Alison Weaver stepped around piles of sheetrock, wearing a glamorous white dress, as construction crews raced to finish Rice University's new $30 million Moody Center for the Arts.

Weaver, the Moody's director, had no trouble ignoring the noise of screeching power tools and the sweat dripping under her hard hat as she described a place where neuroscientists and composers can ask students to make musical instruments, and photographers and earth scientists can team-teach a course about Galveston Bay.

"It is really different for Rice," Weaver said. "I want it to always feel like a start-up."

Collaborative arts centers have been trending strongly in upper education across the U.S. for more than a decade, and Rice also wants to raise its profile in Houston as the city nears a cultural pivot-point. Located near the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Menil Collection - which are each expanding their own footprints - Rice is now poised to join the growing party.

The Moody will host its first classes in January and open to the public in February.

With no in-house academic departments, it will be a hub for cross-disciplinary teaching as well as a major new venue for exhibitions and performances.

Rice president David Leebron said arts and humanities contribute in essential ways to every education and intellectual endeavor, including science and technology.

Brown University's similar Granoff Center, in Providence, R.I., has had "an amazing impact" since it opened in 2009, said its new director Butch Rowan, a composer and videographer who has utilized its resources often. While the Granoff Center doesn't track attendance, it allows students to break out of disciplinary boundaries.

"That's when magic happens," Rowan said. "It's galvanized the entire campus.

Symbolic design

Situated on the campus' south side, next to the humble metal shed of the Rice Media Center, the Moody building looks like it could be the home of a hip technology company.

Architect Michael Maltzan's two-story structure combines a substantial jumble of intersecting rectangles clad in charcoal-gray brick and a glass-walled first floor. That's a wild departure from Rice's many classically-inspired buildings.

Maltzan said the Moody's contemporary spirit reflects its programs. He admires the "very specific and historic context" of the Rice campus, where many buildings are covered in the same, rose-hued St. Joe brick, but said he wanted to make a building "related to its own time."

A magnesium oxide coating on the Moody's dark brick alters its color poetically as atmospheric conditions change - a nice echo, in solid form, of the changing light within James Turrell's monumental "Twilight Epiphany" skyspace nearby. The brick appears to be dark blue on clear days, silvery when the sky is overcast, and nearly black at night, setting off the lights visible through all that glass.

That transparency was key, opening a window to the activity inside and "welcoming everyone in," Weaver said.

Cut-outs in two of the building's corners hold steel sculptures inspired by Rice's lush tree canopy that will be iconic features. Weaver also reads the branching designs as starbursts of "radiating ideas."

The building's interior, designed around a central "open studio lab," is a microcosm of the campus's quadrangle-based clusters of academic buildings. Walking across quads is an essential part of the Rice experience, Maltzan said. "It's where some of the best collaboration happens."

The building's front door faces Stockton Street, so it's easy for the public to find. Classrooms and labs are concentrated at the back and upstairs, although Weaver also wants the lounges to be active. Even a flight of padded stairs will double as amphitheater-style seating for impromptu talks.

Covered arcades merge the Moody's indoor and outdoor activities. Weaver plans to project films on the west facade and activate the north side's triangular green lawn with events that could include student design competitions and outdoor sculpture exhibitions.

"It's fun to think about, figure it all out," she said.

Maltzan's design was nearly done when Weaver was hired last year, but she tweaked some details and squeezed in a small upstairs cafe - "so it's not an in-and-out building but a place where people will want to hang out."

Otherwise, her mantra was "flexibility, flexibility, flexibility ... with as little nailed-in as possible."

Evolving over time

Weaver, an art historian who grew up in Houston, brings a rare combination of business, academic and museum credentials to the Moody effort. She has taught at City University of New York and directed affiliate locations for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

She has already scored a significant Houston collaboration: Lebanese-born, Palestinian video and installation star Mona Hatoum has signed on to be the Moody's first artist-in-residence.

During six to eight weeks at Rice next spring, Hatoum will develop an exhibition for the Menil that opens in the fall of 2017, her first major U.S. show in 20 years.

Weaver would like to see influential artists such as Hatoum build relationships in Houston - "so they don't just drop in for a lecture or to do an installation."

She also wants to emphasize the "cultural voice" on campus. Weaver could see Hatoum speaking at Rice's Baker Institute, for example. "With Mona's work, you can talk about power dynamics, women in the Middle East or the ramifications of geometric minimalism," she said.

Several professors are already collaborating on courses for the spring semester. Shepherd School of Music composer Anthony Brandt and visiting neuroscientist David Eagleman will work together, as will photographer Geoff Winningham and earth scientist Adrian Lenardic.

Although university officials have long said the Moody would not affect the world-renowned Rice Gallery across campus, that institution will close in May, and its director, Kim Davenport, will move to the Moody as a curator.

Davenport's experience is important: For 20 years, she has commissioned top artists from around the globe to create site-specific installations with students and faculty in a dedicated, 40-by-44-foot room that is the only university museum of its kind.

"The most important thing is to continue the tradition of site-specific installation," Weaver said. She said visiting artists will be able choose where to intervene at the Moody: "Someone might like to do an installation outside, or take the stairwell, or need a smaller, controlled space or a bigger, open space."

She can't predict how the building will be used 50 or 100 years from now, but she knows it will evolve over time. Forward thinking is the whole point.