Stanford systems.

Founded in 1885, Stanford University's historic campus on the southern edge of the San Francisco conurbation at Palo Alto was originally developed to a master plan by Frederick Olmsted. The now sprawling campus continues to evolve, with the most recent set of additions built to accommodate the rapidly expanding discipline of computer science. Antoine Predock's new Center for Integrated Systems (CIS) houses facilities for research into computer hardware, partnering a similar building for software systems research by Robert Stern, which was completed last year.

Predock won an invited competition for the new CIS building, and was generally acknowledged as a slightly surprising choice. Stanford's conservative groves of academe are dominated by nineteenth-century Romanesque architecture, with which Predock's idiosyncratic sensibility and arcane references (UFOs, geology) might seem at odds. However, through judicious massing and selection of materials, Predock's building succeeds in distilling Stanford's essence into an identifiably contemporary form.

The CIS is located on a prominent pedestrian mall defined by a major campus axis. Together with Stern's software research centre and buildings by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the new intervention reinforces the axis along what will be a new science and engineering quadrangle. Clad in honey-coloured Indian sandstone, the squat three-storey building evokes institutional monumentality and permanence with its deeply recessed orthogonal openings and balconies.

The entrance on the north elevation is reached through a short arcade, lined with heavy stone benches. The underside of the arcade's barrel-vaulted roof is clad in copper panels, which infuse it with a warm, sensuous glow. It is easy to imagine this sheltered, civilised space becoming popular with students. Copper is also used to clad the gently pitched, overhanging roof.

The arcade leads into a generous lobby, with an open courtyard beyond. Taking advantage of Palo Alto's warm, Mediterranean climate, the courtyard gives the building a to communal focus and admits light the spaces above. The narrow rectangular plan is organised in two wings around the courtyard. At ground floor level, the east wing houses a small auditorium, the west wing research laboratories, with faculty offices in between. The upper floors contain cellular study rooms for individual researchers, but Predock is aware of the rich potential of the chance encounter, so there are also spaces for informal interaction.

At night, the mass of the building is softened by a narrow strip of clerestory glazing which creates the impression of the copper roof floating above the sandstone walls. For Predock this must rank as a relatively modest and restrained project, yet it has a dignified elegance achieved through lucid geometry, well-chosen materials and an innate concern for its community of users.