Now that it's built, it really does look like a twisted Rubik's cube. Or, as some describe UNC Charlotte's new Center City Building, a giant stack of books.

Whatever the description, UNCC hopes that the glass-wrapped high-rise in uptown's First Ward will significantly boost the university's visibility and bridge the once-vast psychological divide between Charlotte and its namesake university, 11 miles north.

The $50.4 million, 12-floor structure officially opens when the fall semester begins Aug. 22. It's replacing the 15,000 square feet of uptown space the school used in the former Mint Museum of Craft + Design on North Tryon Street.

Cantilevered with whimsy and trimmed in UNCC green, it will house the College of Arts + Architecture along with MBA and other graduate programs.

Yet to the school and city, it is more than a space for academic pursuit.

In time, the building will draw people to lectures by UNCC faculty, to art exhibits, movies, receptions, performances and conferences. Many of its students will work by day and sit in classes at night.

And it will anchor a planned development by Levine Properties that will transform an area of mostly parking lots, vacant buildings and empty lots along Brevard from Ninth to Seventh streets. Ultimately, Levine plans to build an urban neighborhood of residences, shops, restaurants, parking decks and a 6-acre park from the UNCC building to Seventh.

"This building will help connect UNC Charlotte to Charlotte's civic, cultural, political and business life," said Jerry Coughter, executive director of UNCC Center City.

"It's not enough to say, 'OK, we're here.' We have to get involved with the Chamber. Rotary. Local museums. The schools. The building will be a way to put the university's resources on display and pull people out to the main campus, too."

Expressing innovation

Earlier this week, workers continued chipping away at a final punch list. They painted walls and mounted letters spelling CENTER CITY BUILDING out front. They installed projectors and tables in classrooms and figured out how to turn off a fire alarm set off by a storm of dust.

Much of the public gathering spots and many of the classrooms look out on the city, which increasingly will become a laboratory for students.

"Hopefully they'll be inspired by the skyline," Coughter said, walking through an architecture classroom. "It's all about connections: to the banks; to First Ward Elementary across the street; to neighborhood groups."

In the beginning, UNCC wanted an iconic building that expressed innovation - one that stood apart from the "gray flannel" architecture of uptown's banking and finance structures, said James Timberlake, a founding partner of KieranTimberlake, the Philadelphia architecture firm that designed the Center City Building with Gantt Huberman Architects of Charlotte.

"They wanted a building that not only expressed innovation, but did it in such a way that it becomes a brand for UNC Charlotte in the downtown," Timberlake said.

The brick that surrounds the building and covers the ground floor harkens to the brick used on the main campus, said Timberlake's colleague, Richard Maimon, the principle in charge of the project.

Each twist of the Rubik's cube (or book in the stack) is a grouping of three floors, Maimon said.

The first three floors are public spaces, with the ground floor containing a bagel and coffee shop, a gallery and campus bookstore. There'll be a baby grand piano in the lobby for anyone to sit and play. Up a flight, are two auditoriums (one with 300 seats, the other with 100) suitable for lectures, movies and performances.

Each of the upper three twists hold a floor of faculty offices and two floors of classrooms - with 25 classrooms in all. Every other floor has a student lounge.

The environmentally conscious "green" building is fully wired for Internet access. The basement has a catering kitchen for receptions or conferences.

The architects didn't set out to design a Rubik's or books motif. They emerged, much like uptown's round-topped One Wells Fargo Center was once nicknamed the "jukebox building."

"I think that's what architecture is," Timberlake said. "It's what people see in it."

Economy slows rest of plan

For now, the buildings sits alone, waiting for other projects to fill in.

Daniel Levine of Levine Properties said plans for his mixed-use development have been slowed by the economy.

The project is a partnership with the city and Mecklenburg County. Levine hopes plans will be finalized within six weeks, and that work on the park and other parts of the project will begin in the first quarter of 2012.

To build the $11 million park, about 48,000 cubic yards of dirt will be trucked in to raise the area between the UNCC building and Seventh Street by 8 feet, Levine said. Plans call for Levine to build the park and turn it over to the county for cash and a land swap.

UNCC won't wait. Lectures are planned and 100 metrologists (precise measurers who devise standards for measuring equipment performance) from around the world are scheduled to use the building for a fall conference, Coughter said.

"The more we interact with people and groups, the more exposure they get to the university and we get to them," he said. "To be a focal point where the city and university come together, we've got to be a part of both."