Prisma building (demolished)

The barracks lasted almost half a century. At the time, footage was taken of the construction for the then Polygonjournaal (Dutch only)

In 1979, Building P was connected to Building S, the new home of the sociologists. The building was designed by Nick Geerts of Kraaijvanger Architects. The architect's “indoor street model” provided a maze of narrow corridors and (too) low ceilings with scattered “little squares” where lost visitors could ask for directions or take the emergency stairs outside. The sociologists of Radboud University, by the way, were based in an almost identical building, by the same architect, on Thomas van Aquino Street until its demolition in 2018. Building S looked like a copy.

Buildings P and S were renamed Prisma Building in 2005. Not because Prisma was a well-known social scientist, but because Prisma Building would be populated with various services of the university after relocation. Thus, the building deserved a neutral name. When it was announced that the School would move to the former Landbouwhuis (Agriculture House), Prisma Building was already named after Herbert Simon, American psychologist and sociologist. That, because in the early 21st century, School buildings were all given names of scientists.

However, it would take until 2016 for that move to take place. All that time, scientists remained residents of Prisma, a building in disrepair, with letter designations such as P/S (the piece of P that used to be called S), P/low (the makeshift building in the woods) and P/high (the new building at the head of P/low). It provided a high daily average of errant visitors. In the midst of it all, you could find a series of stacked, organic concrete forms, by the hand of artist Roel Teeuwen.