Building 21: Interdisciplinary Idea Lab

⚾️🩰Los Angeles @dodgers first AI research scientist, Mathilde Papillon, shares with us about how she married physics and dance all the way back in 2019 during her time as a scholar here at Building 21. (Part 1/3) curious for more? It took a lot of work making these and your reposts would mean the world 🌎 🤞Spread the word: change.org/building21 !!! (in bio)

✍️ Sign to help us discover what’s next: *change.org/building21 tl;dr After 9 beautiful, daring years being hosted at McGill University in Montréal, Canada, we are now in search of what’s next. On May 1st 2026, Building 21 has been asked by McGill to vacate the space and no additional funding will be allocated to this project. Last Glimpses: experience B21 yourself! 🏡 #MilaB21ScholarShowcase #1 | Thursday 3 - 6PM, 9 April 🏡 #MilaB21ScholarShowcase #2 | Tuesday 3 - 6PM, 21 April Spread the word: LIKES, SHARES, REPOSTS are deeply appreciated. It’s our time to shine! #BigGreenDoor

💡 Ever wonder what’s behind that green door on the corner of Sherbrooke and University? 🏠 Building 21 is McGill U’s interdisciplinary idea lab. If you (yes, you!) have ANY curiosity-driven project that you wouldn’t get to work on in a conventional classroom setting... Building 21 is a space where you can receive mentorship, support, and community to bring your ideas to life! 🗓️ May 1st, 1-5PM, @B21 (651 Sherbrooke St West) - we have our scholar exhibit coming up! All are welcome to come see some of the amazing projects that students have been working on here in the last semester. Hope to see you there!

🪷 In her B21 project “Between Devotion and Justice”, B21 scholar Islamiyat Jamiu looks at how women from Muslim backgrounds move between faith, feminist thinking, and the realities of everyday life. Islamiyat, a @mcgilleng Master’s student and @mastercardfoundation scholar hailing from Nigeria, spoke with women in different places in their relationship to Islam — some practicing, some questioning, some who’ve stepped away. What comes through isn’t a simple “for or against,” but something more layered. A lot of the tension isn’t about belief itself, but about interpretation — who defines it, and whose voices are heard. Feminism, in these conversations, wasn’t always an identity people claim. It showed up more as a way of asking questions — about autonomy, expectations, dignity. 🎥 Watch the video to hear Islamiyat talk about her work and her experience in her own words. 👀 Read about Islamiyat project here: https://lnkd.in/dadTdcgq 🗣️ Spread the word: change.org/building21 Featuring: Islamiyat Jamiu Created and Produced by: Alex Nicholas Chen Additional Footage by: Mohamed Amine CHAAI

building21 ill love you forever ♡ Swipe to learn more about scholar Annette Hong Kim’s project! Miho 3333: A Ritual for Diasporic Grief and Radical Hope This project explores radical hope, futurism, diaspora healing, and memory through the imagination of our collective descendants. Just as we learn from our ancestors, they can learn from us as well. This ritual experience allows diasporic folks to connect with imagined descendants who carry their stories forward. Many diaspora folks grieve losses that are not only about death, but about lost homelands, languages, cultural connections, rituals, severed lineages due to migration, war, colonialism, and the fear of being the « last » to remember. This ritual explores radical hope, a unique form of hope that persists in the face of profound adversity and cultural devastation–it goes beyond conventional optimism and resilience, necessitating a transformative mindset toward an uncertain future (Lear, 2006). It is knowing that “one can fight for justice and that fight will not be futile” (French et al., 2020)

🏡 Goodbye (for now) from behind the Big Green Door 300+ scholars, 40+ disciplines, 13 cohorts, 9 years of Beautiful, Limitless, Unconstrained Exploration Paper handmade by: Cristina Batalla Illustration by: Cássia Bellmann Colour by: Elena Savidge Photo by: Elena Savidge Support here: change.org/building21 Thank you to each and every mind who partook in this sublime experiment thinking beyond the acknowledged, the recognised, and the comfortable 🌌

B21 BLUE scholars Annette, Nina, Tamara, and Firuza went on air @ckutmusic @allthingscampusckut to talk about their projects and the end of Building21 on #mcgill campus… keep following to see what’s next for Building21 and to even be part of it! Don’t forget to sign our petition linked in our bio! #building21 #ckut #mtl #academiatok

❓What Happens When a University Shuts Down Its Most Creative Space On April 27th 2026, fellows Firuza Huseynova (MA Digital Humanities), Nina Zepcan (MISt), Annette Hong Kim (MEd Inclusive Education), and Tamara Pressman (PhD Economics) appeared on CKUT 90.3 FM’s All Things Campus, hosted by Karla Stephan. They shared deeply about their fellowship projects, their experience at Building 21, and the essentiality of interdisciplinary third spaces at the university. The biggest thank you to everyone at @ckutmusic for making this possible. 💛 Read about it on https://www.building21.ca/projects/ckut-90-3fm-all-things-campus-featuring-building-21-fellows

(PART 2) 💃🌌 Mathilde tells us about how she reconnected her dance brain—unused in her degree program—with her physics brain during her time as an interdisciplinary fellow here at Building 21. Now, Mathilde is LA Dodger’s first AI research scientist. She also went on to develop a new subfield of ML called ‘Topological Deep Learning’, a research program dedicated to studying human motion and intuition using deep learning. Support our last days at McGill University here: change.org/building21 🙏🙏🙏 Featuring: Mathilde Papillon Created & Produced by: Alex Nicholas Chen & Neil Roy Choudhury Emerged in Montréal, QC 2026

Help us save @building21.ca ! Scholar @vertsage ’s project is on diasporic grief and radical hope. To help us continue supporting beautiful, limitless, and unconstrained explorations like hers, sign the petition our bio! PS: don’t forget to verify your signature after signing! #building21#mtl#mila#interdisciplinary#mcgill

📣 Final B21 Showcase (Open to all!) 🗓 Tuesday, April 21, 2026 🕒 3:00 – 6:00 PM 📍 Building 21, 651 Sherbrooke Street West After 9 years of Building 21, we are having our last interdisciplinary research showcase tomorrow hosted at McGill University. We hope to see you behind the Big Green Door for one last time 🏡 Support: change.org/building21

Lesson 1: our scholars have pipes 😍🎤 Lesson 2: come see B21 scholar David Austin at our Final Scholar Showcase at McGill University this upcoming Tuesday, April 21st 2026, 3PM - late 🏡 See you there! #BigGreenDoor