herr2ck: PRB, Yo!

September 2025.

The Physics Research Building is an odd Contemporary design that somehow still appears dated on the exterior. It’s very bland compared to the Postmodern business school and Collegiate Gothic Mendoza House nearby. However, the interior is a well-kept secret and has beautiful clerestory windows and lots of natural light.

The Physics Research Building is located on north campus, bordered by Woodruff Avenue and Mendoza House to the north, Scott Lab to the south, Koffolt Labs to the east, and Hitchcock Hall to the west. Prior to the construction of the Physics Research Building, the site was occupied by the Welding Engineering Labs.

Welding Engineering Laboratories/Shops Building History

Elevation of Shops Building. (Historic Campus Map)

Welding Engineering Labs was designed as the “Shops Building” by university architect Joseph N. Bradford in 1915. Its construction began that November, the general contractor being Dawson Construction Co., and it was fully completed by January 1917. With a steel frame and brick exterior, the building is in an industrial vernacular style. University architect Howard Dwight Smith designed two additions that filled in the voids formed by the E-shaped plan of the building in 1947 and 1949, respectively. The Shops Building was renamed “Welding Engineering Laboratories” in 1968.

Welding Engineering Labs was demolished in 1999 for the construction of the Physics Research Building.

Physics Research Building History

The Physics Research Building was being designed in 2002, and its construction began that year. It opened in 2005, and was dedicated November 2. With a brick and sheet-metal exterior, the building is an example of the Contemporary style, and it has 238,000 square feet of space. The Physics Research Building was designed to centralize the Department of Physics’ laboratories, classrooms, and offices, and it was the first step in Ohio State’s “selective investment program.”

I think most people like the building’s design, natural light, and study spaces, but I was reading some random document I found about event planning in PRB, and it says this verbatim: “The PRB has a higher than average rate of building system problems. Event planners should be mindful that heating and/or cooling disruptions can occur.” Are we thinking this is a fault in the design or just because of the heavy load of the research equipment?

Photos

North facade of PRB:

Ever since late Postmodernism and Deconstructivism happened and with the advent of CAD, we are seeing these wacky shapes of buildings everywhere. The only way to really understand their massing and expression is through diagrams or just having a really keen eye. I know a lot of architects and professors have an aversion to the idea of populism in architecture (i.e. making buildings easily understandable to the average Joe), and I do as well to some extent, but I have always been in the camp of more legible and clear architecture. Pretty much every time period of design can do this, too!

The side is basically a standard brick box that looks like it was warped:

I think what a lot of contemporary architecture tries to do is create some kind of spatial effect, play with light, create odd forms that are rearranged and disfigured, etc. As much as the worst of today’s architecture is kind of the bastard child of the Modern movement, in a way we are returning to the eclecticism and character of Victorian architecture that the Modernists despised. It’s just not as literal as Beaux-Arts columns or Romanesque vaulting.