The boldly sculptural Brown Center, designed in conjunction with Charles Brickbauer, was the first new building to be constructed on the campus in nearly a century. The center’s crystalline architecture provides an appropriately dynamic image for the college’s growing digital arts department. The angular geometries of the plan were generated by site constraints and translated to the building’s elevations. The faceted exterior is clad in translucent white glass to provide solar shading and create a provocative counterpoint to the white limestone of the college’s Renaissance Revival main building which stands across Mount Royal Ave. The new structure is meant to stimulate a dialogue between contemporary and traditional forms, technologies and materials. While it may appear complex from the outside, the Brown Center is a simple plan with classrooms and other programmatic space wrapped by light-filled hallways which become exhibition and critique space for student work........
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