The shell-limestone facade reads cool grey at noon and warm only at the parapet line — gold is reserved for the rotunda spire and the wheat-sheaf relief, never the wall.
Aluminium sunbreaks repeat on an eighty-centimetre module across every elevation, so the hour is told by shadow rather than by ornament or by signage.
Where the concrete grid breaks for a steel-framed window, the building admits a single statement — light, a mosaic, a reading room — and never two at once.
Each pavilion is mirror-balanced on its long axis because the campus was meant to be walked toward, not around — the facade owes the visitor a clear front door.