The Centre for Music, Art, and Design is an interdisciplinary facility at the University of Manitoba shared by the Faculties of Architecture and Music, the School of Fine Art and the integrated Architecture, Fine Art and Music Library. The new building joins two existing buildings to form an arts courtyard with buildings on three sides and an important cross-campus pedestrian corridor on the fourth.

The University of Manitoba is just south of Winnipeg on the Red River; winter temperatures routinely drop well below zero. As in many places with extreme winter weather, a network of underground tunnels complements a network of surface pathways. The direct connections to neighbouring buildings, both above and below ground,