September 2025.
Ohio State’s Wexner Center for the Arts is both a well-known example of Postmodern-era Deconstructivist architecture, and a highly lambasted design in hindsight. I think the design pays homage to the site’s history excellently, yet at the same time it falls victim to many common PoMo fallacies. It’s also an interesting look back at the architecture school’s pedagogy of the time.
The Wexner Center is located on the northeast edge of the Oval. It is bordered by Mershon Auditorium to the east, Sullivant Hall to the south, and College Road to the west; and it is attached to Weigel Hall and Timashev to the north. Prior to the construction of the Wexner Center, the site was occupied by the Armory.
Armory History
1921 view of the building’s exterior. (Buckeye Stroll)
The massive, castle-like Armory was designed by Columbus firm Yost & Packard in 1896. Its construction began in September of that year and concluded by January 1898, though the contractor abandoned the project in 1897 and the university had to finish the building. Best described as part of the Romanesque Revival style, the building had a wood frame clad in brick and steel arches to support the roof. It cost $115,000 to build.
The interior of the armory in 1917. Getting some Prydwen vibes here… (Buckeye Stroll)
The Armory was built to house the Department of Military Science, hold bunks for ROTC cadets, and serve as a gymnasium for the school. It had a canvas running track, two pools, 750 seats above the drill hall, and a cannon room. Most of its original functions were relocated over time, though. The bunks were relocated to later purpose-built barracks (now also demolished), Converse Hall was built to supplement the Armory’s teaching functions in 1942, and the Physical Education Building and Natatorium (later Larkins Hall) provided more gymnasium space. It’s unclear what exactly the Armory did after its successors were built, but I think it served as a backup or as auxiliary space.
Color photo of the facade. (Knowlton Archives)
Beyond classes and military use, the Armory had a couple other uses during its lifetime. It held the “Regimental Hop” dance beginning in 1906, a formal dance intended for underclassmen in the military program. Other events like a co-ed prom used the Armory as well. From 1911 to 1922 (I think University Archives has a typo on their blog post), Ohio State’s commencement was at the Armory, until the graduating classes grew so big it needed to be held off-campus at the fairgrounds. Finally, it was the home of the basketball team from 1898 to 1919, when it likewise moved to the state fairgrounds.
The massive tower being demolished in 1959. (Knowlton Archives)
Though it survived an earlier 1935 fire, in May 1958, another fire severely damaged the Armory. Given that it was built with a wood frame, it was very susceptible to fire damage. The Board of Trustees approved demolition of the west wall in June 1958, and eventually they decided to demolish the entire thing in December. The site was fully cleared on March 12, 1959. After this, the site sat empty for the next 30 years.
Wexner Center History
The Wexner Center under construction in 1988. (Historic Campus Map)
In 1982, the Board of Trustees held a design competition for a “Visual Arts Center” on campus. Five architects/firms, each paired with a local architect, submitted an entry: Peter Eisenman (the least experienced of the five), Cesar Pelli, Michael Graves, Kallman McKinnell & Wood (who designed the business school), and Canadian architect Arthur Erickson. Eisenman and his assigned partner Richard Trott were named the winners in 1985. The first phase of construction was relocation of Mershon Auditorium’s loading dock, which took place shortly afterwards. Eisenman completed the construction documents while this occurred, and the construction of the actual Wexner Center began in March 1987. The building was dedicated on November 16, 1989, and its construction cost about $45 million.
The completed building in 1996. (Buckeye Stroll)
A major renovation occurred beginning in 2002 at a cost of $10 million to fix structural flaws, which caused excessive sunlight, temperature swings, and water infiltration. The galleries were temporarily moved to a former coffin factory a few miles away in the meantime. With little modification to the original design, the Wexner Center reopened in 2005.
Looking northwest at the Wexner Center, showing the grid motif. (Buckeye Stroll)
The Wexner Center has a very esoteric design, typical of the Deconstructivist style within the larger Postmodern movement. It is unlike many other works of campus architecture (besides Knowlton Hall) in that a conventional stylistic description is insufficient. A number of motifs characterize the building’s unique design:
Most obvious are the simplified, scattered brick towers that appear as if they are built of children’s blocks and strewn about. These are clearly a reference to the Armory which stood on the site beforehand. Beyond their massing and a hidden, incomplete archway, they are unadorned.
The towers are punctured by small, white metal bars that take the shape of scaffolding and form a grid. These visually contrast with the brick and serve several purposes. (blah blah blah…Robert Venturi…dual functioning element…blah blah blah) The grid’s appearance as scaffolding is supposed to make the building appear incomplete. Another thing that’s easy to notice is its odd orientation in relation to the brick towers. Eisenman wanted to play with the distinction between Ohio State campus and Columbus’ street grid, as the former points 12.25° westward from north. The grid follows the Columbus street grid and points true north, while the remainder of the building is oriented the same way as campus. The end result is meant to create interesting architectural moments.
Inside, Eisenman took the unique philosophy that an art museum should compete with the pieces it displays, rather than take a secondary role. Glass with grid mullions lets natural light in, while many common Postmodern tropes occur inside, like odd layout in plan and even a column in the middle of the stairway.
1989 view of the interior. (Buckeye Stroll)
Even the site was chosen by Eisenman himself, as he rejected the university’s four offerings. To be fair, I don’t think such an oddly shaped site would be stipulated by OSU.
It’s important to note that Peter Eisenman taught at Ohio State for a time. I dealt with some of his effects in the Knowlton Archives, but unfortunately I don’t remember when exactly he was a professor and no sources online mention it. Regardless, Eisenman exerted a great influence on the pedagogy of the school at that time, as before this building was done he was a well-known theorist. Looking back at the description I just wrote, it really looks like something professors would salivate over in final review even to this day. There is this tendency now for prominent architects to design buildings that just do too much. Your museum does not have to acknowledge the student who farted on the site in 1896 in its design while simultaneously taking the form of a peeled banana in plan. Not to sound like a Modernist here, but sometimes simplicity is best. I think PoMo almost went too far in reacting to Modernism that they basically turned themselves inside out and made works of anti-architecture.
If you want to read a better-thought out (if extremely florid in language) criticism of the Wexner Center, read this old One:Twelve article. (For the record, the author is now a professor and historian at the University of Minnesota.)
The Wexner Center was named after billionaire and Epstein associate Les Wexner, who I will not honor with a biography.
Photos
I’ll start at the southeast corner of the Wexner Center. This grassy area used to be hardscape with a gridded pattern, but it has since been torn up and replaced by plants. Subtle changes like this over time have weakened the composition slightly.
From the more northern walkway between the new green space and Mershon Auditorium, the original gridded sidewalk remains:
As controversial as this grid is, it sure is photogenic. Expect to see a lot more details of it in the following images.
One of the towers, looking forlorn as it’s separated from the main building:
The thing about Postmodern architecture and the styles that follow is that it focuses on heavy transformation of a common geometry or systems in plan, such as a square, circle, or grid. The end result is that this kind of architecture has to be understood through diagrams, instead of the more straightforward designs that it followed. This is why portions of the Wexner Center appear so arbitrarily placed about the site.
South side of the grid:
Looking northwest at the masonry portion:
The Armory’s influence is very obvious, but the end result is rather chaotic and abstract. There’s a Knowlton buzzword for you--“abstraction.”
It’s weird how the tower peels away and reveals three different layers of brick:
Southwest side, with the cement whispering gallery:
Dematerialized tower, with a glassy gridded facade inside:
Another nicely lit view of the grid:
In the recess between the cement stairs and the building is Groundswell, a work of landscape art by Maya Lin. Lin is famous for designing the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C. as a college student. It fills what she calls “residual spaces” in the building’s design with piles of broken tempered glass, which are influenced by Japanese zen gardens and the prehistoric Native American mounds of Ohio.
This massive arch is clearly a recreation of the one that led to the entrance of the Armory, but it is both broken and leads nowhere:
More breaks in the masonry:
The cross-axis gap also has a grid, but it’s less monumental than the north-south corridor:
Compare this to a work of architecture like the Farnsworth House where everything deliberately lines up exactly, while here everything does the opposite. I’m not quite sure which is better.
Detail of the intersection between the horizontal and vertical members--nice and mildewy:
Looking south towards Page Hall:
Here’s that cliche shot everyone takes:
You can’t lie…it is cool.
Fun diagonal, abstract grid:
The end also ascends a bit, but just barely.
Looking back south:
White grid, blue sky:
The north side is mostly concrete, much different from the fancy brick south side:
Wonky landscaping of the gardens:
I hear people complain about not finding the entrance, but it’s on-axis from the east side. I know the north one is tucked away, though.
Just about everyone is (reasonably) confused about a column in the middle of the stairs, and another hovering above:
My theory professor tells me this is meant to subvert one’s expectations about a building and how they condition you (i.e. the stairs lead here, the door handle is at this height), but the way I see it is that it’s a white elephant that just boggles most visitors and makes life difficult for people with disabilities. I understand there is a sort of status quo to architecture, but I think there are better ways to combat it than putting a column in the middle of a staircase.
The atrium had this sort of tapestry exhibit going on:
Much of the galleries are accessed via “sprouts” off this “beanstalk” of a hallway:
Another thing I’ve learned in architecture school is if you say something about a building’s design/aesthetics convincingly enough, it’s true. In this essay, I will discuss why Philip Johnson’s Glass House is a masterpiece of eclectic Victorian architecture rivaling the work of Louis Sullivan…just kidding.
More weird grid conflict moments:
I do like these clerestories and the natural light that they bring in:
East windows:
A lot of the Wexner Center’s exhibits are the kind of nonsensical, esoteric modern art that gets one into prestigious art schools. It’s like Knowlton’s student work. Just like architecture, I enjoy good, logical contemporary art (which can still be possible despite abstraction), but when it delves into “banana-taped-to-a-wall” levels, it’s just ridiculous.
What are these, saggy balloons? Compare it to these exhibits from 2022, which I enjoyed:
Another look at the busy clerestories:
Not to be the snobbish traditionalist, but what does this kind of art even represent?
It’s like crumpling up a sheet of notebook paper, taping it to a foam rectangle, and presenting it as your final studio model. As long as you come up with some witty summary like “This library proposal represents the futility of effort in architectural pedagogy while simultaneously critiquing the double-curved, dematerialized facades and insufficient spatial adjacencies of contemporary architecture,” the reviewers will eat it up. This must be the art world equivalent.
…and here is the actually built architectural equivalent:
I of course have lots of respect for Peter Eisenman and would take this building over all the Modernist crap on campus any day of the week, but works of architecture like this have led to the worst of designer contemporary architecture of the 2020s.
Click here for part 2, which covers the other competition entries.
Sources:
https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/24059
https://library.osu.edu/site/buckeyestroll/
https://knowltondl.osu.edu/Browse/objects/facet/collection_facet/id/18
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