The Laboratory Timeline Architecture for Scientific Research Past, Present & Future 1 Prologue

2 Historical Introduction The Scientific Method and Early Labs

3 The Lab Timeline Purpose-Built Labs, Mid-19th Century to Present

4 The Lab Timeline Buildings Stories, Details and Floor Plans

5 What is the Lab of the Future?

6 Epilogue 1 Prologue

4 5 The Laboratory Timeline was born from a few today with new conviction and intent. The second fundamental questions. As architects, we had is that one can’t ignore that great science and noticed that the lab building typology had not been research occurred in certain buildings and spaces comprehensively researched and that the available that are now legacy and that those environments literature on the subject was scattered. We felt compelled engendered discovery and invention. Certainly to investigate this typology and the ways it has been the individual researcher’s imagination or the shaped by research priorities and architectural ambitions research group’s collective minds and inquiries over time, and we began by asking: played a critical role, but the design of the physical environment must have contributed in some way How have research labs, the “knowledge production too. The Lab Timeline therefore tracks the history 1 centers” of our physical environment, evolved from of scientific discovery and invention alongside the solitary spaces in unlikely locations to the scientific history of lab architecture. The physical location of communities and major segments of institutional the “Fly Lab” in Columbia University’s monumental fabric that they are today? Schermerhorn Hall and the building's proximity to What can be learned from labs designed and built in museological collections as well as other natural- previous generations, and even within the past decade, science departments surely played a role in the great to best inform our building designs? discoveries in genetics that occurred there. The lab itself was cramped and tiny, but perhaps that helped What is happening now in scientific research that can accelerate the research by encouraging frequent help shape the labs of the future? conversation amongst the research team during their The Lab Timeline examines the building typology long days in the lab. Can this example be applied 2 from its roots in the mid- to late 19th century, when to new planning and design ideas for labs today? A retaining wall bisects the campus along the north-south axis, revealing a change in topography (1930s) purpose-built structures for scientific research were Perhaps not literally, but certainly the model exists as just beginning to emerge, to present-day lab buildings, a source of inspiration. and, finally, ahead to the future. We should be reminded As architects of lab buildings we are committed to that the architecture for scientific research is only about designing and building for the future of science. It’s 160 years old—an extremely young building typology been said that “the best way to predict the future is in relation to domestic architecture, temples, churches, to invent it.”1 Invention requires hard work, sustained theaters, schools, and museums. We have not been inquiry, a grounded understanding of what came at this for very long, and the rapid pace of scientific before, and, perhaps, a bit of luck. We believe discovery and inquiry will continue to inform our architecture can proceed on a similar path to arrive research buildings of the future. In order to understand at successful and inventive solutions. The Lab 3 what the future may bring for science and research Timeline attempts to capture that spirit of invention buildings, it’s important to understand how we ended up and provide inspiration for research labs of the future. where we are today. There are two important reasons to examine the architectural evolution of the lab building. The first is that the basic goals and aspirations of the individuals and institutions of the past are often very similar to what they are today but exist under very different technological, institutional, societal, and political conditions. This is meaningful architecturally because we can generate new architectural concepts 1 Gregor Mendel’s Lab—a monastery garden, 1865 2 Rockefeller Institute Medical Research Labs, 1917 from historical examples and recondition them to the 3 Leicester University Engineering Labs, 1963 present. Marie Curie’s “shed lab” in Paris might have 4 4 Columbia University Neuroscience Labs, 2017 been less than ideal—but imagine it reinterpreted

6 7 2 Historical Introduction The Scientific Method and Early Labs

8 9 Aristotle Alchemy Experimentation Research 4th Century BCE Alchemist’s chamber, 400 AD–1300 AD Chemical Lab, circ. 1750 Michael Faraday’s lab, London, 1852

Long before labs existed, the scientific method had to Strongly influenced by Aristotle, alchemists resembled This continued into the 19th century, when European I implore you, take some interest in those sacred be contemplated. Aristotle—as depicted in Raphael’s scientists but were trying to alter the world rather than and American labs often depicted the lone researcher dwellings meaningly described as laboratories. Ask painting The School of Athens, at center in blue (next understand it. While they wanted to help people in need, working in less than optimal conditions—in attics, that they be multiplied and completed. They are to Plato)—was one of the first great philosophers they also had to earn a living by producing cheap dyes, basements, or sheds without much access to natural the temples of the future, of riches, and of comfort. to ask fundamental questions about nature and to imitation pearls, and metal alloys that looked like gold light or critical services like plumbing and ventilation. There humanity grows better, stronger; there she examine the world around him. He is the father of and silver.4 They are often depicted as solitary figures Emphasis shifted to experimental reproducibility and can learn to read the works of nature, works of modern science and the scientific method—the laboring alone over experiments, usually in the presence rationality. progress and universal harmony, while humanity’s process of observation, collection, classification, of a draught furnace and other paraphernalia that own works are too often those of barbarism, of This continued into the 19th century when labs in and discovery. In opposition to Plato, who believed added to their mystique. The environment was either fanaticism, and of destruction.7 Europe and America still often depicted the lone in mysticism and idealism, Aristotle was a realist and lofty, as the above image shows, or gloomy and isolated. researcher in his or her lab in less than optimal — Louis Pasteur, 1868 empiricist who sought to observe nature through the They incorporated mysticism, religion, astronomy, and conditions— in attics, basements, or sheds without sober eyes of science.2 He wrote treatises on biology, mathematics into work that was often based on the much access to natural light or critical services including the taxonomy of many living organisms, as Aristotelian theory of the four elements of matter: earth, like plumbing and ventilation. Scientists began to well as physics and astronomy. air, fire, and water. Typically working in secrecy, they demand better facilities. Louis Pasteur, one of the mixed the mystical with the empirical and technical.5 Aristotle set up a school in Athens to rival Plato’s great “microbe hunters”6 who brought the world some academy: The Lyceum. This was his answer to Plato’s As alchemy evolved, others turned to real of the first vaccinations, pasteurization, and (most Academy and its mirror image.3 It consisted of a experimentation to uncover the secrets of the natural important?) better wine, was eloquent on this matter garden, a temple to the nine muses, lecture rooms, world. The disciplines of chemistry began to emerge and implored politicians and universities for improved a library, and rooms with tables for collecting and and scientific laws were proposed and accepted to facilities. This helped to usher in the purpose-built dissecting biological specimens. explain natural phenomena. research lab that could accommodate groups of scientists. The late 19th century saw the lab become visible, recognized, and institutionalized. It is here that The Lab Timeline begins.

10 11 3 The Lab Timeline Purpose-Built Labs: Mid-19th Century to Present

12 13 The Cavendish Thomas Edison Marie Curie’s Schermerhorn Hall Rockefeller Institute The Einstein Tower Cold Spring Harbor Lab MIT RadLab Laboratory Laboratories “Shed Lab” (“fly lab”) Columbia Flexner Hall Potsdam, Germany (Jones Lab), Cold Spring (Building 20) Cambridge, England West Orange, NJ Paris, France University, New York, NY New York, NY Erich Mendelsohn, 1922 Harbor, NY; Sidney Watson Cambridge, MA James Clerk Maxwell, 1874 Henry Hudson Holly, 1888 no architect, 1897 McKim, Mead & White, 1898 Coolidge & Shattuck, 1917 (orig. 1895), 1930s McCreery & Theriault, 1943

Genes Reside on Chromosomes “Transforming Principle” Heredity and Genes (Gregor Mendel) - 1865 (T.H. Morgan “Fly Room” at Columbia)- 1910 Penicillin of Nucleic Acids (O. Avery) - 1944 Rous Sarcoma Virus X-Ray Crystallography (A. Fleming) - 1928 Microbes & Vaccination (Pasteur) - 1870’s (Peyton Rous) - 1909 (W.L. Bragg)- 1915 Dawn of Molecular Biology (Delbruck, Luria) - 1935 First Chemotherapeutics (Ehrlich) - 1878 Synthesis of Purine (Emil Fischer) - 1902 Bacteriophage (F. D’Herrelle) - 1921 Biology

Neuron Doctrine Microbes and Disease (R. Koch)- 1890’s (Santiago Ramon Cajal)- 1890 Structural Theory of Mind (Freud) - 1923 F.D. R. Launches F.D.R. Launches National X-Rays (Roentgen) - 1895 Polio Hospital - 1928 Cancer Inst. - 1936

1874 1888 1897 1898 1917 1922 1935 1943

Electromagnetic Waves (Hertz) - 1887 Point Contact Transistor Special Theory of Relativity (Einstein) - 1905 Model of the Atom (Niehls Bohr)- 1913 Cloud Chamber: Carbon Fiber Filament Positron & Muon- (Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley (T. Edison) - 1879 Discovery of Radium/Radioactivity (Marie Curie) - Theory of General Relativity Neutron (Chadwick)- 1932 1932-1936 at Bell Labs) - 1947 (Einstein)- 1915 Discovery of Electron (JJ Thomson) - 1897 Quantum Mechanics Improved Radar - 1943 Physics & (Born, Heisenberg)- 1925 Engineering First Tank- 1915 2-Stroke Diesel Engine Air Conditioning Transistor (Lillenfeld) - 1926 E. Lawrence Cyclotron - 1938 (Diesel) - 1893 (Carrier) - 1902 Refrigerators (GE) - 1927 Nuclear Fission Early Vacuum Tubes- 1910 Telephone (Bell, Watson) - 1876 Wright Brothers Airplane - 1903 Electron Microscope - 1931 (Rutherford, Bohr, Hahn, Meitner) - 1938

14 15 NYU Medical Sciences Max Planck Institute Bell Labs Teijin Inst. for Chemical Salk Institute Wistar Institute Lewis Thomas Laboratory NYU Skirball Institute Building New York, NY, for Physics Holmdel Township, NJ Research Tokyo, Japan La Jolla, CA Philadelphia, PA Princeton University, New York, NY Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Munich, Germany, Eero Saarinen, 1961 James Stewart Polshek, Louis Kahn, 1965 Mansell, Lewis & Fugate, Princeton, NJ; Venturi, Rauch, Ennead Architects, 1993 1952 Sep Ruf, 1958 1963 1975 and Scott Brown, 1986

DNA Proven the Genetic Material, Bacteriophage (Hershey, Chase) - 1952 Complete Human Structure of DNA (Watson, Crick, Endosymbiotic Theory Genome Sequenced - 2000 Franklin) - 1953 Human Insulin from (Lynn Margulis)- 1966 Recombinant DNA - 1978 Reproductive Cloning Polio Vaccine (Salk, Sabin) - 1955 WI-38 Cell Line RNA Sequence (Campbell, Wilmut) - 1996 Philadelphia Chromosome (L. Hayflick) - 1962 (Sanger) - 1968 Polymerase Chain Reaction (Mullis) - 1983 Biology (Nowell & Hungerford) - 1959

DNA Polymerase- Genetic Code, Codons Central Dogma of Molecular the enzyme for Reverse Transcriptase First Child Conceived by IVF - 1978 Biology (Crick) - 1956 (Matthaei, Niremberg) - 1961 (Temin, Baltimore) - 1970 assembling DNA (A. Rapid Gene Sequencing Hematopoietic Stem Cells Kornberg) - 1956 (Sanger, Coulson) - 1977 (Weissman) - 1990 1952 1958 1961 1963 1965 1975 1986 1993

CERN- Large Hadron Bubble Chamber Particle Detector Big Bang Theory (Hawking) - 1970 Collider & International (Glaser) - 1952 Space Station - 1998 Pulsars Discovered Top Quark Dark Matter (Zwicky) - 1955 1967 November Revolution (Fermilab/SLAC) - 1995 (quarks, mesons) - 1974 Digital Camera Physics & Ultrasound - 1959 Strong Interactions - 1962 (Apple) - 1994 Engineering Microprocessor (Intel), DynaTac Fortran Programming Kevlar - 1971 Cell Phone - Google and Wifi - 1998 First Satellite - 1958 Self Cleaning Oven - 1963 1984 Language - 1957 Hand Held ARPANET, Fiber Optics - 1970 World Wide Web- 1990 Laser (Bell Labs)- 1961 Calculator Quantum Computing Information Theory (C. Shannon) - 1949 1967 Boeing 747 - 1969 (Feynman) - 1980 Lunar Landing- 1969

16 17 Clark Center, Bio-X Institute of Physics University of Michigan CERN Large Hadron MIT Media Lab Andlinger Center for Vassar College Integrated Stanford University Humbolt University Biomed. Science Research Collider Cambridge, MA Energy & the Environment Science Commons - Palo Alto, CA Berlin-Aldershof, Germany Building, Ann Arbor, MI Near Geneva, Switzerland Fumihiko Maki, 2010 Princeton Univ., NJ Poughkeepsie, NY Foster & Partners, 2003 Agustin & Frank, 2004 Ennead Architects, 2006 No architect, 2008 Tod Williams & Billy Tsien, 2015 Ennead Architects, 2016

WHAT IS THE LAB OF THE FUTURE? N 80 Upper Level Plan 40 20 10 0 Bridge for Laboratory Sciences, Vassar College

CRISPR cas9 Genome Editing Enzyme (Doudna, Charpentier) - 2012 Robotic Limbs Controlled by the Brain (Duke Univ.) - 2014 Grid Cells in the Brain Role of Telomeres and Telomerase (Moser, Moser) - 2005 (Blackburn, Greider, Szostak) - 2009 $1,000 Genome Sequencing - 2016 Biology

RNA Interference Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Nobel Prize (Fire, Mello) - 2006 (Yamanaka) - 2006 Synthetic DNA, Mycoplasma Precision Medicine Initiative - 2015 Cryo-Electronic Microscope Laboratorium (Venter) - 2010 Organs on a Chip (Stem Cell Engineering) - 2013 (Dubochety, Frank, Henderson) - 2017

2003 2004 2006 2008 2010 2015 2016 2030

Apple i-Pad - 2010 YouTube - 2005 Discovery of Higgs Boson Particle (CERN)- 2012 Segway - 2001 Development of Graphene National Ignition Facility Applications - 2005 (Fusion Potential) - 2009 Gravitational Waves Detected Physics & (Barish, Thorne, Weiss) - 2015 Engineering Apple i-Phone Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating (S. Jobs) - 2007 System, Google - 2014 Social Media, Facebook - 2004 Carbon Sequestration - 2008 Curiosity Rover- 2012 Self-Driving Car - 2011

18 19 4 The Buildings Stories, Details, and Floor Plans

20 21 Upper-level floor plan 1 Large laboratory The Foundation 2 Professor’s private room 3 Apparatus room 4 Professor’s laboratory 5 Lecture room

1 2 3

The Cavendish Lab Cambridge, England 1874 Architect: James Clerk Maxwell

The Cavendish was one of the world's first purpose- The design and layout of the building embodied built lab buildings, and was designed specifically the idea of the lab as the center of measurement for experimentation and education in physics. This and calculation. It included three floors of labs was before Einstein’s time, but the foundation for and a basement for specialized experiments. The his theory of relativity and modern physics was laid windows were intentionally large to provide steady, here through the research of J.J. Thomsen, Ernest bright illumination for experiments. Exterior window Rutherford, and other physicists. The building was platforms were intended for spectroscopes, prisms, large by 19th century standards and was set within and lenses to study the phenomenon of light.8 the context of the traditional Victorian campus of The history of discovery at the Cavendish has been Cambridge, surrounded by museums. The choice of a nothing less than extraordinary: Nearly 30 Nobel museological setting was deliberate because just prior laureates conducted their work here. In 1953, James to this time, engineering and the natural sciences were Watson and Francis Crick, in collaboration with taught from museum collections. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, elucidated the structure of DNA at the Cavendish.

22 23 Lower-level floor plan 1 Repair shop The R&D Factory 2 Boiler room 3 Heavy machine shop 4 Lab 5 Library and Edison’s desk

1 2 3 4 5

Thomas Edison Laboratories West Orange, NJ 1888 Architect: Henry Hudson Holly

Thomas Alva Edison brought his ambitious plan and delicate fine-tooled components, a drafting for a world-class laboratory and research-and- room, and chemical labs. A two-story library near development facility to West Orange, New Jersey, in the entrance served as Edison’s office and meeting 1887. He also purchased a large estate and mansion location with investors. Four smaller one-story only a couple of miles from his new lab. When it was satellite lab structures were situated perpendicular built, the West Orange lab complex was probably one to the main lab. The phonograph, refinement of the of the largest in the world. His goals for the lab were as electric light-bulb, and magnetic storage batteries lofty as his inventions: were among the hundreds of inventions conceived, developed, and produced here. The main lab building I will have the best equipped and largest facility extant, and its satellite labs still stand today as a great model incomparably superior to any other for rapid and for an R&D incubator. cheap development of an invention, and working it up to commercial shape with models, patterns, and special machinery. 9 The main three-story lab building is 250 feet long and only 50 feet wide. The structure was designed to be flexible and contained shops for both heavy machinery

24 25 Floor plan (reconstructed) 1 Exterior court The Shed 2 Vestibule 3 Lab equipment 4 Lab

3 4 3

2 1

Marie Curie’s “Shed Lab” Paris, France 1897 Architect: unknown

Marie Curie is likely to remain the only two-time While not ideal, it served its purpose, and it’s worth winner of the Nobel Prize to have carried out much noting that the shed had some desirable architectural of her scientific work in a shed. She was awarded the features: high bay space that was open, flexible, and prizes in both physics and chemistry for her discovery flooded with daylight from an industrial skylight; a little of radioactivity, opening the doors to 20th-century space for interaction at the stove and chalkboard; atomic physics. Most scientists did not have room for and direct access to a courtyard so that experiments experimentation at this time and had to make do with could be moved outside when necessary. marginal spaces in universities, museum basements, or, in many cases, their homes. Both Curie and her husband, Pierre, needed space to conduct their work on the measuring, distilling, and isolation of radioactive elements. They found a shabby unused glass-paneled atelier on the Rue Lhomond in Paris. Curie described it as “a ramshackle hangar...its ceiling was of shaky laths, its windows were ill-fitting and drafty, its taps dripped... the only furniture was a worn pine table, but there was a blackboard...and a cast iron stove with a rusty pipe that gave off a little heat in the winter.”10

26 27 Upper level floor plan (4th floor in 1898) 1 The "Fly Lab" The Fly Lab 2 Office 3 Lab 4 Classroom 5 Library

3 2 1 3

2 5 2 5 4

Schermerhorn Hall Columbia University, New York 1898 Architect: McKim, Mead & White

At Columbia University in the 1890s the sciences The building is perhaps best known for the “fly were driving the campus. The need to compete lab”— an important location in the history of science. with European institutions like the Cavendish lab It was here in this 16 - by 23-foot lab that Thomas and German research universities was critical for Hunt Morgan and his team studied mutations in science to flourish in America. Science pavilions the Drosophila fruit fly between 1907 and 1928 and with large windows were among the first buildings discovered that genes are arranged on chromosomes, at Columbia's Morningside Heights campus.11 These thus transforming biology forever. The small lab held Italian Renaissance-style buildings were part of the three to four scientists who worked as an interactive masterplan for the campus designed by architects unit, communicating their findings as soon as they McKim, Mead & White. observed them. The room was reconstructed for the biographical film "The Fly Room” (2014) featuring Schermerhorn Hall was built to house the departments Morgan’s team. of the natural sciences, including anthropology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, and biology. Lower levels housed labs and museum collections for the departments. Upper levels contained labs, classrooms, libraries, and a lecture hall.

28 29 Upper level floor plan 1 Library The Institute 2 Lab 3 Office

3 2 2 3 2 1 2 3 3

2 3 2 2 2 2 3

The Rockefeller Institute Flexner Hall, New York 1917 Architect: Coolidge & Shattuck

The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (known this concept, and the result was somewhat today as Rockefeller University) was founded in 1901 compartmentalized, though this was balanced by with a gift from John D. Rockefeller. At that time, there communal spaces in the facility such as the formal was no place in the United States devoted exclusively dining hall. to medical research to address infectious diseases— The legacy of discovery at Rockefeller is nearly the leading causes of death in the country. unmatched. Seminal work on genetics was The Institute was a revolutionary idea at a time when conducted here in 1944 by Oswald Avery and his few medical schools offered students opportunities team, who identified and isolated the substance of for pure research. Under the leadership of Simon heredity, DNA (although its structure would not be Flexner and others, the Institute was organized around deciphered until 1953). the firm belief that unfettered pursuit of knowledge by the best minds would lead to life-changing results for humanity.12 Flexner organized the institute around individual laboratories, each headed by one investigator. There were no departments; Flexner set the researchers free to pursue problems of their own choosing. The layout of the labs expresses

30 31 Lower level floor plan 1 Base of observatory The Expressionist Icon 2 Lab 3 Study area 4 Equipment

3 3

2 1 4

1 3 3

The Einstein Tower Potsdam, Germany 1922 Architect: Erich Mendelsohn

Designed to represent as well as facilitate the The building is typical of Mendelsohn’s architecture, study of Einstein’s theory of relativity, the tower with no right angle in sight, giving the impression of bearing the great physicist’s name is perhaps one space distorted both vertically in the observatory tower of architectural history’s most potent examples of and horizontally on the lower research floors15. The German expressionism. Intended as a concrete resulting plan expresses the centralized observatory, structure, but built of brick covered with a sculptural banded by rings of sculpted windows on four floors layer of reinforced concrete, it makes an "unmistakenly sitting above a wavelike platform. feline impression—appearing as a crouching, muscled beast with extended forepaws."13 It is reported that the architect Erich Mendelsohn took Einstein on an extended tour of the structure in 1922. The scientist said nothing until later, when, during a meeting with the building committee, he whispered his one-word judgment: “Organic.”14

32 33 The Science Village

Floor plan (renovated) Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Long Island, NY 1930s 1 Entry Architect: Sidney Watson (original 1895 Jones Lab) 2 2 4 2 Lab 3 Dark room Since their inception in 1890, the labs at Cold Spring Delbruck, Barbara McClintock, Phil Sharp, and Carol 4 Cold room 3 5 2 2 Harbor on the North Shore of Long Island have been Greider. Starting in 1933, symposia were organized 5 Mechanical the cradle of molecular biology in the United States. for the duration of the summer, attracting large groups The institution took root in 1895 with the Jones Lab, to collaborate on common research interests. The 1 pictured here, which was designed to accommodate researchers at Cold Spring Harbor have written summer programs for students focused on marine extensively about the vibrant community of colleagues biology, zoology, botany, and anatomy (and still in gathered in a retreat-like setting surrounded by nature, use today). Over the ensuing decades, individual and how that environment contributed to advances in structures, often designed in the community's their work. vernacular residential style, populated the hillside overlooking the harbor. These buildings included labs, scientific libraries, meeting halls, dining facilities, and living quarters for scientists. Cold Spring Harbor became a popular summer destination for prominent scientists such as James Watson, Alfred Hershey, Salvador Luria, Max

34 35 Upper level floor plan (reconstructed) 1 Office and lab wing The Plywood Palace 2 Radar lab wing

2 2 2 2

MIT RadLab (Building 20) Cambridge, MA 1943 Architect: McCreery & Theriault

Building 20 at the Massachusetts Institute of almost any intended use. The layout of five low, Technology was an artifact of wartime haste.16 Built as narrow wings provided excellent daylight and created a temporary facility in 1943, its primary purpose was courtyards that could accommodate projects that to provide research and testing space for engineers were bursting through the building's walls.18 Many focused on the development of radar to help win World researchers who spent time in Building 20 talk about War II. its absence of architecture, its glorious disorganization and flexibility: In fact, the mission statement given to the architects stated: “Life of said building to be for the duration of “What was great about it was the ability to personalize the war and six months thereafter.” 17 Remarkably, the your space and shape it to various purposes. If building continued to be used for inter-disciplinary you don’t like a wall, just stick your elbow through it. research and engineering until 1998 when it was If you want to bore a hole in the floor to get a little finally demolished. Designed in about two weeks in extra space, you do it. You don’t ask. It’s the best 1943, the building was ready for occupancy by radar experimental building ever built.” 19 researchers six months later. Steel was unavailable because of the war, so the building was framed with heavy wood timber and designed to accommodate 36 37 Upper level floor plan 1 Lab support The Masterplan 2 Lab 3 Office 4 Mix of labs, offices, and meeting space

3 2 1 2

3 1 2

NYU Medical Sciences Building New York 1952 Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Designed as New York University’s Bellevue Medical thus: “In relating these functionally separate units…the Center campus by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects have made a practical contribution as well medical science facility covered almost eleven acres on as a contribution to the dream of all modern architects Items should be spaced .15” apart (can use this the east side of Manhattan from 30th to 34th Streets to change the monotony of the 19th-century city suare as a marer and between First Avenue and the East River.20 pattern.” 21 The new buildings included both high and mid-rise The mid-rise laboratory, known today as the Medical structures designed in a clean-edged modernist Sciences Building, is perhaps one of the earliest • composition of interlocking volumes. They consisted examples of a lab in the modernist idiom. It was • of medical laboratories, the university hospital tower, a designed to 1950s standards of lab planning with • residence hall, and an alumni pavilion, all planned as an self-contained individual labs located along a • asymmetric arrangement of functionally disparate units central corridor. spread over the four city blocks. • • This project was a precedent-creating masterplan expressing the emerging dominance of modern architecture in the post-war period. The 1950 SOM exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art described it

38 39 The Modernist Pavilions

Ground level floor plan Max Planck Institute for Physics Munich, Germany 1958 1 Laboratory pavilion Architect: Sep Ruf 2 Lecture hall Portico 3 Well established throughout Germany, with symbolic position against buildings designed “to keep 4 Workshops numerous research facilities built for a diversity of things secret.”23 Experimental hall scientific disciplines, the Max Planck Society for 5 Ruf’s judicious use of glass reflects these values, 1 the Advancement of Science sought to expand and and the innovative design for the lab complex was democratize its facilities in the post-war era, which in striking contrast to the Society’s earlier research were to be characterized by the sober pragmatism of buildings, which were created in the style of bourgeois modern architecture of the 1950s.22 villas.24 Each function of Ruf's complex, which included In 1958 the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Werner an experimental hall, a workshop, a laboratory wing, 4 Heisenberg was named director of the Max Planck and a lecture hall, was allotted a pavilion of its own. Institute for Physics & Astrophysics, and a new The architecture conveys a sense of transparency and facility was to be built in Munich under his direction. weightlessness through the balanced distribution of 3 Heisenberg commissioned the modernist architect monumental solid elements and glazed curtain walls. Sep Ruf, who was lauded as one of the most influential 2 theoreticians and practitioners in Germany. His work personified the new democratic understanding of 5 architecture in the wake of the war, perceived as a

40 41 Ground level floor plan 1 Entrance The Black Box 2 Laboratory wing (labs and offices) 3 Central atrium

2 2

1 3 1

2 2

Bell Labs Holmdel Township, NJ 1961 Architect: Eero Saarinen

The output of Bell Labs from the 1920s to the development. The primary Bell Lab buildings were 1980s has become so entrenched in our everyday built in 1925 in New York City, 1945 in Murray Hill, technology that it is easy to forget how innovative NJ, and 1961 in Holmdel, NJ. The Holmdel lab is an this work was at the time it was conceived. As the enormous six-story steel and glass box designed by research and development arm of AT&T, Bell was Eero Saarinen. Set on 460 landscaped acres, the the biggest industrial lab in the world, turning out building spans 2 million square feet and houses about innovations that changed society, including the 5,000 people. The interior includes a soaring atrium. vacuum tube, the transistor, the silicon solar cell, the Modular labs were designed to provide maximum maser, the laser, and the first fiber optic systems. It flexibility, since the demands of research projects is "where the future, which is what we now call the could often not be foreseen. Saarinen placed the present, was conceived and designed."25 building's long connecting hallways on its glass perimeter, with the windowless offices and labs in the There was a true culture of innovation at Bell Labs. interior. "Gone completely are the old claustrophobic, Teams of scientists focused on a specific problem dreary, prison-like corridors." 26 were able to roam free and gather knowledge through theory, experimentation, testing, and

42 43 upper level floor plan 1 Lab units The Self-Designed Machine 2 Offices 3 Entry pavilion below

Teijin Institute for Chemical & Polymer Research Tokyo (Hino City), Japan 1963 Architect: James Stewart Polshek

Teijin Ltd., a manufacturer of synthetic fibers, intended type of research in the building involved polymers and to build a large new research facility in 1961. Chairman rayon fibers which required that the labs have no direct Shinzo Ohya declared that he wanted his laboratory to solar exposure. These design factors and a limited be the most advanced in Japan, not only in its function building height of 24 meters effectively set up the but in its physical design. It was to be an example for plan into a long linear bar with south-facing research Japanese companies still recovering from the war.27 offices and vertical service cores separated from the north-facing laboratory units by an access corridor. Architect James Stewart Polshek, then only 31 years The highly sculpted north facade, the vertical towers old, was approached to design the 300,000 square of the south facade, and the low reception pavilion foot facility—his first major commission. With his and grounds display a modern sensibility that draws family, he moved to Japan to direct the design and inspiration from traditional Japanese temples, palaces, oversee construction of the project. and gardens. Two fundamental design considerations emerged that allowed the project to practically “design itself,” the architect modestly said. First, the site was a relatively flat, treeless industrial landscape with a picture- perfect view of Mount Fuji to the south. Second, the

44 45 Plaza level & mezzanine level composite plan 1 South lab wing (shown fit-out) The Research Monastery 2 North lab wing (shown shelled) 3 Study rooms (PI offices) 4 Library 4 5 Plaza 6 Mechanical 7 8 7 Lab bench 8 Lab support 3 3

1 2

6 6

Salk Institute for Biological Studies La Jolla, CA 1965 Architect: Louis Kahn

By 1957, the foundation for eradicating polio had selected. Each lab block was column-free, permitting achieved its goal and had a generous endowment due ultimate flexibility. Office and study spaces were to the success of Jonas Salk’s vaccine. Salk began separated rather than embedded within the lab areas, discussing a new institute that would foster further with each study room offering a view of the ocean. The medical research. A site was identified in La Jolla, plaza that unites the two lab wings was originally to be California, on a mesa overlooking the Pacific Ocean planted entirely with trees, but Kahn reconsidered this that would resonate with Salk’s goals of linking science after meeting with Luis Barragan. It was the Mexican and research with the humanities—as he stated, he architect who suggested, “I would not put a single tree “would like to invite Picasso to the laboratories”. 28 in this area. I would make a plaza…If you make a plaza, you will have another façade to the sky.” 29 Louis Kahn was selected as the architect in 1960. Both Kahn and Salk had bold visions for the project, and both shared an admiration for medieval monasteries and cloisters like the hillside Basilica of Assisi in Italy, believing that to be the perfect analog to what could be achieved in La Jolla. After many design schemes were tested, an arrangement consisting of two identical laboratory blocks separated by a plaza was

46 47 Upper level floor plan 1 Typical cellular lab The Mid-Century Mundane 2 Typical office within lab 3 Lab support 4 Specialty research area 5 Conference room

1 4

1 5

The Wistar Institute Cancer Research Building Philadelphia, PA 1975 Architect: Mansell, Lewis & Fugate

A noticeable pattern in U.S. lab architecture emerges center in the nation dedicated solely to basic research. in the 1970s, when the buildings seem to close in The Cancer Research Building and Vivarium were on themselves. The heroic and innovative research added to renovate and extend the Institute's facilities complexes of the previous decade evolve into opaque to accommodate the expanding cancer research masonry boxes that look inward rather than outward. program. The Institute's more than half-century Many of the labs also fall into a category of vernacular achievements in vaccine development have saved building that uses a modern architectural language to countless lives globally and Wistar scientists have been contribute to a sense of place, but is not considered pioneers in the study of infectious diseases and the significant or as a candidate for preservation.30 genetic basis of cancer. The Wistar Institute's Cancer Research Building and The typical floor plan of the cancer research lab Vivarium are an example of this building genre. The includes a series of enclosed labs. An internalized, Wistar Institute has a fascinating history beginning narrow, double-loaded corridor separates the labs and with a Victorian building dedicated in 1894 designed to equipment spaces. In 2014 a new glassy addition— The host the Institute’s museological collection of anatomy Robert and Penny Fox Research Tower brought about specimens and to house research programs in the most significant architectural transformation since anatomy and biology. In 1972, Wistar became the first the original 1894 Victorian era structure was built. National Cancer Institute (NCI)— designated cancer 48 49 Upper level floor plan 1 Typical open lab The Manor House 2 Internal lab support zone 3 Typical PI office 4 Lounge space 5 Typical individual lab

1 3 1

4 2 2 4

Lewis Thomas Laboratory Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 1986 Architect: Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown

Advances in the field of molecular biology in the late Departing from the discrete and closed labs of the 1970s and early 1980s prompted Princeton University 1970s, the planning made use of an implied internal in 1983 to build a new facility that would attract the lab corridor on one side, thus allowing for an “open most prominent scientists. Influenced by Elizabethan lab” concept to emerge. The openness was further manor houses and New England mills,31 the highly articulated by the use of interior glass dividing walls patterned brick and stone post-modernist facades between labs and departments to “create visual designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown connections and promote greater awareness of reflect Princeton’s use of traditional building materials. fellow researchers.”33 Small lounge spaces at the ends of the lab block facilitated interactive behavior The building planning was developed around the on each lab floor. concept of a “generic” lab, as the majority of the building’s occupants had not yet been recruited.32 The building design was a simple rectangular block measuring 278 feet by 85 feet. Labs were located along the exterior walls, which featured large windows. The process and lab equipment spaces were placed in the center core zone, away from natural light.

50 51 Upper level lab floor plan 1 Typical lab 4 Lounge and meeting space The Tower 2 Internal lab support zone 5 Lecture hall 3 Typical PI office

4 5 4

3 3 1

1 3 3

NYU Langone Skirball Institute for Biomolecular Medicine & Residence Tower New York 1993 Architect: Polshek Partnership Architects (Ennead)

Faculty Offices & Residential Conceptual planning with Polshek Partnership honorific entrance lobby, which filters 7,000 people Architects began in 1987 on a new biomolecular daily, connects the new and pre-existing elements of medical research building on the NYU campus. It was the entire hospital and medical school. The first four to be the largest building project in the university’s floors above the ground level concourse house 60,000 history. The mission of the project was to attract the square feet of research labs; the next four floors house finest talent in the field and secure the university’s faculty practice offices; and the remaining twelve floors identity as one of the city’s preeminent medical house residential units for staff. The research labs are research and healthcare institutions. individualized but connected with offices between, and Research are located along the east and west primary facades to Laboratories The 25-story facility served as the new “front door” catch morning and afternoon daylight. A central corridor to NYU’s urban campus and integrated with the accommodates lab equipment and access to labs and city’s architectural fabric while accommodating an lab support spaces. The east pavilion provides shared unprecedented mix of uses. Due to the limits on collaboration spaces. Concourse developable site area, the architects decided to Entry stack the needed programs into a tower fronting York Avenue. At the concourse level, a double-height

52 53 Ground level floor plan 1 Typical open lab 4 Cafe The Inside-Out Lab 2 Lab support zone 5 Courtyard 3 Typical PI office

3 1 4

1 3

James H. Clark Center Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 2003 Architect: Foster & Partners

In 1998 James Spudich and Steven Chu at Stanford a fluid and transparent lab setting that is inviting and hatched the “Bio-X.” initiative at a time when science, open. This was a new paradigm for lab planning— was suggesting new avenues of research and giving allowing passersby to see directly into the building. rise to new disciplines of study. Major progress was The traditional lab building had been effectively turned being made in the biological sciences and the Human inside-out,36 with enclosed lab support spaces massed Genome Project would soon be complete, "opening on the exterior of the building and open labs located the floodgate of new information"34 Bio-X was to on the interior courtyard side. Enhancing the idea of a provide an imminent response to this rapid progress building that can respond to rapidly changing patterns by strengthening collaborations by physically locating of trans-disciplinary research, all interior furnishings, the disciplines of bioinformatics, computer science, including workstations, are on wheels, allowing teams to biology, engineering, and physics in one place. group and regroup on short notice. The result was the Clark Center, by Foster & Partners, completed in 2003. The building was purposefully sited in a central location to serve as a “showpiece and pulse of the campus.”35 Its three convex and fully glazed lab wings face into a central courtyard, creating

54 55 Upper level floor plan 1 Lab Der Endlos Durchgang 2 Offices 3 Lecture room 4 Meeting space 2 5 Courtyard 5 5 1 1 4

4 1

5 1 5 2 5 3 2 2

Institute of Physics, Humbolt University (Lise Meitner Haus) Berlin-Aldershof, Germany 2004 Architect: Augustin & Frank

The Berlin Senate in 1999 decided to relocate its of the institute.37 The dimensionally varied internal center for mathematics, physics, and the natural corridor (durchgang) links departments in a spatially sciences to Humbolt University in Aldershof. The dynamic way by alternating between internal core new Institute for Physics was named for Lise and outside edge, allowing occupants to circulate Meitner, who with Otto Hahn in the 1930s made continuously and thus increasing the potential for important discoveries in nuclear physics. This was interactions. The modules of the building are optimized an extraordinary achievement at the time, given that and repeated based on their function, allowing for women in Berlin were not allowed to work in labs expansion and future growth. The facades become or attend university. (Meitner, who was Jewish, fled an experience from both the inside and the outside: Germany for Sweden in late 1938.) Hahn would go internally, occupants can circulate among the facades; on to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1944, but externally, passersby can see through large façade Meitner's contributions were not recognized. openings into the garden. The design of the Institute for Physics arranges laboratories, offices, and classroom spaces around the principle of rooms rotating from a central core. A series of internal courtyards separate various zones 56 57 Upper level floor plan 1 Typical open lab 4 Atrium The Atrium 2 Lab support zone 5 Meeting space 3 Typical PI office

1 5

2 1 2 2 2 2 4 1 3

encounters because they happened to ‘bump into’ one another. Given the important role of such unscheduled, informal contacts in the survey data describe above, as well as the importance posited 2 for “passive contacts” in innovative workplaces, developing alternative measures is imperative. We 1 propose two possibilities that more closely operationalize the likelihood two people will have regular but unscheduled interactions during the course of their daily work (Figure 6).

(3) Functional Zone Overlap

We define an individual’s functional zone as the area bounded by the spaces assigned to this person (office, lab), the circulation spaces that are closest to these assigned spaces (elevators, stairs), and University of Michigan Biomedical Science the public or shared spaces that the person is likely to use on a regular basis (restrooms). Two people Research Building Ann Arbor, MI 2006 have a zonal overlap if there is any intersection between their functional zones, and the zonal overlap can be characterized in terms of the areas of their functional zones (areal overlap), the number of Architect: Ennead Architects spaces in their zones (spatial overlap), and the length of paths that connect the various spaces or rooms in their zones (path overlap). In this discussion we will concentrate on the novel concept of path overlap, that is, the overlap between the paths of the two people in a potential collaboration With biomedical research breakthroughs such as the penetrates the building’s core. Bridges across the pair or dyad. completion of the Human Genome Project (2000) atrium connect the offices and labs, emphasizing the and the imminent work on stem cell advancements idea of community. Consider Figure 6, which represents the work paths of two hypothetical investigators who share a (2006), the University of Michigan wished to build a The large floor plates promote increased collabo- floor in the BSRB building. The path outlined in orange traverses the shortest walking routes world-class biomedical research building. connecting Person 1’s assigned office, lab space, the nearest elevator and the nearest relevant rations. In fact, a study in 2014 completed by the restroom. The blue path does the same for Person 2. Ennead’s design solution took its cues from the site university’s Institute for Social Research gathered data and the requirement to create a distinct identity on the building’s use patterns and found that the co-lo- and “front door” for the medical school campus. cation of research groups on the same floor showed a The insularity of the standard research environment dramatic increase in the formation of interdisciplinary Zonal Overlap with compartmentalized labs is turned completely collaborations. It also found that overlapping “shared” around. The architecture recalls and reinterprets zones created more opportunities for scientists to For every 100 feet of zonal overlap, collaboration the great open labs from the 1960’s including the collaborate and secure joint funding. between scientists Salk Institute and Bell Labs. Here, the L-shaped increased by 20 percent, lab block is separated from the sinuous ribbon of and grant funding increased faculty offices by an internal sky-lit atrium, which by 21–30 percent. 58 59 The Collider

CERN Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS Detector near Geneva, Switzerland 2008 Architect: none

What about big physics? How do these enormous countries. Thus the architecture becomes a network of collaboration projects that are shrouded in mystery international collaborators who are not only connected fit into the context of labs? They are labs after all, by data, but who also physically build portions of the or perhaps better defined as experiments on a project remotely and deliver their components to the monumental scale. If not considered architecture, their Geneva site. engineering is a wonder, all in the service of better understanding the universe. As one physicist said, “It is no longer clear where the experiment can be said to be. The experiment cannot The Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the European be localized, for the circus tent spans the globe.”38 Organization for Nuclear Research) is a network of circular particle accelerators located 100 meters The Higgs-Boson particle was discovered in 2012 at underground and as large as 27 kilometers in CERN, completing the Standard Model of particle circumference. Particles such as protons traveling physics. close to the speed of light are collided with each other to detect even smaller sub-atomic particles. The detector shown above requires the efforts of 2,000 physicists from 150 institutions in 30 different

60 61 Upper level floor plan 1 Double-height space lab 3 Lobby below The Glass Lab 2 Offices 4 Meeting space

2 4 2

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MIT Media Lab Cambridge, MA 2010 Architect: Fumihiko Maki

The guiding concept of the original MIT Media Lab, Designed by Fumihiko Maki, “the master of delicacy, completed in 1985, was defined by MIT president Jerry precision, and understatement,”40 the exterior and Weisner and visionary professor Nicholas Negroponte, interior of the building celebrate the use of glass and whose mantra was that the “best way to predict the employ a pristine palette of whiteness, transparency, future is to invent it.”1 Their mission was to define the and light-diffusing materials. In direct contrast, the keystone technologies of the future. The Media Lab interdisciplinary Media Lab research groups represent was to transcend known boundaries and disciplines messiness and entropy with their clutter of new and by fostering an unconventional mix of research areas, abandoned experiments. The architecture thus including technology, media, the human/machine encapsulates the carefully arranged, double-height interface, sciences, art, and design.39 That mission is space labs in glass with the goal of making everyone’s still true today. In 2004 a plan was initiated to expand work visible to everyone else. The collision of the the Media Lab with a new 163,000-square-foot facility. composed, immaculate architecture and the chaotic world of the preoccupied researcher fits the original mission of the Media Lab: mixing disciplines.

62 63 Ground level floor plan 1 Clean room The Garden 2 Teaching labs 3 Offices 4 Meeting rooms 5 Exterior courtyard 6 Existing engineering quad

2 1 5

2 5 3 5 6 5 4

Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment Princeton University, Princeton NJ 2015 Architect: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

Designed to connect and enhance Princeton’s existing fragment of history was preserved and inspired the engineering quadrangle and create inviting indoor architectural concept of the new building as a series and outdoor spaces accessible to all Princeton of interconnected masses that create varied garden students and faculty, the Andlinger Center is a courtyards. Because the highly sensitive research refreshing approach to laboratory design. Because of equipment had to be located in lower level labs, the its sensitivity to the Princeton campus scale and its architects Tod Williams and BillieTsien developed the landscape traditions, the building never feels like an idea of an “orthogonal geological massing that pushes ordinary science building; in fact, it shares qualities into the earth using a system of site cuts and courts and characteristics often found in monasteries and to bring daylight deep into the interiors.”41 The building museums—yet it is a building for serious research with is clad in a pale gray elongated brick manufactured state-of-the art scientific tools. in Denmark, which lends the building a sense of scale and craft. On the interiors, felt wall coverings include The site is bound on two sides by a classical masonry enlarged sketches from the notebooks of Galileo, wall designed in 1911 by McKim, Mead & White. This Marie Curie, and Einstein.

64 65 Upper level floor plan 1 Administration suite The Bridge 2 Typical office 3 Seminar room 4 Research labs 5 Teaching labs 6 Existing adjacent building

5 5 4 4 1

3 2 6

Vassar College Integrated Science Commons Poughkeepsie, NY 2016 Architect: Ennead Architects

Founded in 1861, Vassar College was one of the first physics, astronomy, and psychology. Together, the women’s colleges in the United States. From the four buildings form a vibrant hub to promote the earliest days, the sciences were a vital part of its advancement of scientific instruction and inquiry, curriculum. Renowned astronomer Maria Mitchell was while weaving together the natural landscape of the Vassar’s first professor in 1865, and a state-of-the-art acclaimed campus, well known as an arboretum. observatory was built for her right on campus. The Siting for the 80,000 square-foot Bridge Building commitment to the sciences remains strong today fulfilled the aim of creating the cohesive science with the completion in 2016 of the Integrated Science precinct with a minimal footprint. A true “building in the Commons designed by Ennead Architects. trees,”42 its slow curvature prompts visitors, students, Previously scattered across the campus in disparate and faculty to casually experience each part of the departments, the new Bridge for Laboratory Science building as it unfolds. Building and three adjacent renovated existing science buildings centralize the sciences in one precinct that includes the departments of biology, chemistry, cognitive science, computer science,

66 67 5 What is the Lab of the Future?

68 69 The Lab of the Future Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments

History bears it out—great centers of scientific innovation and discovery have not always been inviting and inspiring spaces. But just as today’s researchers build on earlier discoveries to shape new directions in biomedical research, biotechnology, modern physics, engineering, and many other disciplines, so must the laboratories of the future take lessons from the suboptimal working conditions in labs of the past, some even in our most recent past. Laboratories must live up to the greatness of the science produced in them while embodying the concepts that drive good design. Research institutions large and small, entrepreneurial lab groups, and lab start-ups all have different needs, yet certain architectural truths are universal. So— what is the lab of the future and what must it accomplish? Three transforming architectural principles, considered comprehensively in a building, provide the framework for successful research environments going forward.

University of Texas at Austin Cockrell School of Engineering Engineering Education and Research Center Ennead Architects

70 71 Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments

1. Community & Connectivity

How can architecture help connect separate imaginations in different human minds? The lab of the future must build strong scientific even cafes—play an increasingly important role for communities and promote connectivity between successful research facilities. While in decades past, a many disciplinary groups. This will increasingly small coffee station might have been sufficient, today’s involve connecting with expertise well outside the scientists—like people of all occupations—demand primary discipline of the research focus including greater variety in their “work-play” environment. design disciplines, public policy, environmental Ennead designed Stanford University’s Chemistry, policy, and development and business models. The Engineering & Medicine for Human Health (ChEM-H) research community must offer a range of spaces and Neurosciences Institute complex to create a in which to be productive. This includes spaces vital scientific community that connects the schools not just for experimentation but for socialization, of engineering and medicine. The inner elliptical collaboration, and contemplation. courtyard creates an outdoor room that can be used A strategy for building community and connectivity for meeting and gathering for the primary disciplines in is in many ways driven by context. An isolated the building: biochemistry and neuroscience. Around research campus is different from an embedded the courtyard, enclosed by a glass curtain wall, an urban research university; a growing research interior double-height living room space acts as a university is different from one with a 150-year buffer to the lab research bench spaces. The building legacy; an entrepreneurial start-up lab is different even has a pub where colleagues can gather after long from a corporate pharmaceutical company hours in the lab to unwind over a casual drink. conducting research, development, and production. Yet all must cultivate community to be successful research environments. In addition to well designed and flexible lab space, thoughtfully considered collaboration spaces throughout the building— such Stanford University as shared conference rooms, seminar halls, and ChEM-H & Wu Tsai Neurosciences Building Ennead Architects

72 73 Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments

2. Flexibility & Growth

How do we design labs for the unforeseeable?

The lab of the future must be flexible, but how much in smart infrastructure; mechanical, electrical, and flexibility is needed or can be afforded? The concept plumbing systems laid out to facilitate future changes; Shared Equipment Corridor of the flexible lab has been preached for decades. and labs with well-considered repeating modules all Scientists have always known that the more easily have enduring value. they can change their labs in response to new At the Biological Sciences Building (BSB) at the developments, the quicker they can respond to needs University of Michigan, Ennead addressed flexibility and speed their discoveries. This was evident in the and growth at three levels: the building, the floor 1888 Thomas Edison Labs in New Jersey, where plate, and the laboratory neighborhood. Here, benches and desks were movable, and utilities were three individual lab towers are divided into six equal overhead and easily accessible. The labs at MIT's research neighborhoods per floor. Each neighborhood Building 20 from 1943 were easy to alter due to the Wet Lab is designed to flex according to need, and a common With write-up desks separated from bench area flexible design of the partitions and the robustness of With Write-up Desks Separated From Bench Area shared equipment corridor connects all of the the superstructure. Flexibility is one of the underlying neighborhoods along one side of the building. The concepts of Louis Kahn's 1960 design for the Salk module allows for an intensive wet lab design, or the Institute, where the lab space is free of columns, and a same space can be easily designed for computational walkable mechanical interstitial space above the labs workspace—increasingly prevalent in research offers full access to all utilities. facilities focused on data driven applications. Flexible design is even more important today, with Computational Lab the rapid advancement of equipment technology and research pursuits. Flexibility does come at a price, and careful decisions must be made relative University of Michigan to budget requirements. However, an investment Biological Sciences Building Ennead Architects 74 75 Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments 3. Comfort, Daylight & Transparency

What are the qualities of a space that inspire minds engaged in research, teaching and learning?

The lab of the future must provide a comfortable activity, places for reflection and contemplation, and environment that is balanced accordingly, with an the use of interior finishes that create warmth and a abundance of daylight in work and collaboration sense of comfort and cleanliness are all mechanisms spaces and highly controlled or no daylight in that are important to promote the physical and spaces dedicated to equipment and specialized psychological well-being of the building’s users. experimentation. While this is a fundamental and At the University of Oregon, Ennead’s Phil and Penny timeless principle, there are examples in the history of Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact the lab typology where daylight or comfort were not implements sustainable principles to provide indoor high priorities. Marie Curie’s “shed” lab was sparse, and outdoor spaces that create a sense of wellness, drafty, and in disrepair. If it had been comfortable, comfort, and transparency. The primary facades conditioned, and well equipped would the Curies have include sunscreen curtain walls made of high- proceeded more healthfully and more rapidly to their performance glass to shade the lab and office spaces discovery? Furthermore, many U.S. labs built in the to reduce solar heat gains and improve visual comfort. 1970s seemed indifferent to the need for daylit spaces. For a portion of its structure, the building features Perhaps this was a response to the energy crisis, or the exposed cross-laminated timber construction—a design may have been driven purely by function and beautiful, locally sourced low-carbon footprint material process. that contributes to the users’ connection to place. Interiors that capture daylight and provide visual cues to the outdoors are critical for any successful research environment and will help to recruit and retain top talent. Indoor air and water quality, access to views and outdoor spaces, the encouragement of physical University of Oregon Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact Ennead Architects 76 77 6 Epilogue Inventing the Future

The purpose-built research building is a young that lent to easy manipulation of its spaces. And typology relative to its peers in architecture. And just as the lab typology became increasingly refined, a as science over time has been explaining the laws revered modern architect designed a masterpiece: of the universe and of life itself, the architectural an ocean-side cathedral to scientific pursuit and response to this continuum of discovery is evolving as intellectual contemplation. priorities of research shift. The history of science is As breakthroughs have continued, the laboratories replete with architectural lessons and concepts that that facilitate them have evolved apace. In the 21st can be interpreted in new ways. century, the sequencing of the human genome In 1874 cutting-edge discoveries in the laws of physics spawned countless iterations of biological lab prompted a new lab building in Cambridge, England, buildings, all competing for attention and identity, cloaked as a Victorian Gothic museum. Two decades designed to attract, retain, and nurture the finest later in Paris, a brilliant physicist/chemist and her scientific minds. husband needed a lab in which to confirm their This rich architectural history helps us to construct hypotheses on radioactivity—any type of space, a new conceptual framework for the future of even a shed, would do. In the U.S. around the same research communities. Like their predecessors, time, a leading university was building big in order these buildings will embody the visions and goals of to compete with its European counterparts, while a their inhabitants, cultivating the intellectual curiosity, summer retreat where the seeds of molecular biology commitment, and collaboration necessary to achieve were sown was beginning to evolve into a picturesque, greatness in science—as mankind moves forward, renowned research institution. A hastily constructed inventing the future. building intended as a temporary research facility during World War II ended up in use for more than fifty years, beloved for the “charming” shoddiness

78 79 BOOK CREDITS IMAGE CREDITS 20: Fermilab, Interactions.org 42: Bell Labs Author Craig M. McIlhenny AIA All photos © Ennead Architects, except where noted. 22: A History of the Cavendish Laboratory (1910) 42: Ezra Stoller/Esto Designers Tess Fleming, Aislinn Weidele Images for each page are credited clockwise from top. 22: Rosalind Elsie Franklin by Elliot & Fry. 42: Bell Labs Editor Carolyn Horwitz © National Portrait Gallery 44: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office Contributors Keri Murawski, Oliver Winters, Yeng-Tse Wu 44: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office Permissions Sanjiv Dhodapkar, Michael Hassett cover: Fermilab, Interactions.org 22: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 4: Fermilab, Interactions.org 22: The Architect and Building News 44: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office CHAPTER OPENER IMAGES 6: ID 61271339 © Vvoevale | Dreamstime.com 24: Thomas A. Edison Laboratories. Photo credit: 44: Mount Fuji, Mauiuy92 The cover and chapter opener images are 6: The Rockefeller University Jet Lowe. 46: Salk Institute photographs of particle tracks and collisions 6: Leicester University. Photo credit: NotFromUtrecht 24: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects 46: Salk Institute recorded in bubble chamber devices used to 6: © Frank Oudeman/OTTO (OT1142228; Columbia 24: Science Source 46: Salk Institute make precision measurements of high-speed University’s Jerome L. Greene Science Center) 24: Perspective View Of the Edison Enterprises, 48: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects atomic particles. The devices were used in the 8: Fermilab, Interactions.org Including the Laboratory Complex. From an 48: Wistar Institute study of high-energy physics and subatomic 10: The School of Athens, Raphael insurance map dated April 22, 1922. 50: Lewis Thomas Laboratory, aadair4 atomic particles, particularly in the 1960s. The 10: Amphitheater Sapientiae Aeternae, Heinrich Khunrath 24: Jazz Guy; Flickr 50: Princeton University particle paths and collisions recorded produce 26: Musée Curie (Coll. ACJC) - All 50: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects images of great interest and beauty: art at the 11: Chemical Laboratory in the middle of the eighteenth subatomic level. century 28: Schermerhorn Hall and Fayerweather Hall, 52: Jeff Goldberg/Esto - All 11: Faraday at work in his laboratory at the Royal Institution, Columbia University, New York, New York, 1895. 54: Stanford University, Foster and Partners Wellcome Collection gallery Photo by Geo. P. Hall & Son/The 54: Timothy Hartung/Ennead Architects 12: Fermilab, Interactions.org New York Historical Society/Getty Images. 56: Humboldt University, Andreas Levers 14: A History of the Cavendish Laboratory (1910) 28: McKim, Mead and White, Campus Plan 56: Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn in their Berlin 14: Perspective View Of the Edison Enterprises, Including 28: Party in the Fly Room at Columbia on laboratory, 1913. (Smithsonian Institution) the Laboratory Complex. From an insurance map January 2, 1919 56: Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin dated April 22, 1922. 28: University Archives, Rare Book & Manuscript 56: Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin 14: Musée Curie (Coll. ACJC) Library, Columbia University Libraries 58: Jeff Goldberg/Esto 14: Historical Findings Photo: Schermerhorn Hall 28: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects 58: Aislinn Weidele/Ennead Architects 15: The Rockefeller University 30: The Rockefeller University 58: Jeff Goldberg/Esto 15: Erich Mendelsohn. © Kunstbibliotek, Staatliche Museen 30: Rockefeller University Archives, R.G. 1100 60: CERN zu Berlin/Dietmar Katz 32: Erich Mendelsohn. © Kunstbibliotek, Staatliche 60: The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS. 15: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Museen zu Berlin/Dietmar Katz Credit: xenotar Getty Images 15: Courtesy MIT Museum 32: R. Arlt, AIP 62: Anton Grassl/Esto - All 16: Ezra Stoller/Esto 32: Erich Mendelsohn. © Kunstbibliotek, Staatliche 64: © Michael Moran/OTTO (OT1127424; Andlinger 16: Max Planck Institute for Physics. ©Kai Otto Architects. Museen zu Berlin/Dietmar Katz Center for Energy and the Environment) 16: Ezra Stoller/Esto 34: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 64: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects 16: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office 34: Barbara McClintock Collection, American 64: Princeton University, Michael Van 17: Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Alfred Essa Philosophical Society Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. 17: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Archtects 34: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects 65: Princeton University, Tod Williams Billie Tsien 17: Don Weinreich/Ennead Architects 34: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 66: Ricahrd Barnes 17: Jeff Goldberg/Esto 36: Courtesy MIT Museum - All 66: ID 08.06.08, Archives & Special Coll., Vassar 18: Stanford University, Foster and Partners 38: Ezra Stoller/Esto College Lib. 18: Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin 38: Ezra Stoller/Esto 66: Richard Barnes 18: Jeff Goldberg/Esto 40: Max Planck Institute for Physics. ©Kai Otto 68: Fermilab, Interactions.org 18: CERN Architects. 70: Jeff Goldberg/Esto 19: Anton Grassl/Esto 41: Max Planck Institute for Physics. ©Kai Otto 78: Fermilab, Interactions.org 19: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects Architects. 19: Richard Barnes 42: Ezra Stoller/Esto

80 81 ENDNOTES 1 CBS 60 Minutes, April 22, 2018. Original 23 Christina Landbrecht, "The Myth of Transparency." quote by Alan Kay, 1982. 24 New Laboratories (Charlotte Klonk). 2016. 2 Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Christina Landbrecht, "The Myth of Transparency." New Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Laboratories (Charlotte Klonk). 2016. Civilization. 2013. 25 Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory- Bell Labs and the Great 3 Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Age of American Innovation. 2012. Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western 26 Eero Saarinen (original quote). The Idea Factory- Bell Labs Civilization. 2013. and the Great Age of American Innovation (Jon Gertner). 2012. 4 The Design of Research Laboratories, The Nuffield 27 James Stewart Polshek, Build, Memory. 2014. Foundation Division for Architectural Studies. Oxford 28 Leslie Thomas, Louis I. Khan- Building Art, Building Science. 2005. University Press. 1961. 29 Leslie Thomas, Louis I. Khan- Building Art, Building Science. 2005. 5 Mark C. Fishman, Lab- Building a Home for Scientists. 30 Mid-Century Mundane: the most exciting of mundane mid- Lars Muller Publishers. century architecture. https://midcenturymundane.wordpresscom/ 6 Paul de Kruif, Microbe Hunters. 1941. 2011/08/09/thewistarinstitutephiladelphia-pa/. August 9, 2011. 7 The Design of Research Laboratories, The Nuffield 31 James Collins, Jr., "The Design Process for the Human Foundation Division for Architectural Studies. Oxford Workplace." The Architecture of Science (Peter Galison University Press. 1961. and Emily Thompson). 1999. 8 Simon Schafer, A Tour Around the Old Cavendis 32 James Collins, Jr., "The Design Process for the Human Laboratory- The Founding. 2007. Workplace." The Architecture of Science (Peter Galison 9 Neil Baldwin, Edison, Inventing the Century. 2001. and Emily Thompson). 1999. 10 Rosalynd Pflaum, Grand Obsession: Madame Curie and 33 James Collins, Jr., "The Design Process for the Human Her World. 1989. Workplace." The Architecture of Science (Peter Galison 11 Janet Parks, "POSTINGS: 100 Years of Morningside and Emily Thompson). 1999. Heights; Columbia Past, Columbia Not," The New York 34 https://news.stanford.edu/news/1999/june9/biox-69.html Times. October 26, 1997. 35 Christina Landbrecht, "The Myth of Transparency." New 12 Elizabeth Hanson, The Rockefeller University, Laboratories (Charlotte Klonk). 2016. Achievements: A Century of Science for the Benefit of 36 Brian Griffin, Laboratory Design Guide, 3rd Edition. Mankind, 1901-2001. 37 Robyn Beaver, Contemporary Architecture Publication. 2004. 13 Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman, 38 Peter Galison and Caroline A. Jones, "Factory, Architecturefrom Pre-History to Post-Modernism / The Laboratory, Studio: Dispersing Sites of Production." The Western Tradition. 1986. Architecture of Science (Peter Galison and Emily 14 Gaynor Aaltonen, The History of Architecture- Iconic Thompson). 1999. Buildings Through the Ages. 2008. 39 MIT Media Lab at a Glance. https://dam-prod.media.mit. 15 Charlotte Klonk. New Laboratories. 2016. edu/x/2018/10/15/at-a-glance-2018.pdf 16 Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, What Happens 40 Robert Campbell, "MIT Media Lab Aims to Elevate After They Are Built. 1994. Transparency." The Boston Globe. http://archive.boston. 17 "Magical Incubator," MIT Infinite History. https:// com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/12/06/mit_media_ infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/mits-building-20- lab_elevates_transparency/. Dec. 6, 2009. magicalincubator 41 "The Style of Substance- A look at recent work 18 Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, What Happens from Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects / After They Are Built. 1994. Partners." Architect- The Journal of the American 19 Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, What Happens Institute of Architects. https://www.architectmagazine. After They Are Built. 1994. com/design/the-style-of-substance_o. April 8, 2015 20 Museum of Modern Art Bulletin. Skidmore Owings & 42 "Vassar College Completes Integrated Sciencec Commons, Merrill Architects, USA. Fall, 1950. A Group of Four Dynamic Buildings to Advance Scientific 21 Museum of Modern Art Bulletin. Skidmore Owings Instruction, Inquiry and Collaboration." Vassar Info. http://info. Merrill Architects, USA. Fall, 1950. vassar.edu/news/2015-2016/160504-integrated- 22 History. Max Planck Institute. https://www.mpg. sciencecommons-completed.html. May 4, 2016. de/955787/12_event7-1956