture when addressing environmental responsibility and academic innovation. The project promotes renewable energy use through 11,000 square feet of rooftop solar panels, generating approximately 342 megawatt hours annually, targeting LEED Gold certification. The atrium features a large staircase connecting the first two floors and café, creating a lively central hub. Suspended 30 feet in the air, Damien Ortega's Magnetic Field sculpture composed of 18 metal rings and 1,476 vibrant glass spheres animates the soaring space with artistic vitality. Eight rooftop terraces located on the corner perimeters of each "bar" offer sweeping 360-degree views of the mountains to the north, campus to the west, and sports bowl to the east, these multifunctional spaces landscaped with native flora can be used as outdoor classrooms, study areas, or meeting places.

Design Team -- BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, established in 2006 by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels in Copenhagen, has distinguished itself as a global architectural practice operating across nine international studios in Copenhagen, New York, London, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Oslo, Zurich, Shanghai, and Bhutan. The firm is currently led by Founding Partner and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels alongside CEO Sheela Maini Søgaard, employing over 500 architects, designers, urbanists, landscape architects, interior and product designers, researchers, and inventors.

Under the creative direction of Bjarke Ingels, the office pursues a holistic design methodology that reconciles seemingly contradictory programmatic requirements into unified architectural solutions. Each project translates into a complex innovation system where different layers form inclusive dynamics, reflecting the firm's commitment to sustainability and social impact.

The firm's design philosophy centers on the principle of "pragmatic utopianism," a concept that manifests in projects characterized by engineering innovation, environmental sustainability, and interdisciplinary collaboration. BIG's portfolio demonstrates consistent excellence in creating environments that balance functional performance with formal innovation harmony, establishing the firm as a significant contributor to global contemporary architectural discourse.

The practice understands architecture as an expanded discipline, integrating engineering innovation with environmental sustainability through specialized in-house departments including BIG Engineering, BIG Landscape, BIG Product, and BIG Ideas. Notable completed works include CopenHill waste-to-energy plant with skiable roof in Copenhagen, Google Bay View campus with geothermal systems and photovoltaic canopies achieving LEED Platinum in California, The Spiral high-rise with continuous terraced green spaces in New York, and The Twist inhabitable bridge-museum hybrid in Norway. BIG's interdisciplinary practice extends beyond traditional architecture, encompassing furniture design for manufacturers including Fritz Hansen and Artemide, urban infrastructure such as the proposed Oceanix floating city, and mobility concepts including Virgin Hyperloop pods. Robert Day Sciences Center, as BIG's first completed project in Los Angeles and the inaugural building of the Roberts Campus masterplan, demonstrates the firm's capacity to address diverse educational needs and environmental responsibilities, establishing a new eastern gateway for Claremont McKenna College.