"There is a growing emphasis on a hands-on laboratory environment where students become engaged in science, and learn science by doing science," says Richard M. Heinz, vice president and principal architect at Research Facilities Design (RFD) in San Diego. Heinz and Sean Towne, another principal architect at RFD, focus on the programming and design of laboratory spaces as consultants to building architects, and have been tracking the evolution of teaching laboratories for more than a decade. RFD, with 40 architects, engineers, and designers, has collaborated with 125 architectural firms on more than 900 projects in 45 states throughout the United States and overseas.

Many of the changes in building design stem from the one overarching priority to give students hands-on scientific experience. That pedagogical goal has influenced the layout of everything from lecture halls to laboratories to common areas, and has dictated the equipment and technology used in those spaces. How these changes play out depends to some extent on the type of educational institution.

Large public institutions, for example, tend to have discipline-specific buildings, and organize their buildings by function. A large institutional science building may have long blocks of teaching labs, research space, support, and non-lab or administrative office classroom space all in different zones.

At small liberal arts colleges, the goal is to provide students with easy access to the faculty, so science buildings more often are configured with groups of faculty offices, faculty/student research labs, and teaching clusters.

Structured for Collaboration, Equipped for Research

Just as professional researchers benefit from their interactions with other scientists, students learn more when they have the opportunity to collaborate with each other. To accomplish this, architects use creative and flexible seating to blur the distinction between laboratory and lecture spaces.

In lecture halls, they are doing away with the traditional tiered rows of tablet arm chairs or fixed seats in front of fixed tables, where students sit idle while their professor lectures from the front of the hall. A current trend in lecture hall design is to have two rows on the same level, with fixed tables, but movable chairs. That configuration allows students to turn around and share a table with the students behind them, so they can break from the lecture to enter into a discussion or solve a problem collaboratively.

Non-designated space—areas furnished simply with tables, chairs, and maybe a chalkboard or white board—give students a place to work together outside of the classroom. In public institutions, it is sometimes difficult to justify funding a space specifically for this activity, despite its educational value; so, many architects are designing them into alcoves, hallways, and foyers by making those spaces wider.

To provide flexibility like the lecture halls, laboratories now offer an array of seating options [see Laboratory Designs Differ by Discipline] and cutting-edge media technology, so they can double as lecture space while keeping the research equipment close at hand. For example, a lab can be outfitted with two ceiling projectors, one on a typical screen and one that is synchronized with a smart board, which is a giant digitizer that allows the professor to manipulate the image on the screen.

Students, as well as faculty, have access to more media technology in the labs. Computers are becoming common on wet lab benches, so students do not have to wait until they get to a computer lab to do the computations from their experiments. That fairly recent trend already is evolving to incorporate wireless communication and the increased used of laptops, which are mobile and require little adaptation to the benches. Despite increased interest in wireless networking, Heinz continues to design labs that can be hard-wired.

"We are still putting in the conduits and the dual compartment raceways, so the cabling can be brought in with the assumption that wired may always stay a step or two ahead in terms of speed and bandwidth," he says.

"The decision is, do you pull the cable through the lab, or do you send it to a transmitter in the lab?" says Towne. "We are starting to see people make the decision not to wire the labs, even though the pathway might be there."

In fact many of the mechanical systems in the building need to remain accessible without major renovation because it is likely they will have to be upgraded long before the building has neared the end of its useful life.

"Robust structures and accessible systems are the emphasis these days," says Heinz. "And we always try to build in some spare capacity."

Increased technological sophistication brings with it increased concerns about security: Networking with the professor's computer permits electronic communication back and forth during the lab. Attention should be paid to how much control the faculty member has over what the students are looking at, and vice versa.

Architects need to plan how they will accommodate all of this media apparatus, cautions Heinz. In some labs, typical demonstration tables on wheels have been outfitted with a rack for components such as a DVD player, document camera, and computer.

"When you are planning the labs, make sure that there is enough space at the front of the rooms to accommodate all of these things," he says.

Media and information technology are not the only things available to students in newer labs. They also contain sophisticated scientific instruments and large equipment that previously was available only to faculty, graduate students, and professionals. It is no longer unusual to find a 300 megahertz NMR, electron microscope, or gas chromatograph in an undergraduate lab facility.

This costly equipment generates its own security issues. Some institutions use card-keyed entry systems to limit students' access to certain areas and monitor their use of the labs.

Science on Display

At the same time colleges and universities are making scientific research more accessible to science students, they also are making it more visible and inviting to non-scientists with the use of visual displays and artwork.

"I like these new science buildings to reek of science without actually smelling the way old science buildings do," jokes Heinz.

A foyer at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, uses many of the elements being incorporated in science buildings across the country. One foyer is dominated by the presence of a large telescope mounted in the middle of the floor. On either side of it are tables with chairs for small impromptu gatherings. The foyer itself contains a lighted glass case displaying scientific instruments, and another display case can be seen down the hall. A lab off the foyer is visible through a wall of windows, and the floor above it has been left open to an oval-shaped loft above the telescope.

"There are a lot of things going on, but you definitely know that you are in a science building," says Heinz. "Each area of the building—biology, chemistry, physics, and geology—is like that, with its own displays."

An interaction/study space with removable seating at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, is used for student poster displays next to a large picture window that looks out onto the main quad on campus. Its visible location invites non-science students into the building to look at the displays.

Science is also being celebrated with the unique artwork that adorns these buildings. Samford University's new science building, for example, contains a popular Foucault pendulum. The University of San Diego's science and technology building features a light and optics display hanging from the atrium ceiling. Perhaps the most unusual is at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga. Rather than displaying a bust of the college founder, they took blood samples from a direct female descendant and replicated the DNA pattern—part of the sequence and the full sequence—and added a plaque describing what it is. This is painted on a deep red wall towering three stories, and is visible from many vantage points throughout the building. The atrium is used for many public receptions for campus and community events.

Sustainable Building Practices

Another trend is to design teaching laboratories and many other academic facilities to be ecologically sustainable. That can influence the building materials—using wood from a certified sustainable forest, setting minimum requirements for recycled steel, employing dry coating process for steel finishes, and using finishes that minimize off-gassing by using fewer volatile organic compounds—as well mechanical systems, such as fume hood exhaust and ventilation systems outfitted with variable air volume controls, sash-limiting devices, occupancy sensors, and heat recovery systems.

By Lisa Wesel