Understanding how space influences the amount and type of interaction in an interdisciplinary environment is the cornerstone of the Socially Ergonomic Environmental Design (SEED) planning guide. Coined by Gwen Drury, a consultant for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (WID) building project in Madison, SEED involves the process of cataloging naturally occurring spatial behaviors associated with forming and developing successful interdisciplinary collaborations, then designing spaces that support those behaviors.

“We want to make it less awkward for researchers and individuals working in an interdisciplinary environment to cross those disciplinary boundaries,” says Drury.

Integrating SEED into the design and construction of research facilities requires a project vision in which interaction is prioritized as fundamental to research collaboration. SEED explores the notion of a collaborative interaction continuum in which all aspects of the research environment, from building site to lab bench, are viewed as interconnected opportunities for team-oriented discovery. SEED keeps the design team focused on the interaction goals of the project, in the context of important competing priorities.

Analyzing Past and Present Research Building Models

Drury is working with principals at Ballinger, the Philadelphia architectural and engineering firm designing the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, to ensure that the Institutes’ spaces will provide optimal opportunities for building users to create and grow collaborative relationships.

“Many institutions we studied throughout the world believe they are building for interdisciplinary, collaborative science,” says Jeffrey French, FAIA, a principal at Ballinger. “However, what we found more often than we expected were co-location models that were really multidisciplinary in the sense that different departments were merely located in the same building. That alone does not necessarily breed collaboration.”

Research building models have changed over the past four decades, but there has been one constant: in most cases interaction did not top the priority list of design and construction fundamentals. Instead, efficiency has long been the priority driver.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, efficiency was achieved by minimizing circulation space using the double-loaded corridor. That trend was followed for nearly two decades by the racetrack corridor concept, prioritizing daylight to both lab and office while centrally internalizing lab support,” notes French. “The model prevalent today is the plan which layers offices, lab support, and labs, again prioritizing daylight to these areas, but maximizing efficiency via single corridors and often deploying an elastic boundary between lab and lab support to enhance flexibility.”

Today, some institutions are abandoning the traditional practice of housing researchers with their departmental colleagues. Rather, they are taking representatives from various departments and co-locating them, not just in the same building, but in the same laboratory in accordance with research focus areas. This trend signals the growing importance of bridging disciplinary boundaries and of the need to build facilities that optimally support such interaction.

Design Approaches to Enhance Interaction

Over time, different approaches have been used by designers to enhance (or even dictate) the interaction patterns of people. These approaches include environmental determinism, environmental possible-ism, and environmental probable-ism.

The first approach subscribes to the philosophy that if you construct a building in a certain way, people will automatically behave in a certain way.

“Environmental determinism assumes direct cause and effect between place design and behavior, which has been largely discredited,” says Drury. “This is a philosophy of forcing people to do something by limiting their choices and that’s not what we want to do in research buildings. We want people to exercise their creativity.”

Environmental possible-ism takes the opposite tack, trying to ensure that there are no impediments to the desired behavior. It doesn’t necessarily facilitate interaction—it simply doesn’t prevent it.

Environmental probable-ism underpins the SEED concept because it assumes that one should not only permit interaction but can enhance the probability that it will occur. Identifying peoples’ naturally preferred spatial behaviors in different situations and designing to support those behaviors in places where those situations can optimally occur is key to SEED.  This approach seeks to make optimal interaction sustainable over time, minimizing the need for retro-fits.

Social capital is emerging as a previously under valued by-product of interaction in the research community. The premise is that any group of individuals will be more effective and productive if they have trust and a connection between them, than they would be without it. These tight ties of connection can be nurtured by working or socializing together.

SEED Checklist

Drury introduced the idea of a checklist for systematically cataloguing, prioritizing, and measuring the success of design efforts to support interaction. The checklist was then tailored by French, fellow Ballinger principal Craig Spangler, and Drury to guide planning for the collaborative interaction continuum envisioned for the WID project. Referred to by the principals as Version 1.0, it includes six categories: placemaking, flow, perceptual access, territoriality, spatial relations, and biophilia.

“We’re trying to create an environment where interaction is likely to occur without being forced,” says French. “Vibrant, lively spaces emerge when people are given choices. We are seeking a systematic approach, a tool which we as designers could use, and be held accountable for strategies we intend to enhance interaction, so we created this checklist. It keeps us focused as we plan, and will guide future efforts at assessment.”

Placemaking

The first category focuses on providing space that attracts users and encourages them to linger in a place. For example, users are likely to choose places that have comfortable seating, a place to rest their coffee or laptop, and plenty of electrical outlets. This category also references visual respite, or giving users a reason to pause by providing a breathtaking view or an artistic item.

Refuge describes spaces toward which individuals tend to gravitate. These semi-enclosed spaces feel like a refuge, but also provide long-distance views of other parts of the building.

“The concept of Powers of 10 applies to placemaking,” says Spangler. “The idea is that if you have 10 things to choose from in a particular place, people are likely to come to that area for a variety of reasons. These could include a coffee shop, restaurant, conference room, or a garden area.”

Sittable space refers not just to having places to sit, but also to making sure the seats are movable or that they can accommodate a variety of sitting configurations. These spaces are especially effective when incorporated at crossroads, where paths cross, or along desired lines.

Flow

This category refers to how people choose to move through a space. Central to flow are crossroads and draws, which are areas people naturally visit, including restrooms, coffee stations, food establishments, work stations, or copy rooms. It is important to locate draws in areas where they can be readily found and not in an isolated corridor.

“We can take advantage of the places where people are already likely to go,” says French.  “How you then cluster or arrange these draws is significant in enhancing the potential for interaction. Although building efficiency is often a mandate in a building project, you can be so captive to efficiency that you just can’t add additional space that isn’t in a net assignable program. Buildings that prioritize efficiency tend not to have the crossroads or opportunities to cluster draws in ways that best spawn casual interaction.”

Designers can create opportunities for incidental interaction in the flow of circulation. Touchdown stations, such as computer kiosks or docking stations, afford short term activities and tend to attract users to linger as they move through a space. Desire lines are natural paths that develop between points that many people find of interest and travel between.

Perceptual Access

Transparency, wayfinding, and sight lines are the key components of this category. The premise is that what individuals can see may influence what they choose to do. Though transparency offers more visual information, it is crucial to attain the right balance between the openness of transparency and the users’ ability to control that transparency. Occupants tend to feel like they are in a fish bowl if there is too much transparency, giving people the ability to watch closely or linger too near a work station. Strategies for maintaining perceptual access while giving users more control over their privacy include creating a buffer zone between the public and private spaces of a building by using fritted glass or to providing users with window shades for privacy when needed, but still enabling people to see into shared areas like laboratories.

Wayfinding is enabled by creating landmarks, districts, nodes, paths and edges that create a clear overall image of the space layout in users’ minds. Signage and graphics should serve only as a secondary wayfinding strategy. If strong “imageability” of the space has been successfully established, the signage serves—at best—as confirmation as users find their way.

Sight lines are unobstructed visual connections between spaces and often correspond with desire lines, resulting in users’ creation of short cuts if designers haven’t planned ahead and built them in.

Territoriality

Territoriality deals with shared space, defensible space, front and back yards, and jurisdiction. Territorial boundaries are used by people to form their groups, but eliminating visible boundaries does not result in people coalescing into one big, happy group. Optimal interaction layouts create boundaries for small groups, but keep the boundaries porous.

Defensible spaces are areas that can be visibly owned or delineated. Front yard areas are more public spaces, while back yard areas are more private. Jurisdiction defines temporary, flexible space that is not owned by any particular individual or department.

Designing for territory can mean different things. The University of Wisconsin’s chemistry building, for example, uses rigid boundaries to define the territory and the defensible space. However, territory is less rigidly defined at Imperial College in London where work stations are located just outside the laboratory, and there remains little ambiguity about where someone’s personal space begins.

Spatial Relations

Spatial relations deals with the volume and dimension of spaces; proxemics, the range of comfortable social distances; and gradients of privacy. Other elements are tropism, the tendency to turn toward sources of light or motion; low building height with added accessibility between floors; and horizontal distance between communicators.

“According to research conducted by Dr. Tom Allen of MIT, the ability to see other floors and to see activity on those floors contributes significantly to interaction,” says French. “Horizontal distance is also a major factor impacting interaction. Dr. Allen’s research shows that interaction diminishes when the horizontal distance between particular individuals exceeds 70 feet.”

Biophilia

This term refers to the tendency of living things to seek out the presence of other living things. The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University accomplished the “see and be seen” component by grouping people spaces to enable individuals to see each other on a continuous basis. The labs are in the center and the support zones are on the perimeter.

Density is a major concern of biophilia, as well. It is assumed that people who have plenty of room for working, while still being able to easily interact with others, will be happy, although evidence suggests that moderate crowding can be a good thing for interaction. Not surprisingly, however, the level of happiness starts to diminish when individuals begin to feel a loss of control over the amount of interaction, and start to feel too crowded. The answer is to provide a comfortable density with user-modulated privacy choices.

“We are moving away from the sole practitioner model of research, and towards collaboration.  Interaction is critical to collaboration, and we believe the SEED concept will enhance our ability to design spaces to support and facilitate it,” says French.

Drury believes that the SEED framework can aid in the design of any building or space in which un-forced, lively interaction is a high priority.

By Tracy Carbasho