Brutalist buildings seem like they’ve stepped straight out of a disaster movie, often setting the stage for dystopian worlds and post-apocalyptic futures in both film and television—and Mac-Corry follows suit.
George Lucas filmed multiple parts of Star Wars in Tunisia to capture the Brutalist architecture, giving the film a more otherworldly and dystopian feel. The harsh, angular structures in Star Wars enhanced Tatooine’s desolate and alien atmosphere, contributing to its futuristic aesthetic.
Brutalist architecture is characterized by its use of bare, unfinished concrete and striking geometric shapes. Closer to home than that far, far away galaxy, Mackintosh-Corry Hall (Mac-Corry), along with Jeffery Hall and John Watson Hall, could easily be plucked from the same cinematic universe as Star Wars.
The Brutalist design of Mac-Corry—constructed in 1973 on the former site of George Richardson Memorial Stadium—feels more like a forgotten future than a modern academic building. The Canadian architect behind the building, Ronald Thom, ed in 1986.
Jacintha Luo, Sci ’25, explains how Mac-Corry reminds her of her favourite movie franchise, Star Wars. She finds the building’s structure caught between the reality of campus life and the unspoken narrative of a world that might be, much like the dystopian cities seen in film.
The stories of Mac-Corry’s creation are shrouded in mystery—whether an architect’s descent into madness, a building born from personal strife, or a rumour of a design intended to stifle student protest is left up to interpretation.
Duncan McDowall, former University Historian at Queen’s, is the author of Writing About Queen’s: A Historian Ponders His Alma Mater, a reflective history of the institution.
Through years of research and writing, McDowall has gained an in-depth understanding of Queen’s history, delving into topics like “Challenging Limestone Liberalism: The Edwards Affair and the Hotel Hobbit.”
His work partially examines the complex pressures surrounding Brutalist architecture and its influence on Queen’s decision-making in the ’70s.
“Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder and Mac-Corry certainly aroused both iration and disdain,” McDowall, ArtSci ’72, wrote in a statement to The Journal.
Beyond this history—and unconfirmed myths—exists the more pressing truth of a building whose design and functionality reveal deeper flaws.
Love Affair Myth
Mac-Corry’s winding halls have sparked plenty of campus myths, but one stands out: it was designed to keep people from clashing.
“I was told a myth that Mac-Corry was constructed to be confusing to navigate due to people conflicting with one another. Sort of as a way to keep them from butting heads,” Emma Walcer, ArtSci ’26, said in a statement to The Journal.
Whether this legend is true or not, it sounds a lot like a love story—two people, always running into each other, always at odds, until they realize they were never meant to find their way out alone.
In the fall of ’89, Stacy Kelly, ArtSci ’96, arrived on campus eager yet nervous, unaware that Mac-Corry’s labyrinthine halls would soon mirror a romance as complicated as its design.
“In first-year, I certainly got lost trying to figure Mac-Corry out, but it didn’t take too long to understand how to navigate the complex,” Kelly said.
Mac-Corry isn’t just a building—it’s a puzzle, a test of patience, and, for the unlucky few, a trap.
“You just need to understand that it’s not a linear building layout and that it’s a multi-level weirdo of a building with a lot of odd little ageways, stairwells, and zig-zags,” Kelly said.
One wrong turn, and you’re in a completely different wing than you started. Some say it was designed this way on purpose—to keep certain people apart, or maybe to push them together. Either way, once you step inside, finding your way out is only half the challenge.
Mac-Corry’s maze-like design has fueled plenty of theories, but one legend refuses to fade. Students have spent decades blaming its impossible layout on something more sinister than poor planning.
“The enduring story during my undergrad years was that the architect had gone insane,” Kelly said.
Whether the madness came from the myth of a love story—two people destined to collide again and again—or from something else entirely, no one really knows.
“While the communal aspects were praised, its non-linear layout left many students and faculty confused, and the widespread use of drab concrete did not win favour. Over time, the building’s exterior became grimy, and its unconventional design continued to generate debate,” McDowall said.
With its twisting corridors and stairwells leading nowhere, Mac-Corry feels less like a building and more like a riddle left behind by a mind unraveling.
Student Protest Myth
One long-standing campus rumour claims Mac-Corry’s Brutalist design was intentionally crafted to suppress student protests—a theory ed by Sebastian Leck, ArtSci ’16, The Journal’s Editor in Chief from 2015-16, and a current editor at The Logic.
“Brutalist architecture has an interesting and somewhat tragic backstory worth exploring,” Leck said in a statement to The Journal.
“I heard at Queen’s that Mac-Corry was designed to prevent student protests—probably from another student, maybe at orientation. I can’t exactly when or where, but it felt like a compelling explanation about why the building was designed in such a strange and confusing way,” Leck said.
In true journalist fashion, his initial curiosity has since led him to dig deeper.
“I used to blindly believe the anti-protest story during my time at Queen’s, but my further research, which mostly came after the fact, has since changed my perspective. I took a class on European intellectual history in my fourth year that covered topics like Haussmann in and Modernism, which has really influenced how I think about it now,” Leck said.
“The protest myth is common across many universities in the US and Canada with Brutalist buildings from the ’70s. They’re often considered ugly and vaguely reminiscent of totalitarian governments, so they’re associated with anti-protest methods,” he added.
While architecture has historically been used to control public behaviour—Baron Haussmann’s 19th-century redesign of Paris is a prime example—there’s little evidence suggesting Mac-Corry was purposefully designed to stifle dissent.
“In the 1960s, as Ontario’s post-secondary education system rapidly expanded to accommodate the Baby Boom generation, Queen’s University grew from 3,600 to over 10,000 students, prompting the creation of new programs, faculty, and facilities, including the Mac-Corry Building, which was built to address the growing need for space on campus,” McDowall said.
“As students pushed for more control over their education in the ’60s, campus buildings like Mac-Corry were designed to offer flexible, adaptable spaces for changing academic needs,” McDowall said.
Architecture in the ’60s shifted from traditional limestone to modern materials like steel, glass, and concrete. This led to the rise of Brutalism, exemplified by Trent University’s campus which was also designed by Thom.
James Ashby, an architecture scholar, wrote a paper on Thom himself. Ashby believes Mac-Corry was conceived as a “megastructure,” a design philosophy popular at the time that sought to house multiple departments, services, and communal spaces—like its “student street”—under one massive, low-hanging roof rather than in a towering edifice.
According to McDowall, the design of Mac-Corry was meant to encourage interaction between students and faculty, challenging traditional academic hierarchies.
“There was cost-cutting along the way, and it had a second and third phase that were abandoned due to an economic recession,” Leck said.
Ultimately, the building’s confusing layout may say more about the lofty yet flawed architectural ideals of the era than any conspiratorial istrative strategies.
“We should be fair to the architect—like so many buildings in Canada, there is the vision and then when the build happens the budget is far smaller than what is needed,” Kelly said.
Leck proposes the “confusing” design of Mac-Corry is likely a failure of the utopian architectural ideas from the ’60s and ’70s, rather than a deliberate attempt by University s to suppress protests, and that its association with fascism and its unattractiveness led students to link the style with the systems they were protesting.
Protests led to a significant response, with the mid-1990s construction of Joseph S. Stauffer Library, which embraced the Gothic style and used traditional limestone.
Much like the Star Wars saga, the story of Mac-Corry’s design has evolved over time, shaped by the shifting myths of students.
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