“Just as there are many different ways to teach a course, there are a lot of different facilities solutions,” says Richard Heinz, vice president and principal of Research Facilities Design (RFD) in San Diego, Calif.

The goal is team learning, which can happen even outside the classroom. Science buildings are being designed with collaborative spaces where students and professors can meet casually to discuss a new idea or continue a train of thought that began in the lecture or laboratory.

“We think the entire building is part of the learning environment,” says Heinz.

Thanks to recent designs, team learning also takes place in the most unlikely venue: the lecture hall. These bastions of higher education could not be eliminated from academia, so their designs have evolved to allow for more interaction between students and professors and among the students themselves. In many cases the rooms are tiered to allow two rows of tables on each level, and the seats are moveable, so students can turn around and partner with someone sitting behind them.

Technology also is playing a role, as it makes remote information accessible to many students at once. In the Jordan Hall of Science at the University of Notre Dame, for example, a 250-seat lecture room is equipped with a demonstration hood at the front. The hood is sided with glass through which a camera records the activity inside it. The images are then projected on a screen in the front of the large hall, so even students sitting in the back can observe what’s happening inside the hood.

Just as this piece of laboratory equipment has been brought into the lecture hall, features of other traditional spaces are infiltrating laboratories.

“For the most part, all of the things we’ve ever had in the labs are still there, in addition to a lot of new high-tech equipment,” says Heinz. “We have found this puts a lot of pressure on traditional space standards. The notion that the lecture is done somewhere else isn’t the case anymore. Even if it is just a recitation at the beginning of a lab period, it is important to make sure that there is plenty of room up in the teaching wall area.”

The lecture area of the lab can be equipped in many ways—with a demonstration table, podium, cart or cabinet—in addition to classroom-style seating for the students. It is important to plan in advance for the space these items require, cautions Heinz.

One of the most noticeable changes in the labs themselves is the integration of different technology alongside the traditional wet benches, safety cabinets, and analytical equipment. Computers, for instance, are no longer relegated to separate computer labs, but are installed on benches, tables, and desks in the labs themselves. At North Carolina State University, for example, computer monitors are installed on swing arms so they can be moved out of the way when not in use. The keyboards rest on pullout trays, and the CPUs are stored in cabinets below the benches.

More recently, computers are taking up less and less space as students move toward the use of laptops. Invariably the computers are networked either with hard-wiring or with wireless technology, allowing students to collectively view on a large screen digital data that is downloaded from a scientific instrument, the professor’s computer, or from one of their own computers. Professors also are making more use of smart-boards in the laboratories.

Different Labs for Different Disciplines

While lab designers now face an almost limitless set of options when designing an academic laboratory, some designs work better for certain disciplines, says Sean Towne, a principal architect at RFD.

In general chemistry, for example, long island benches remain common because it is efficient to put eight students at one bench, and it offers students a 90-degree view of the teaching wall. Smaller, four-person benches give faculty more room to maneuver but they provide less bench space or require more square footage, and some students will end up with their backs to the teaching wall. To solve that problem, some labs are equipped entirely with face-forward benches.

“The idea is that it sets up a little bit better for extended lectures, while all the services are managed around the perimeter,” says Towne.

Edgewood College in Madison, Wis., has fully integrated lab and lecture in the general chemistry laboratories, with fume hoods and wet benches around the perimeter, allowing the center of the room to be completely dry, explains Heinz.

“In the middle of the room, there are not lab tables, but classroom tables,” he says. “There is no wet chemistry out in the middle.”

When it comes to organic chemistry, the primary student workspace is the fume hood, which requires 52 to 60 sf per student. If the hoods are concentrated around the perimeter of the lab, it leaves the center of the room available for benches or tablet arm chairs, so the lab could accommodate instruments or a student break-out area for group discussions.

The downside of ringing the room with fume hoods is that the setup does not allow any natural light into the room, and professors always see their students from the back. Putting the fume hoods perpendicular to the wall and siding them in glass solves both problems.

It is convenient to have classroom space built into the lab, but students are still limited in what they can do there. The ideal is to have a space dedicated to the lab but separate from it. The University of Notre Dame has what it calls a “data analysis room” between two laboratories. Students can retreat from the lab, have a snack, talk about their work, and still see what is going on in the lab.

Some types of biology labs are frequently being outfitted with moveable tables, says Towne. This works best for general biology, botany, ecology, and physiology labs where students need access to power and data at their tables, but not water and gas. Tables can get their power from overhead service lines, or from floor boxes that power the tables. The boxes can be tightly sealed to help protect them from spills.

A lab at Seattle Pacific University has tables located in a ‘docked-in’ peninsula configuration, so professors can roll a cadaver out from the adjacent storage room to the middle of the lab under an overhead light. The students can gather round the cadaver to observe and then go back to their home position at the perimeter of the room.

Physics labs have a lot of flexibility because they require less fixed equipment. They often have a central experimental demonstration area in the lab, with student tables and computers around the perimeter.

Responsible Building Design and Stewardship

The commitment to making science education a hands-on experience extends to the buildings themselves, which are being designed with environmentally sustainable features that are put front and center for everyone to see. This allows the institution to lead by example, and to make the building itself a learning tool for students.

St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., has a bioswale to capture and filter water runoff. Life science students there take water samples from the bioswale as part of their course work.

At the Vermeer Science Center at Central College in Pella, Iowa—the first LEED-certified building in the state—real-time data about the building’s solar power and other environmental systems is available on a Web site and displayed on touch screens throughout the building.

“They have really done a nice job integrating that as an educational opportunity,” says Towne.

By Lisa Wesel