In 1991, Brian MacKay-Lyons led a team of architects and urban designers, including Charles Moore, Attilio Gobbi, William Mitchell and Giancarlo De Carlo to produce a Campus Plan for Dalhousie University. The result of a participatory design process involving broader university community, the Campus Plan proposed that University Avenue be developed as a linear garden flanked by academic courtyard buildings. The new Computer Science Building is a product of both the Dalhousie Campus Plan and the recent merger of Dalhousie University and Technical University of Nova Scotia. The project was executed by Brian MacKay-Lyons Urban Design as design architects in association with Fowler Bauld & Mitchell Architecture as prime consultants.

The program, developed in tandem with the scheme through an intensive urban design process requires 85,00 ft² distributed in five stories on a 200’ x 100’ site along University Avenue. The scheme embodies an academic philosophy which views computer science as an enabler in a multi-disciplinary research view of the University. Therefore, the heart of the program is the research ‘playground’ or electronic loft space aimed at project-based learning. A 65’ tall ‘cybercafe’ is a social forum in the building with its dramatic social stair, is aimed at the informal exchange of ideas. An ‘electronic amphitheatre’ facilitates intellectual exchange within a larger community.

Connected to the goal of accessibility to other academic disciplines, industry, and the public, the building takes on a lantern-like character in order to suggest the work and technology inside. Playground/ lab bays on two levels hover above a glazed classroom base with a future industry-oriented penthouse to be housed above. The entrance from University Avenue, under folded zinc screens, connects to the atrium which contains the café. The zinc screens are draped off a poured concrete structural frame, wrapping around the three street frontages and the atrium at the rear to form a minimalist urban metal jacket.

A rigorous tartan grid establishes the building’s DNA, and is a common denominator which both accommodates program ‘grain’ and the structural ‘grid’. This infrastructure design approach enabled a fast track, construction management process involving the sequencing or building systems and by extension, the building trades. The result of this rational approach was a high-tech building at a construction cost of $130 per sqft. in a design and construction period of 18 months. It avoids image or style.