Construction is complete for a Bjarke Ingels-designed expansion at Claremont McKenna College.

The Robert Day Sciences Center, located at 9th Street and Claremont Boulevard, includes 135,000 square feet of space with room for more than 1,400 students. The new construction is home to Claremont McKenna's Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences, which conducts research into fields including genetics, the human brain, and climate.

Exterior view of the Robert Day Sciences CenterLaurian Ghinitoiu

The first Los Angeles-area project for Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and the first building completed in BIG's master plan for the Claremont McKenna College's Roberts Campus, the building is described as being composed of two stacked volumes, each rotated 45 degrees from the floor below. A full-height atrium is the centerpiece of the building, providing visibility into classrooms and research spaces from all levels.

Each level of the building bridges across the level below, using triangular steel trusses clad in Douglas fir. At the center of it all the sculpture Magnetic Field by Damien Ortega, which is suspended 30 feet in the air and is composed of 18 metal rings and 1,476 colorful glass spheres.

At the exterior, the rotating masses of the building create eight rooftop terraces with view of the surrounding campus and the mountains to the north. The multipurpose spaces include native landscaping, and can function as both an outdoor study rooms and gathering places. Roughly 11,000 square feet of solar panels adorn the roof of the building, which is targeting LEED Gold certification.

Exterior view of the Robert Day Sciences CenterLaurian Ghinitoiu

"We imagined the Sciences Center as a series of parallel building volumes side by side - with a public space in between - that are rotated in all the same directions as the mall," said BIG founder Bjarke Ingels in a news release. Even though each of the individual building volumes are rational, flexible, and capable of being computer labs or wet labs, the open atrium in between becomes a Piranesian social space where you can see fellow students, faculty, colleagues, and professors from every level."

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