Who we are

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

We enable scholars to pursue unconventional ideas.

Every semester, we run a cohort-based program that lets students of all levels and backgrounds pursue an idea of their own. We provide funding, mentorship, a physical space, and a like-minded community to help them further their idea.

Discover our scholars
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.

Vision and Mission

Vision

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

We gather intrinsically-motivated scholars of McGill University to create an inclusive environment of innovation, rigour, and experimentation. In collaboration with a global network of innovative communities, Building 21 maintains a commitment to challenge, refine, and support a diversity of approaches, processes, and thinkers across the spectrum of human competencies.

Mission

Attract, facilitate, and refine truly original and rigorous scholars and scholarship.

Create a home for complex, unconventional problems and hosts a multiplicity of diverse, sometimes contradictory, perspectives across disciplinary boundaries.

We're rooted locally, but our reach is international.

Building 21 gathers the brightest and most curious scholars under one roof at McGill University here in Montréal, Québec. Their work at B21 has directly led them to create impact on a global scale.

Proudly made by McGill
Building 21 is proudly supported by McGill University and channels its core values of pursuing the advancement of knowledge.
Investing in Québec
Micro-MBA program in Matane, Québec applies B21's educational model to local business and community leaders.
Innovating globally
Alison Hirukawa met her cofounder through B21 and is now CEO of DropGenie, a venture-backed biotech startup based in Boston and Montréal working to streamline cell line engineering for gene editing.

Our team

Building 21 is run by a small group of individuals from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.

Anita Parmar
Co-Director
anita.parmar@mcgill.ca

After completing her B.Sc. in Physics at McGill University, Anita Parmar continued on to complete her Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics at the University of New Mexico, worked as a statistician and research manager in non-profit for health policy, as a logistician for an import-export company in Mexico City, as a management consultant in Montréal, and started her own company designing supply-chain analytics tools before returning to McGill University.

Ollivier Dyens
Founder & Co-Director
ollivier.dyens@mcgill.ca

Ollivier Dyens is full professor in the Département des littératures de langue française, de traduction et de création. He is the author of 14 books. He was Deputy Provost, Student Life and Learning at McGill from 2013-2018. His area of research is the impact of technology on humanity.

Staff
Alex Nicholas Chen
Program Coordinator
alex.nicholas.chen@mail.mcgill.ca

Alex Nicholas Chen recently graduated from McGill University’s Honours Cognitive Science program. His projects at Building 21 have involved disclosing blind spots in existing research paradigms and articulating novel ways of pursuing and understanding human phenomena. He is interested in un-forgetting the invisible delights, joys, tragedies, and vitalities of our everyday experiences.

Nakiya Noorbhai
Program Assistant
nakiya.noorbhai@mail.mcgill.ca

Nakiya Noorbhai graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a minor in Linguistics. She has started a PhD the department of Geography and Urban Studies, where she looks at construction sand mining and infrastructure development. At B21, she leads the Future of Cities program where she works with a diverse group of students to design cities built to withstand the complex challenges of the future.

Darius Valevicius
Program Assistant
darius.valevicius@mail.mcgill.ca

Darius is a graduate of the cognitive science and neuroscience programs at McGill. His academic research and his project at Building 21 explore the neuroscience of aesthetics and emotion. Outside of B21, he currently works as a research software developer for the McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience.

Carole Graveline
Communication Mentor
carole.graveline@mcgill.ca

Journalist by trade, communicator by profession. Director of Engagement and Partnerships at McGill and Director of Media Relations. Always concerned with communicating, popularizing, informing and  building bridges with the community. A career as a journalist with Radio-Canada radio and television, filled with travel, major interviews  and reports always imbued with humanism. Co-author of a book on the short history of AIDS in Quebec.

Past Staff
David 'Jhave' Johnston
Methodological Advisor

David Jhave Johnston is a digital-poet writing in emergent domains: AI, 3D, VR, and code. Author-programmer of the multimedia human + AI writing art-project ReRites (Anteism Books, 2019), the theoretical-history Aesthetic Animism: Digital Poetry's Ontological Implications (MIT Press, 2016), and many online interactive literary works at www.glia.ca. Jhave currently is an independent writer, affiliate faculty in the Computational Arts Dept at Concordia University, advisor at McGill’s Building21, and an interdisciplinary creative consultant.

Jill Harrington
Intergenerational Leader

A career of adventures in teaching, government communications, policy development, think tank research, fundraising, and educational technology in Canada (Calgary, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Toronto, Guelph and Montreal), Bermuda, and Germany.

Viola H. Ruzzier
Program Assistant

Viola Hallé Ruzzier is a Program Assistant at Building 21. She recently graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Biology. She is interested in studying how science is written, and has written a short volume containing stories based on scientific concepts and phenomena.

Claudia Raihert
Program Assistant

Claudia completed a M.Sc. in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh and studied French Literature and Linguistics during her BA at McGill. Her research focuses on metaphor, and what metaphor processing can tell us about human cognition. She is also interested in category-learning, and how different categories can shape and influence our perceptions. Claudia has a soft spot for poetry, nature, and déjà-vus.

MingXi Gu
Design & Communications Lead

MingXi Gu joined Building 21 as an undergraduate majoring in Computer Science. With Alex Nicholas Chen, he led the design and implementation of Building 21’s current visual identity, website, and communications. MingXi is intensively passionate about accelerating progress, innovation ecosystems, and technological disruption.

Aditya Jain
Sustainability Officer
Rebecca Brosseau
Branding & Strategy Manager
Damian Arteca
Researcher, Radical Futures

Contact us

651 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal, Québec

Building 21
General contact

Email

Ollivier Dyens
Co-director, Building 21

Email

Anita Parmar
Co-director, Building 21

Book a meeting

Email

A event at Building 21