Before graduating last spring, Alex Nicholas Chen was in many ways your typical McGill student: bright, curious and ambitious, he pursued an honours degree in cognitive science with a minor in computer science.
That’s already a full workload, but not for Chen.
“I still had a lot of energy and a lot of ideas,” he said. “I wanted to direct that extra energy to something.”
That “something” ended up being Building 21, an interdisciplinary space for McGill undergraduate and graduate students to pursue ideas, projects and processes that fall outside traditional research paradigms. There, Chen completed a semester-long residency, where he was encouraged to explore his ideas, embrace non-linear processes and collaborate with his fellow scholars.
“If I want to create a product, I go to McGill Engine; if I want to make it a business, I go to Dobson,” said Chen. “Building 21 helps me think about the paradigm and solidify it before I think of everything else.”
From poetry to chronic pain, to cognitive science
Students at Building 21 have a wide array of interests.
When Chen arrived, “two people were studying whether you could detect the sublime in poetry, and two others were using VR to communicate patients’ experiences with chronic pain.” Other scholars were investigating psychedelics, language models and the politics of sounds.
Chen’s project, titled Technology and the Self, touched on psychological anthropology, phenomenology and cognitive science.
“I was in this room with people I never would’ve spoken to on campus, they were questioning every single assumption I had, and it changed the course of the way I thought about my ideas,” recalled Chen, who now serves as Building 21’s Program Co-ordinator. “I consider it a unique experience at a university, not just at McGill.”
Becoming better known
Building 21 was founded in 2017 by Prof. Ollivier Dyens, who serves as Co-Director alongside Anita Parmar.
“Finding old solutions to new problems will never work,” said Dyens. “Building 21 was born from the realization that our education system, though productive, is not unique, inventive, and multifaceted enough to train students to resolve current and future social, political, environmental, and ethical problems.”
Despite being at the cutting edge of innovative ideas, Building 21 has kept a relatively low profile, but that may be about to change: it was recently shortlisted for a QS Reimagine Education Award in the category of Developing Emerging Skills and Competencies. That prize is awarded to projects that are effectively developing skills and competencies required in the workplace, now and in the future.
Tackling ocean plastics, cancer
Building 21’s principal program is the BLUE Residency – (BLUE stands for Beautiful, Limitless, Unconstrained Exploration) – a non-credit program that admits 15-20 applicants every semester to pursue their most innovative ideas.
The BLUE program has welcomed over 180 McGill scholars so far, including graduates who have gone on to study at Oxford, Harvard and Caltech.
In 2025 the BLUE residency will include access for select students to executives from organizations such as MILA, Microsoft and Google DeepMind. They’re also offering two new programs: a BLUE for Ocean Plastics Residency, which includes mentoring from 4Ocean to tackle the ocean plastic crisis, and a BLUE for Cancer Treatment Residency, in collaboration with cancer treatment company Farcast Biosciences.
Applications for the residencies for winter 2025 are closed, but students can apply to be a Community Member all year round, which allows them to use Building 21’s dedicated space, develop their ideas with support from other members and attend events there.
An incubator of ideas
Chen completed his McGill honours thesis and his BLUE project simultaneously. His thesis was published in Perception journal; his BLUE project was presented at three McGill events.
“Most of my McGill degree was very structured, and I’m grateful for that,” said Chen. “But the things you think about when you’re washing the dishes, those ideas you can’t get out of your head, sometimes it seems like there’s no place for this. But Building 21 is the place for this.”