The outdated Physics Building is due for a facelift, but the exact specifications are still up in the air.
Renovations to the building—built in 1948 and added onto in 1963—have been discussed intermittently over the past 15 years, said University Architect John Pearce. The building needs to be updated in order to execute certain labs and experiments, which require carefully controlled atmospheric conditions. The approach that the University will take, however, is unclear.
“We could build a separate experimental building, or we could build a whole new building for the entire department,” Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said.
The cost of renovating the existing building to make it conducive to labs and experiments would cost approximately as much as building a new facility—about $30 million—but funding is one of the major obstacles for the progress of the project, Trask said.
“We lost a lot of money in 2008, [and] it still hasn’t come back,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out how to pay for this, and that will affect, in part, what we decide to do.”
Duke Facilities Management is currently conducting a study to work through the logistics of the project, including where a new building might fit, and what could potentially be housed there, Pearce said. He added that the study should be completed by the end of the academic year.
Lack of sufficient funding, as well as the prioritization of other campus construction projects, has impeded work on the building. Pearce said, however, that the project is beginning to take shape.
Gao said she would like the project to begin as soon as possible, since the current building impedes scholarly work.
“The main issue is the [air conditioning] system of the building,” she said. “Professor[s and] students cannot run experiments during a certain part of the year, like summer, when the temperature and the humidity are difficult.”
Gao added that she realizes it will take time to acquire funding and plan the project.
“We hope it [will] not take too long, but realistically I don’t see how this can happen in even three years,” she said.
Gao also noted that she would prefer to have a new fully furnished building over a partial add-on.
“Having lab space in the new building and then having offices in the other building... is a way to go in the short term, but long term—for professors and students and others who do research in physics—we’d like to do one building where you do research [and] teach your class,” she said.
Trask said there are other projects on the University’s agenda that have priority over the Physics Building, including the West Union Building, Baldwin Auditorium and Page Auditorium. Updating the Physics Building is a priority for the University, Trask said, and it fits in with recent changes made to other science buildings, including renovations to the Biological Sciences Building in the past decade, and the construction of the French Family Science Center in 2006 and the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences in 2004.
Despite the timeline, Pearce said plans to address Physics Building are coming together.
“It’s been discussed for a long time... because the building’s in such bad shape, but this has gotten serious now [with discussion of] a way to sort out the pieces and make it work,” Pearce said.
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