The Stephen Hawking Centre opens in Waterloo this weekend

The Stephen Hawking Centre officially opens this weekend.

The Centre is a 55,000 square foot expansion to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which was founded in 1999 in Waterloo by RIM founder and co-CEO Mike Laziridis.

Built with the intention to foster unconventional thinking and encourage the collaboration of top minds, the Centre will build on Waterloo's reputation of innovation. The building was constructed and architected from the ground up to be an environment in which research will thrive in—natural light, ventilation, bridges and staircases with blackboards, "interaction areas," etc.

This expansion to Perimeter comes with a pricetag of $29 million, funded by both private and public money, and doubles the size of the institute. It will become the largest centre of its kind in the world.