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This research laboratory is a 47,000-square-foot expansion of the University of Arizona's optical sciences department. The building contains state-of-the-art optical research labs, teaching labs, classrooms, interaction areas, and research offices for the world-renowned program. The building's design is conceived as an abstraction of landmark inventions in the history of optics, such as the camera obscura. Within the simple volume, daylight is introduced by skylighted shafts that illuminate interior spaces. The cast-in-place concrete structure is sheathed in a copper alloy that patinates to a reddish bronze hue, recalling the color of the brick featured throughout the campus.