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Designs on Laboratories
Date: 12-02-04 21:33
Dozens of universities have recently built new laboratories featuring large, open spaces and many rows of lab benches. The new designs are a radical shift from the tradition of small lab rooms supervised by single scientists as fiefdoms. Do the new designs make sense? Would you like to see them on your campus? Does the traditional breakdown of "turf" help or hurt science? Read more...
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-06-04 15:58
I would think that all aspects of security would be of concern to researchers having to share such a large and open space with others!
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-07-04 09:08
Our department has new labs with free movement within a floor. There have been incidents of expensive reagents disappearing or anonymous improper equipment use; although I'm not sure that this is significantly worse than when we had the traditional architecture. What doesn't ring true is the promotion of open lab designs as a way to increase interaction. A closed door doesn't stop anybody I know from speaking to a colleague. Such designs are simply cheaper to build because less area is lost to interior walls.
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-07-04 09:49
I worked where we made a transition from an open environment to individual small labs with code-locked doors that sprung shut (to comply with fire laws). My experience was that this vastly decreased interaction among colleagues. The psychological effect of walking down a hallway of closed and locked doors is more potent than one might expect. I think it also decreased the quality of the work being produced, as there was less brainstorming.
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-07-04 11:02
I believe in open work spaces because they foster new ideas, but moreover because we are social primates and most of us desire or even need the company of our own species. I hope that everyone who enjoys open space work environs will take a moment to give some thought to social animals being singly-caged in laboratories. Even if you prefer your own private lab with locked doors I hope you will take a moment to think about what it would be like if you could never leave that locked room again. Primates and dogs, just two of the very social species used in laboratory experiments are more often than not put in cages by themselves where they resort to self-mutilation or stereotypic behaviors to cope with their isolation. The 1985 amendments to the Animal Welfare Act were supposed to cure this ill-treatment but institutions fought hard against the amendments so the regulation requiring exercise for dogs and enrichment for nonhuman primates is now nothing but a piece of paper that must be shown to a USDA inspector. Even if you don't use animals in your work I urge you to find out if your institution makes any effort to relieve the boredom, frustration, and pain that animals in your laboratories face everyday. Thank you.
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-08-04 09:54
"There is nothing new under the sun in the field of education. There is only the re-working of old concepts..."
An educator whom I respected very much told me this once. Since then this statement has haunted my outlook on "new" ideas in education. I see this statement affirmed so often.
In or around the 1960's a new wave of school design swept the U.S.A. That design was also called "...the Open Concept". It's influences spread from Kindergarten through graduate school. It was also called "...schools without walls."
Of course, it failed miserably. In some cases less than a decade later saw the "dilbertization" of these large, open areas into smaller areas where one could concentrate on one's research or on private matters concerning students in, shall we say, privacy.
Not only do we need walls but we also need soundproofing in our schools.
Picture an English class next to a bandroom, all with no walls.
I will make this additional comment in passing. Some scientific labs require not only walls but in some cases air filtration to prevent cross-contamination with substances, both biologic and otherwise, that can ruin a research project and skew the data and negate its results.
If we expect to carry on research in our research institutions, how in the world can you expect it to be done in such conditions with no walls?
If we expect to conduct classes, partitions are not enough to keep distractions from destroying the concentration required to keep the class on task.
On the other hand, it is good to be socially at ease with colleagues and students. Open spaces are great in Student Union buildings, gymnasiums and places in institutions where groups meet and interact in a social setting.
If this concept is to be workable, it must be planned and carried out by those who are expected to occupy the spaces and who are expected to produce results. Did anybody ask individual faculty members what they though was appropriate for education AND for research?
No, the majority cannot rule on this if you expect individuals to produce results.
Think about this. I teach Radiologic Technology. How comfortable would you be with my live x-ray lab not having walls that were lead-lined, or, simply just having no walls at all? Now, remember, my undergraduate students will be making radiation exposures under indirect supervision as a part of their required classes all day with you having class in the space right next to mine. Well, you have nothing to worry about there, such a thing is prohibited both by federal law and the administrative rules of the Indiana State Board of Health.
Just having this "dream" of a perfect facility strong armed through the faculty and student body can result in a disaster. Furthermore, with the investment in facilities being what it is today, it will be a disaster that may take decades to overcome.
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-12-04 11:05
The design of research space is like the design of any other space: one must first outline the goals/objectives that one wishes to accomplish in the lab. Maintaining sterility, prohibiting cross-contamination are all important issues but interdisciplinary research pushes the limits of traditional disciplines. These labs have tremendous potential, as long as communication lines remain open between researchers.
These types of labs have become more common place at PUIs as space on these campuses tend to be more limited. A lot of work has gone on with respect to planning both teaching and research space and what it means to the education of undergraduate studes.
One should go to www.pkal.org to look at all their documentation about building design.
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-14-04 13:08
Dear Biologist, PUI...
It is good to meet with faculty, both from your department and from others to discuss your research. Regular departmental meetings where each faculty member presents their research for scrutiny will sometimes produce the results that you seek and of which you speak so highly.
However, it has been my experience that constructive criticism is not what usually occurs under such conditions. So much so, in fact, that unless I had a well-known reputation, I would be reluctant to share many projects with my fellow faculty until they are well on their way to being completed.
If cooperation is what is needed in research, that is more likely to occur in a department where there is little competition between faculty members for either lab space or for funding.
Let us not forget that Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor in a squash court beneath the stands of an unused football stadium at the University of Chicago.
Lab space does not have to be built for a purpose, however, it is a good idea to have a variety of laboratory space available for researchers, not 'just' open labs. That is my point. I am not saying do not build open labs, I am saying do not build 'only' open labs.
If the main reason to make open labs in one large room is because there is a shortage of lab space, funding to build labs or real estate on which to build them, then the design of that 'open' lab is being made for the wrong reason.
If the 'open' lab is being made as a political statement, then perhaps more traditional forms of protest should be considered that will not disturb researchers.
Science always seems to find a way thanks to determined researchers that beileve in what they are doing. I am sure that good research occurs in open labs as well as labs with walls. However, there are certain things that you cannot do in labs that are not sequestered, there are certain types of research that shoud be sequestered for the safety of everyone and there are certain types of research that require large, open labs.
Forcing ALL researchers into an 'open lab concept' for whatever reason is a big mistake.
Re: Designs on laboratories
Date: 12-26-04 12:23
I would be happy with labs that have cabinets I can reach without a ladder. And I'm 5'4". Can we have that architectural revolution, where shelving and storage is reachable? It would seem not, the buildings going up at UWisc-Madison and UMich-AA are all based on high-rise, nonscrubbable, but extremely fashionable designs. The best lab design I've ever seen was in an industrial lab in Ohio, where they had storage facilities as a separate room: you get a cart, load it up with the things you need (they had a barcode-bleeping thing to update inventory, you just bleeped things out like a supermarket, and then the lab manager would order more automatically), push the cart through a clean passthrough to minimize dust, and in the middle of the lab the equipment and benches were all underneath a big air-handling system. The benches were open, but because of the air-handling system, you could do just about anything you wanted on the benchtop.
Not my dream lab, though: having survived several hazardous spills, evacuations, HazMat cleanups and fires, including undergrads who think it's "cute" to sneak up on you while you're working with biohazards, I can honestly say that it's safer and less disruptive by far to have closed labs with offices kept separate. When there's a spill, fire, explosion, natural disaster, or undergrads at work in one lab, you can always retreat to another and continue your work. If the power goes out in one lab, you can have half your cultures safely stored in another.
There is also the issue of inventory and access. Every semester, I have this conversation with the undergrads (new trainees when I was in industry):
Me: So, you've read the training manual about biohazards and passed the quiz, now I'll show you how biohazards are handled here. This is the biohazard bag, it's red and it has this symbol. It is for disposing of contaminated plasticware only. Please don't throw regular trash in here, biohazards are expensive to dispose of. Only throw things like disposable plastic inoculation loops, cell scrapers, or Kimwipes you've used to mop up spills in here. Okay?
New Student: Okay, I got it, only plastic and Kimwipes if they are contaminated.
Me: This is the sharps box. This is where you throw contaminated glass and needles. Only contaminated glass and needles go in here.
NS: Needles and glass. Slides and stuff.
Me: This freezer is the biohazard freezer; make sure you use all the reagents from this freezer in the hood.
NS: In the hood, okay.
Without fail, within two weeks, there will be biohazard bags full of trash, glass slides and re-capped needles thrown in the sink (in the SINK! not even in the trash!), and a biohazard spill on the countertop with a dirty papertowel resting nearby. The same exact thing happens in industry, I used to work with freshly-graduated kids who used volatile mutagens on an open countertop three feet away with no respirator. No amount of training, encouragement, bribery or punishment seems to pound lab safety and hygiene into people's heads. I work with a lot of things that have to be endonuclease-free, and believe me, if I didn't live in a colleague-free cave, I'd never get anything done.
Finally, my last industrial job tried this tactic with our offices, only with non-cuboid-cubicles that were supposed to be more space-efficient. After losing 75% of our storage space, forcing us to throw out most of our hard-copy articles that weren't available in PDF form and schlepp our books home, we found the net result was that no one ever knew whose phone was ringing. The major bonus was, you could hear quite clearly what the hiring/firing plans were and send your resume/CV out accordingly, and some enterprising souls took the opportunity to augment their income with insider trading. And, as always, finding out whether someone was at their desk or in the lab followed the Uncertainty Principle: you could either know where someone was or what they were working on, but not both.