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The Mesa Community College Physical Science Building typifies several important new trends in lab buildings for the physical sciences and engineering. Photo: Liam Frederick, courtesy SmithGroup
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Below the rooftop solar array of a brand-new community college building just outside of Phoenix, students and teachers can be found enjoying an open, free environment designed to encourage spontaneous interaction. While this sounds typical of any campus center or student union, the scene is unexpected in this facility. Why? Because it’s a tightly programmed laboratory building, full of equipment for studying geology, astronomy, chemistry and physics.
Yet the new, 62,500-ft2 South West Physical Sciences Building at Mesa (Ariz.) Community College typifies several important new trends in lab buildings for the physical sciences and engineering. Most notably, today’s emphasis is on cross-disciplinary, collaborative and highly interactive settings that support what MIT physics professor John Belcher has called “the teaching of underlying concepts.”
Like Belcher, many experts believe this approach leads to better-prepared researchers and breakthrough discoveries. Students prefer it, too: At Harvard, there are three times more joint concentrations in chemistry and physics than there were 15 years ago. At Stanford, the number of earth science majors has increased, reversing a longstanding decline, ever since the major was changed from the single discipline of geology to the interdisciplinary “earth systems.”
Reflecting this idea, today’s lab buildings for physical sciences and engineering are more integrated—just like the faculties and research programs they contain. Dealing with a lower division in the physical sciences tends to be a single-discipline affair; today’s teaching and research, on the other hand, can be highly interdisciplinary. The typical curriculum is designed to bring together students from various disciplines or majors for classes that are usually upper-division sciences and often taught by several cooperating instructors.
The settings look as collaborative as they sound. For example, at the undergraduate science building at the Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the goal was to teach life science as an interdisciplinary subject encompassing biology, physics, chemistry and engineering. To do so, their new, 140,000-ft2 instructional facility is a flexible environment combining cross-discipline classrooms with computer labs and dry and wet studio class labs. At Virginia Polytechnic Institute’s Institute for Critical Technologies and Applied Sciences in Blacksburg, Va., on the other hand, a new 42,000-ft2 instructional and research facility is designed to focus on engineering-led, interdisciplinary research in nanotechnology, bioengineering and bio-materials. The resulting labs are open-plan, with few walls between the carefully co-located workspaces designed for interdisciplinary teams.
By definition, engineering science is an interdisciplinary, interactive pursuit, integrating the sciences with areas of traditional engineering such as research design and analysis. New engineering labs reflect this fact, too: A 70,000-ft2 addition planned for the Brown Hall Engineering Building at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, for example, was designed to spark cross-discipline dialogue by showcasing the departments housed in the facility: mechanical, electrical, civil and structural engineering, as well as the school’s well-regarded specialty in mines and its new thrust in bio-engineering. The platform for this crusade will include labs for dry and wet engineering, energy conservation and thermal sciences, as well as mechanics of materials and robotics/automation.
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A 70,000-ft2 addition for the Brown Hall Engineering Building at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden was designed to spark cross-disciplinary dialogue. Image: Anderson Mason Dale Architects.
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Breaking down barriers
As these new instructional labs show, creating interdisciplinary environments compels institutions to consider not only the means, but the ends, too. Merging disciplines effectively is seen as a way to break down barriers and pursue advanced education. The resulting work groups have the potential to innovate, solve new problems, and even create entirely new branches of science.
This mindset informs cutting-edge research facilities, too. Created for nanoscience inquiry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Molecular Foundry was conceived and designed to coalesce various sciences working side-by-side in the same building. Each floor is dedicated to a slightly different area of study, drawing appropriately from multiple disciplines to define and apply new ways of understanding complex situations.
This trend arguably took hold first in new facilities for the biological sciences. While there are parallels, the issues are notably different for physical sciences and engineering. First, to be successful, these buildings demand a highly integrated mix of learning and research spaces. Second, they require more flexibility and adaptability and plenty of room for interaction—traits that our institutions, too often, sorely lack. Third, they work optimally when their labs and associated spaces follow established benchmarks in organization and infrastructure, including proven metrics for space planning. As opposed to biomedical and biological labs, the physical sciences must accommodate a variety of scientific disciplines where the needs might be very different.
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The undergraduate science building at the University of Michigan, completed in 2006, was designed with the goal to teach life science as an interdisciplinary subject. Photo: Justin Maconochie, courtesy SmithGroup
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Lights, cameras, interaction!
To plan and design the best facilities, project teams should take time to understand the dynamics behind these new models of instruction and research—as well as the metrics and benchmarks for their facilities.
Besides being devoted to the physical sciences or engineering (or both), these new lab buildings are also linked by an idea about human behavior: In all cases, the goal is for people to interact with each other as much as possible. This takes form at the Colorado School of Mines, for example, as student lounge/study areas and instructional research clusters, as well as their “showcase labs” for robotics, automation and energy conversion. The school even created a celebratory display area at the main office for added socializing and informal get-togethers.
Collaborative learning is another goal. In this case, the key is supporting joint intellectual efforts by students, sometimes with teachers—common tasks in which each individual depends on and is accountable to the others. At the new Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building at the Univ. of Maryland, for example, this is achieved with instructional-research clusters comprising scientist and grad student offices with dedicated interaction areas arranged around instructional labs and dry computer research labs. At the Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, showcase labs are planned for the new Electrical and Computer Engineering
Building to boost cooperative learning in robotics and circuits.
Another proven method for facilitating interaction and cross-discipline collaboration is through the use of transparency—both architectural and institutional. Focusing on physical porosity, designs of successful science and engineering buildings use in-between spaces in stairs and hallways for people to interact. When appropriate, glass walls and open environments provide visual connections among students and researchers. The whole idea is to transcend the typical physical barriers to people working together.
Efficient and green
As appealing as the idea of a “lab without walls” may be, the concept instantly raises questions about basic lab functionality for chemistry, physics and engineering. For that reason, new physical science and engineering labs first need to meet key benchmarks and metrics that are proven to work. See the expanded edition for information about these important considerations: http://www.rdmag.com/General/Laboratory-Design-News-Archive/.
Speaking of efficiency, every lab project should carefully consider ways to improve energy efficiency and the overall sustainability of the facility. This improves the appeal of the labs, for example by increasing the amount of natural light and outdoor views to reduce electrical lighting needs. But in general, the need for clean power drives energy-efficiency opportunities for computer, engineering and physical sciences labs. For chemistry labs, HVAC and fume-hood exhaust are the main energy costs; ventilation alone accounts for ~50% of the typical lab power load.
The biggest opportunity for sustainable laboratories is in careful sizing of mechanical and electrical equipment based on typical usage in similar facilities. By “right-sizing” the chillers, boilers and electrical distribution systems, energy use can be reduced by up to a third or more. This was the case for LBNL’s Molecular Foundry, where air-handler and chiller loads were reduced by 35% and an electrical substation was cut by 38%.
Other sustainable design strategies include demand-control ventilation, which senses environmental parameters and adjusts ventilation rates accordingly. High-performance fume hoods, which also help reduce airflow, can improve energy efficiency by up to 30%. Similarly, labs can capture and recycle waste energy by using heat wheels and coil energy-recovery loops. Some cutting–edge facilities have also incorporated chilled beams, which provide localized and highly efficient heating and cooling. Many of these ideas and opportunities are outlined in the Labs for the 21st Century or Labs21 program, a joint effort of the EPA and the Dept. of Energy (www.labs21century.gov).
Other planning considerations are driven by safety and proper lab support. For engineering and the physical sciences, buildings must be well-isolated against vibration and electromagnetic interference, with special separations for HPM, or hazardous-processing materials. Oversized equipment is common, necessitating high-bay spaces with overhead doors and adjacent outdoor work areas.
Getting all these details right--and doing it cost-effectively--is vital for a successful research lab or instructional facility. For today’s labs for physical science and engineering, it’s the foundation for new approaches to learning and discovery, but it’s just the beginning. Most critically, tomorrow’s lab buildings need to also respond to the cross-disciplinary, collaborative and integrated approaches that are driving innovation in our educational and research institutions. By keeping all these considerations in mind, we stand the best chance of advancing the people and projects behind them.
Victor J. Cardona, AIA, is a VP and director of lab planning at SmithGroup (www.smithgroup.com), an 800-person architecture, engineering, interiors and planning firm with 11 offices across the U.S. SmithGroup specializes in the science and technology, healthcare, learning, and workplace markets.
Published in Laboratory Design Newsletter: Vol. 14, No. 11, November, 2009, p.1-3.
