The two-story building houses teaching and research laboratories, classrooms and lecture halls, conference and seminar rooms, faculty offices, and a reading room/library as well as a planetarium and observatory. The facility's specialized physics laboratories and classrooms have been designed to foster the goals of collaborative, hands-on learning inherent in the nationally acclaimed "Workshop Physics" model developed at the College. This learning model features T-shaped benches functioning alternately for four-student group experiments and shared computer operations while the central area is designed for group demonstrations.

The L-shaped building plan accommodates the Physics/Astronomy program spaces in one wing, the Math/Computer Science program spaces in the other, and shared spaces at the intersection of the two. The two wings embrace a private garden space featuring an outdoor classroom.

One the exterior, the building utilizes the predominant campus material--a local limestone--on the two public façades facing the campus, and stucco on the private "garden" sides. The building façade on the street side is modulated to express important program elements: the lecture hall and library are contained in an angled stone-clad form at one end, and the planetarium and observatory at the other, housed in a dramatic metal-glass conical form, contrasting with the rough-hewn stone. A glass lobby providing separate access for the public to planetarium functions separates the planetarium/observatory element from the main façade.