Think of a scientist, and a specific image may come to mind – a man in a white coat, maybe, or someone stepping away from beakers that are foaming over in a darkened lab. That image does hold true – the white coats are still necessary and chemists do still use test tubes or beakers. However, the traditional image of the dingy laboratory in a basement, potentially quite large but definitely unglamorous – has shifted. Now, scientific buildings around the world are embracing the kind of bold, futuristic design often reserved for museums and arts centres.
Way back in 1993, Fast Company noted the growth of neo-leisure: working and playing in the same area, with the idea that leisure and relaxation somehow contributed to your productivity. In many contemporary workplaces, the idea that leisure is actually integral to getting good work done has become pervasive. Laboratories are not immune from that change – in some cases, they exemplify it best.
A new book out from MIT Press, Laboratory Lifestyles, examines the growth of high-tech, expensive laboratories, identifying specific cases around the world, from California to Tokyo. Large corporations now see scientific labs as the next place to extend their reach, especially when it came to fields like biochemistry and pharmaceuticals.
The open plan design of these new laboratories emphasised socialisation and collaboration which have become common parlance. Throughout the book, the editors explore how the introduction of beanbags contributed to laid-back scientific conversations at Xerox Parc, or how the kind of food and layout at cafeterias can emphasise socialisation, or a certain kind of diet. Altogether, it combines to create a starting point – but do expensive, high-tech, wellness-focused, futuristic laboratories actually generate better research?
There’s very little evidence to suggest they do. Part of the reason is that these trends are relatively new, so there just isn’t the research. The other, main reason would probably be that measuring the quality of work – or even the quantity of work – produced by researchers in these labs is fairly nebulous. Scientific work isn’t instantaneous – it often happens slowly, at an incremental pace, and one researcher’s version of good work might not be so easily compared to others.
But the suggestion that mixing work and play can lead to better outcomes isn’t just one that afflicts scientists. The larger questions – particularly around what constitutes work – are ones which generally apply to other, modern work environments too, especially ones that come with the attached images of being trendy and cosmopolitan. In the preface, the authors ask, “Are scientists working when stretching at a yoga class, chatting with neighbouring teams in a cafe?” But there are no definite answers.
However, this kind of approach to studying scientists and the places they work in – which is more anthropological than scientific – came from Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, who carried out an anthropological examination of the scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, which was newly built in the 1980s. At the time, the Salk Institute was one of the first high-tech laboratories, fusing a different approach to work and leisure, with an architectural bent that rivalled museums.
“As we did our research, we noticed that laboratory architects and scientists talked a lot about the need for spaces for scientists to socialise away from the bench,” says Sandra Kaji O’Grady, a professor of architecture and one of the authors of Laboratory Lifestyles. “They believed that more informal interaction between scientists will accelerate discoveries. We wondered not only where this idea had come from, but also why it prompted particular amenities and architectural features.”
But the relationship might not be so straightforward. When it comes to lab design, there are plenty of standards and guidelines that have to be followed to a letter – particularly when it comes to safety requirements – in order to make sure that lab occupants can actually carry out their research. One example is that of the Richard Medical Laboratories in Pennsylvania, designed by the famous architect Louis Kahn. While the laboratory itself was lauded for its architectural features (winning several awards) scientists carrying out research had safety concerns about exposed pipes, or large windows that lead to ice in buckets melting.
It was only after a protracted period of time – after which point several scientists had lodged complaints about the design of the building – that some of those issues were addressed. Now, laboratories operating on a similar scale often consult scientists that will use their facilities first, using the kind of research done as the basis for how to build out.
“The Francis Crick Institute was first and foremost designed from the inside out,” says Randy Kray, the director of Science and Technology at HOK, an architecture firm which designed the Francis Crick Institute in partnership with PLP Architecture. “The architecture itself – the openness, the flexibility – that came from this vision of how the science of the future would happen, how it would be conducted.” In the Francis Crick, this means open plan offices and breakout areas are found on every floor, and the glass structure of the building lets people from the outside see in too. But recent years have seen scientists complain about noise levels – with that famous open plan layout actually distracting them from their work.
“Many scholars have studied the ways in which the provision of meals and foosball tables, and on-site dry cleaning keeps people working all hours in jobs that are contractually precarious,” says O’Grady. “Given that scientific method requires objective evidence extracted from repeatable experiments, we thought scientists might be more sceptical about emotive managerial techniques.”
Perhaps this paints a dismal picture – one where every laboratory is modelling on a co-working space without any of the specificity, or more money is spent on design even if it has no significant effect on the quality of research. But that is overly pessimistic. “Actually, what we are seeing is an increasing diversification of laboratories in terms of their size, their institutional affiliations, their amenity,” says O’Grady. “Co-working hacker labs and incubator spaces are growing at a phenomenal rate, and they often have hipster style features to attract a younger and more entrepreneurial audience.The more glamorous ones with celebrity chefs at work in the staff restaurants tend to be occupied by large pharma corporations. But it’s not that all labs are going to look glamorous, so much as the look of all laboratories is now self-conscious.”
As technology improves, naturally, more laboratories will invest in better facilities and laboratories. There’s no rationale for expecting scientists to work in dark basements or bare-bones labs – after all, arguably more accurate and high tech equipment could in fact, aid scientific discoveries. What this may show is that there's a larger conversation to be had around how contemporary workplaces are structured. “I don’t think that the aesthetic is critical to the social aspects of science at the Crick,” says Kray. “Feeling like your environment is beautiful, or attractive – that’s a positive contributor, and you want to get that right.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
