The brutalist buildings on campus contain living, administrative, service/study areas, office and teaching spaces.

Among the living spaces are East Residence, Lambton Hall, Lennox/Addington Hall, and Wellington Woods.

The University Centre is the central administrative space on campus, with senior administrative offices, the campus-community radio station CFRU, the offices of the student paper (The Ontarion), as well as numerous campus club offices, meeting rooms, and a food court.

The McLaughlin Library provides services central to the academic mission from the provision of resources (physical and digital) to provision of workshops to assist with essay-writing, managing research data, dissertation-writing, and many others. It also contains a majority of the available study space on campus.

The Arboreteum Centre is vital to many courses, offering a "living laboratory" for study. It hosts dozens of workshops and public programs annually and can be rented out as a venue for special events.

Office and teaching spaces include the Animal Science Building, Crop Science, Engineering Complex (Thornbrough Building), McKinnon Building, and MacNaughton Building.