What do you seek?

Building 21 is an interdisciplinary idea lab supporting McGill undergraduate and graduate students in pursuit of bold and original ideas.

A lab for beautiful and daring explorations

See who we are

Enabling students to pursue bold questions

Discover our scholars

Help us take our mission to the next level

Get involved

180+

Scholars who pursued a project at B21

$600 000+

Funding for projects and programs at B21

40+

Different disciplines of scholars

900+

Events held gathering scholars of all backgrounds

Who we are

Leading scholars across disciplines to bring unconventional ideas to life.
Learn about our mission
For the sake of discovery
Projects at Building 21 are pursued for the sake of discovery. There are no credits, no grades, no evaluations. Only the pursuit of knowledge.
Safe haven for original ideas
We give scholars no-strings-attached resources to facilitate their exploration. Scholars collaborate to advance the most unconventional ideas.
A community of explorers
We run cohort-based programs that connect the most curious seekers to a tight-knit community. We offer structure, mentorship, and networks.
Our alumni are pushing the boundaries of knowledge and creativity at these institutions

"

B21 showed me what obtaining a university education is all about: exploration, collaboration, and challenge.
Vincent Van Duong
BS Math & Physics, McGill University
Part III, University of Cambridge
PhD Candidate Physics, NYU
Drawing a poster on a the floor with dogs!

What's On

Come experience Building 21 yourself at 651 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal.
See upcoming events
A event at Building 21

Scholars

We’ve supported hundreds of McGill undergraduate, Master's, and PhD students across all disciplines in their exploration.
Discover
Innovating paradigms
Mathilde Papillon first bridged physics and dance as an undergraduate fellow at B21. She is now on track to pioneer a new subfield of Topological Deep Learning as a PhD candidate at the Geometric Intelligence Lab @ UCSB.
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Enabling new paths
Rasha Lama piloted a series of spatial sustainability projects at B21, completely unrelated to her commerce program. This led to receiving a graduate scholarship in Land Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
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From idea to impact
Kat Kavanagh developed the ideas for a citizen science non-profit at B21 that now monitors over 5,000 waterbodies across Canada and has trained over 25,000 Canadians on how to conduct water quality tests.
Read more
See all scholars

Events

Our community hosts a variety of events at our space.
Discover
Lightning ⚡
Tuesdays, 12 - 2pm; Fridays, 3-5pm
Eclectic idea sharing with crowd-sourced critique from the interdisciplinary community.
Contact
Creative Arts & Tech Lab (CATLAB)
Tuesdays, 5 - 8pm
Bringing together artists and creators of different traditional and digital disciplines every Tuesday evening.
Contact
McGill Neurotech
Team-based
Creating brain-computer interface (BCI) applications from start to finish with a yearly team.
Contact
ENCODE Justice Canada
Event-based
AI Ethics and Policy. Fighting for human rights accountability and justice in the age of AI
Contact

"

"B21 is rigorous and free, radical and welcoming, at once wildly exploratory and close to home."
Isabella Chiaravallotti
PhD Plant Science, McGill University
Drawing a poster on a the floor with dogs!

Join us

We’re always looking for brilliant scholars and organizations to advance our mission.
Get involved
A event at Building 21

Join the community

See programs

Partner with us

Get in touch

Come visit in person

Contact us