However, an emerging body of research highlights the limitations of this paradigm. A new study documents the pivotal roles that location, space, and time play in lab productivity. True to its scientific approach, the study team has also developed a set of metrics to evaluate these attributes in existing and future lab designs.

“Speed is a common unit of measure among research scientists,” explains Michael Haggans, principal at Madison, Wis.-based Flad Architects and leader of the study team. “To the extent physical environments enhance speed, certain lab configurations will make researchers more productive, enabling them to do more tasks over time.”

Haggans concedes that the team’s observations could be seen as intuitive, but he stresses that they are also grounded in the rigor of social science methodology.

“This work provides a perspective that is different from the funding administrator’s,” he continues. “Rather, it represents the thinking of research scientists, whose focus is on producing science, not just on providing buildings.”

Researchers on the Move

The emphasis on speed was almost an incidental finding in the Flad study, which was conducted by an interdisciplinary team including Flad planner and architect Trevor Calarco; Thomas Gieryn, chairman of the sociology department at Indiana University (IU), Bloomington; and Michael Chippendale, a retired entomology professor now presiding over his own consulting firm in Columbia, Mo.

As part of a broader effort to understand the dynamics between science facilities and their occupants, the team documented the move of an Indiana University research group from an older, refurbished building (Myers Hall) into the newly constructed Simon Hall in the summer of 2007.

“We wanted to find out what happens when very complicated groups of interacting people move from one location to another,” says Calarco.

The study team initially anticipated that the process of transplanting complex research functions would be closely related to the new space. It was, but not in the ways they expected.

“From the moment we began this study, it became very clear that the move was all about time, in two senses,” Calarco relates. “First was the issue of how to minimize downtime during the move itself, and second was how the new space would save time in research.”

Interviews revealed that scientists were intent on running experiments within a day or two of the move. An oft-voiced preference was to locate frequently used instruments in convenient clusters, in contrast to the previous lab set-up, where they had been scattered to fit into a remodeled building. For the researchers, bringing key pieces of equipment together meant they could be operational in the new facility within hours rather than days.

What prompted the sense of urgency, the team of design professionals and sociologists wondered?

Gieryn views speed as a pillar of the new knowledge society. The “rush,” he says, has been a force in the manufacturing environment since the early automotive assembly line. Today, with economic productivity, innovation, and global competitiveness all a function of knowledge, the need for speed has transformed the research lab into the factory of the 21st century.

“The goal continues to be to improve speed. You can see that in the repetition and the routinization in both places. What we are learning sociologically about labs is that space is equivalent to time,” he continues.  Identifying the present-day grant system as the primary catalyst, he traces out the cycle: “The more funding an investigator receives, the more lab space she has, which leads to more workers conducting more experiments, generating more published papers, obtaining additional grants.”

The equation “time equals money and space” makes speed the fulcrum of good lab design. As Gieryn points out, the study of the Simon Hall experience confirmed that the high-priority issues were moving scientists quickly so they could get their experiments set up in a day or two, and then saving steps so their research could proceed more quickly—all to match the accelerated pace of the grant treadmill.

Time and Proximity Metrics

With the lab/factory relationship acknowledged, the next step for the Flad team was to come up with the empirical data that influence scientific productivity.  The IU research group was again the observation target, this time to determine which features and equipment were essential to the routine working life of the lab.

Providing an overview of its scientific line of inquiry, Chippendale explains that the group about to occupy Simon Hall was devoted to a fundamental problem: the evolution of photosynthesis in bacteria since its origin about 3.5 billion years ago. The investigation is a significant part of a worldwide research effort in this multifaceted area.

“Researchers must draw upon a broad array of scientific disciplines in a lab that includes interrelated fields of science—all the way from microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and structural biology to evolutionary biology,” he comments.

The team had to become familiar with the type of specialized equipment and the sequence of steps necessary to study the evolution of photosynthesis in bacteria. Most of the protocols involved culturing sufficient numbers of bacteria to be able to extract their proteins and nucleic acids, which were then available for analytical studies. Key pieces of equipment included shakers, cell crackers, autoclaves, microscopes, ultra-centrifuges, spectrophotometers, fast protein liquid chromatographs (FPLC), mass spectrometers, thermocyclers, and DNA sequencers. Computers were used extensively for running the most sophisticated equipment and for analyzing data.

“It is very important that the sequence of activities for a particular experiment follows a rigorous timetable. The scientists carefully monitor each step of data collection so that they have confidence when they analyze and interpret their findings and write up the study,” Chippendale points out.

Looking at equipment required by the research group, the Flad team discovered that just 10 items accounted for 75 percent of the total lab usage. The metrics that emerged revealed that roughly 30 percent of space in the lab was in service all the time, “actively used for personal activity;” about 30 percent was used “fairly intensively, for shared activities in non-owned communal space;” and 40 percent was “discernable to be used infrequently,” often devoted to supplies and storage.

The need for access to the equipment was translated into a four-stage scale of proximities: immediately accessible, defined as “very close to the work station,” within five seconds; convenient within the lab, within 20 seconds; adjacent, less than 30 seconds away, for example, in an equipment room in the hallway just outside the lab; and remote, all further points, whether on a different floor or in another building such as a core facility.

Layout Changes Pick up the Pace

Comparing the layout of the research group’s quarters in Myers Hall and its new lab in Simon Hall, the study team noted that the Myers space theoretically accommodated approximately 17 work stations, while Simon has only 11 in the same square footage. The aisles between benches in Myers were only four feet wide. As a result, fewer workstations were fully functional, and activities needed to be staggered rather than concurrent. Adding one more foot to the Simon aisles—an increase of approximately 10 percent in assignable square footage per person—significantly boosts productivity by providing access to everyone's work space, according to Calarco.

Another design change that made a difference was shifting the shared equipment zones from small rooms down the hall to rooms attached to the laboratory. For example, the research group’s two FPLCs, which in Myers were in separate rooms along a hallway, are in Simon ganged back-to-back at the end of a bench, a central location for their multiple users.

“It’s not a question of who owns the equipment, but rather that every second counts,” explains Calarco. “Now, as a research assistant says, ‘We don’t have to run back and forth, we just work.’ This is counter to a research administrator’s preference for less equipment shared by more people. It’s about productivity, not first cost.”
 
Evaluating the equipment locations in the two facilities according to the four metrics of accessibility—immediate, convenient, adjacent, and remote—the team discovered that in Simon the most notable differences occurred within the remote category.

“Twenty percent of the equipment that was formerly remote, down the hall on another floor, is now located within the convenient category, within the researchers’ personal laboratory,” Haggans says.  Eliminating that trek back and forth for eight people generated an appreciable time savings.

Responding to Research and Team Changes

Flexibility in the Simon lab layout also facilitated a major step forward for the research group when it learned that a certain protein analysis required an anaerobic environment. The closest anaerobic hood to the Myers lab, two buildings away, had been going unused because it was deemed too remote, especially for scientists who had to carry their materials with them. The mobile casework in Simon Hall allowed the hood to be moved directly into the lab and set up quickly for all who needed to work there.

“Now they get to reinforce their research, gain years of potentially lost time, and are able to do new research,” observes Haggans.

The Flad study also identified an interesting dimension in the challenge of churn. A steady stream of technicians, post-doctoral fellows, graduate assistants, and undergrads rotated through the lab, each on his own career timetable, creating an ebb and flow in lab population. Some of these ancillary personnel might not even have assigned bench space in the lab, depending on how long a “life span” they had in the research group. Still, they had to be accommodated. On this point Haggans warns that PIs and design professionals may need to push back against the business office penchant to cut space to the bare minimum.

Calarco proposes two ways to accommodate the uneven flow. The first is flexibility, which he defines as the ability to change an environment without outside assistance, for instance through moveable casework and the appropriate supporting utilities, and a double-long bench for the expanding or contracting staff.

Another response to the fluctuations is adaptability, which entails outside assistance.

“Examples of adaptability would be zones designed to accommodate wet surfaces or high equipment, or a zone that might be a chemical prep room in one day, a dark room the next day, and a radioisotope room after that,” Calarco explains. “It would take some configuration change, but the infrastructure within the facility would exist to adapt to that.”

“For the scientists, function is ultimately expressed in productivity,” Haggans summarizes. “Within the laboratory this means sufficient space and equipment located for speed. Within the building, it means support for the community and convenient proximity. Our research will continue to document those physical variables that relate to scientific productivity.”

By Nicole Zaro Stahl