The Brown University Fitness and Aquatics Center provides much-needed new facilities and a new quadrangle at the gateway to Brown's evolving Erickson Athletic Complex. The building brings the architectural character of the campus's historic brick campus core to the northeastern edge of the campus while also acknowledging Providence's tradition of robustly classical industrial buildings.

The building is composed of three distinctly articulated parts. The head house, facing Hope Street and scaled to relate to the surrounding residential neighborhood, houses exercise rooms, locker rooms, and the Nelson Fitness Center, a 10,000-square-foot multipurpose fitness loft. The David J. Zucconi '55 Varsity Strength and Conditioning Center faces the playing fields to the east. Bracketed between these two wings is the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, with a 56-meter swimming pool, equipped for one- and three-meter diving, set one level below grade to reduce the apparent mass of the facility. The roof of the Aquatics Center features the largest hybrid solar-panel-powered electrical and heating installation in the United States, generating enough power to light the building and enough thermal energy to heat the million-gallon pool. A new landscaped quadrangle replaces what had previously been a parking lot between the new building and a 1970s ice rink and gymnasium.