our vision

Building 21 is a space in which unique, daring, beautiful and rigorous ideas and scholarship are welcomed and nurtured.

Building 21 at McGill University is a curated pedagogical space that allows intrinsically motivated scholars to join an innovative, rigorous, and experimental culture of peers and mentors. This culture actively facilitates the development of both original scholars and original scholarship, inclusive of all ages, disciplines, and levels of expertise. In collaboration with a global network of adjacent communities, Building 21 maintains a commitment to challenge, refine, and encourage a diversity of approaches, processes and thinkers across the spectrum of human competencies. 

our mission

Building 21 assumes the responsibility of attracting, facilitating, and refining truly original and rigorous scholars and scholarship.

Building 21 implements a system of reciprocal learning, through co-mentoring, in which every member is both a contributing agent to and a recipient of its pedagogical ecosystem. We nurture expansive  creativity, competence, and rigor amongst an interdisciplinary community of peers and mentors. Building 21 both curates and facilitates beautiful and original work; and trains scholars to convert their curiosity and passion into tractable questions and find potential answers. Building 21 is a home for complex problems and hosts a multiplicity of diverse, sometimes contradictory, perspectives across disciplinary boundaries.