The Laboratory Timeline

The Laboratory TimelineArchitecture for Scientific Research

Past, Present & Future

Prologue

Historical IntroductionThe Scientific Method and Early Labs

The Lab TimelinePurpose-Built Labs, Mid-19th Century to Present

The Lab Timeline BuildingsStories, Details and Floor Plans

What is the Lab of the Future?

Epilogue

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1 Prologue

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A retaining wall bisects the campus along the north-south axis, revealing a change in topography (1930s)

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1 Gregor Mendel’s Lab—a monastery garden, 18652 Rockefeller Institute Medical Research Labs, 19173 Leicester University Engineering Labs, 19634 Columbia University Neuroscience Labs, 2017

today with new conviction and intent. The second is that one can’t ignore that great science and research occurred in certain buildings and spaces that are now legacy and that those environments engendered discovery and invention. Certainly the individual researcher’s imagination or the research group’s collective minds and inquiries played a critical role, but the design of the physical environment must have contributed in some way too. The Lab Timeline therefore tracks the history of scientific discovery and invention alongside the history of lab architecture. The physical location of the “Fly Lab” in Columbia University’s monumental Schermerhorn Hall and the building's proximity to museological collections as well as other natural-science departments surely played a role in the great discoveries in genetics that occurred there. The lab itself was cramped and tiny, but perhaps that helped accelerate the research by encouraging frequent conversation amongst the research team during their long days in the lab. Can this example be applied to new planning and design ideas for labs today? Perhaps not literally, but certainly the model exists as a source of inspiration.

As architects of lab buildings we are committed to designing and building for the future of science. It’s been said that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”1 Invention requires hard work, sustained inquiry, a grounded understanding of what came before, and, perhaps, a bit of luck. We believe architecture can proceed on a similar path to arrive at successful and inventive solutions. The Lab Timeline attempts to capture that spirit of invention and provide inspiration for research labs of the future.

The Laboratory Timeline was born from a few fundamental questions. As architects, we had noticed that the lab building typology had not been comprehensively researched and that the available literature on the subject was scattered. We felt compelled to investigate this typology and the ways it has been shaped by research priorities and architectural ambitions over time, and we began by asking:

How have research labs, the “knowledge production centers” of our physical environment, evolved from solitary spaces in unlikely locations to the scientific communities and major segments of institutional fabric that they are today?

What can be learned from labs designed and built in previous generations, and even within the past decade, to best inform our building designs?

What is happening now in scientific research that can help shape the labs of the future?

The Lab Timeline examines the building typology from its roots in the mid- to late 19th century, when purpose-built structures for scientific research were just beginning to emerge, to present-day lab buildings, and, finally, ahead to the future. We should be reminded that the architecture for scientific research is only about 160 years old—an extremely young building typology in relation to domestic architecture, temples, churches, theaters, schools, and museums. We have not been at this for very long, and the rapid pace of scientific discovery and inquiry will continue to inform our research buildings of the future. In order to understand what the future may bring for science and research buildings, it’s important to understand how we ended up 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 from historical examples and recondition them to the present. Marie Curie’s “shed lab” in Paris might have been less than ideal—but imagine it reinterpreted

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2 Historical IntroductionThe Scientific Method and Early Labs

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Long before labs existed, the scientific method had to be contemplated. Aristotle—as depicted in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens, at center in blue (next to Plato)—was one of the first great philosophers to ask fundamental questions about nature and to examine the world around him. He is the father of modern science and the scientific method—the process of observation, collection, classification, and discovery. In opposition to Plato, who believed in mysticism and idealism, Aristotle was a realist and empiricist who sought to observe nature through the sober eyes of science.2 He wrote treatises on biology, including the taxonomy of many living organisms, as well as physics and astronomy.

Aristotle set up a school in Athens to rival Plato’s academy: The Lyceum. This was his answer to Plato’s Academy and its mirror image.3 It consisted of a garden, a temple to the nine muses, lecture rooms, a library, and rooms with tables for collecting and dissecting biological specimens.

This continued into the 19th century, when European and American labs often depicted the lone researcher working in less than optimal conditions—in attics, basements, or sheds without much access to natural light or critical services like plumbing and ventilation.Emphasis shifted to experimental reproducibility and rationality.

This continued into the 19th century when labs in Europe and America still often depicted the lone researcher in his or her lab in less than optimal conditions— in attics, basements, or sheds without much access to natural light or critical services like plumbing and ventilation. Scientists began to demand better facilities. Louis Pasteur, one of the great “microbe hunters”6 who brought the world some of the first vaccinations, pasteurization, and (most important?) better wine, was eloquent on this matter and implored politicians and universities for improved facilities. This helped to usher in the purpose-built 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.

Strongly influenced by Aristotle, alchemists resembled scientists but were trying to alter the world rather than understand it. While they wanted to help people in need, they also had to earn a living by producing cheap dyes, imitation pearls, and metal alloys that looked like gold and silver.4 They are often depicted as solitary figures laboring alone over experiments, usually in the presence of a draught furnace and other paraphernalia that added to their mystique. The environment was either lofty, as the above image shows, or gloomy and isolated. They incorporated mysticism, religion, astronomy, and mathematics into work that was often based on the Aristotelian theory of the four elements of matter: earth, air, fire, and water. Typically working in secrecy, they mixed the mystical with the empirical and technical.5

As alchemy evolved, others turned to real experimentation to uncover the secrets of the natural world. The disciplines of chemistry began to emerge and scientific laws were proposed and accepted to explain natural phenomena.

I implore you, take some interest in those sacred dwellings meaningly described as laboratories. Ask that they be multiplied and completed. They are the temples of the future, of riches, and of comfort. There humanity grows better, stronger; there she can learn to read the works of nature, works of progress and universal harmony, while humanity’s own works are too often those of barbarism, of fanaticism, and of destruction.7

— Louis Pasteur, 1868

Aristotle 4th Century BCE

Experimentation Chemical Lab, circ. 1750

Alchemy Alchemist’s chamber, 400 AD–1300 AD

Research Michael Faraday’s lab, London, 1852

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3 The Lab TimelinePurpose-Built Labs: Mid-19th Century to Present

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The Cavendish Laboratory

Cambridge, EnglandJames Clerk Maxwell, 1874

Rockefeller Institute Flexner Hall

New York, NYCoolidge & Shattuck, 1917

Thomas Edison Laboratories

West Orange, NJHenry Hudson Holly, 1888

The Einstein TowerPotsdam, Germany

Erich Mendelsohn, 1922

Marie Curie’s “Shed Lab”Paris, France

no architect, 1897

Cold Spring Harbor Lab (Jones Lab), Cold Spring

Harbor, NY; Sidney Watson (orig. 1895), 1930s

Schermerhorn Hall (“fly lab”) Columbia

University, New York, NY McKim, Mead & White, 1898

MIT RadLab (Building 20)

Cambridge, MAMcCreery & Theriault, 1943

1874 1898 1917 1922 1935 194318971888

Biology

Microbes & Vaccination (Pasteur) - 1870’sFirst Chemotherapeutics (Ehrlich) - 1878

Neuron Doctrine (Santiago Ramon Cajal)- 1890

Rous Sarcoma Virus (Peyton Rous) - 1909

Heredity and Genes (Gregor Mendel) - 1865

X-Rays (Roentgen) - 1895Microbes and Disease (R. Koch)- 1890’s

Synthesis of Purine (Emil Fischer) - 1902

Genes Reside on Chromosomes(T.H. Morgan “Fly Room” at Columbia)- 1910

Physics &Engineering

Electromagnetic Waves (Hertz) - 1887

Discovery of Electron (JJ Thomson) - 1897

Special Theory of Relativity (Einstein) - 1905Carbon Fiber Filament (T. Edison) - 1879 Discovery of Radium/Radioactivity (Marie Curie) -

Air Conditioning(Carrier) - 1902

Wright Brothers Airplane - 1903

2-Stroke Diesel Engine(Diesel) - 1893

Telephone (Bell, Watson) - 1876

F.D. R. Launches Polio Hospital - 1928

X-Ray Crystallography(W.L. Bragg)- 1915

Bacteriophage (F. D’Herrelle) - 1921

Dawn of Molecular Biology(Delbruck, Luria) - 1935

Structural Theory of Mind (Freud) - 1923

Penicillin (A. Fleming) - 1928

F.D.R. Launches National Cancer Inst. - 1936

“Transforming Principle” of Nucleic Acids (O. Avery) - 1944

Theory of General Relativity (Einstein)- 1915 Quantum Mechanics

(Born, Heisenberg)- 1925

Neutron (Chadwick)- 1932

Model of the Atom (Niehls Bohr)- 1913

Transistor (Lillenfeld) - 1926 E. Lawrence Cyclotron - 1938

Cloud Chamber: Positron & Muon- 1932-1936

First Tank- 1915

Electron Microscope - 1931

Refrigerators (GE) - 1927 Nuclear Fission(Rutherford, Bohr, Hahn, Meitner) - 1938

Improved Radar - 1943

Point Contact Transistor(Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley at Bell Labs) - 1947

Early Vacuum Tubes- 1910

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NYU Medical Sciences Building New York, NY,

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1952

Wistar Institute Philadelphia, PA

Mansell, Lewis & Fugate, 1975

Max Planck Institute for Physics

Munich, Germany,Sep Ruf, 1958

Lewis Thomas Laboratory Princeton University,

Princeton, NJ; Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown, 1986

Teijin Inst. for Chemical Research Tokyo, Japan James Stewart Polshek,

1963

NYU Skirball Institute New York, NY

Ennead Architects, 1993

Salk InstituteLa Jolla, CA

Louis Kahn, 1965

Bell LabsHolmdel Township, NJ

Eero Saarinen, 1961

1952 1958 1961 1963 1965 1975 1986 1993

Structure of DNA (Watson, Crick, Franklin) - 1953

Dark Matter (Zwicky) - 1955Pulsars Discovered

1967

Reverse Transcriptase (Temin, Baltimore) - 1970

Reproductive Cloning (Campbell, Wilmut) - 1996Polio Vaccine (Salk, Sabin) - 1955

Human Insulin from Recombinant DNA - 1978

Complete Human Genome Sequenced - 2000

Philadelphia Chromosome (Nowell & Hungerford) - 1959 Polymerase Chain Reaction (Mullis) - 1983

Genetic Code, Codons (Matthaei, Niremberg) - 1961 First Child Conceived by IVF - 1978

Hematopoietic Stem Cells (Weissman) - 1990

Endosymbiotic Theory (Lynn Margulis)- 1966

DNA Polymerase- the enzyme for assembling DNA (A. Kornberg) - 1956 Rapid Gene Sequencing

(Sanger, Coulson) - 1977

Central Dogma of Molecular Biology (Crick) - 1956

RNA Sequence (Sanger) - 1968

DNA Proven the Genetic Material, Bacteriophage (Hershey, Chase) - 1952

Bubble Chamber Particle Detector (Glaser) - 1952

Information Theory (C. Shannon) - 1949

Ultrasound - 1959

Lunar Landing- 1969Boeing 747 - 1969 ARPANET, Fiber Optics - 1970 World Wide Web- 1990

Google and Wifi - 1998

Digital Camera (Apple) - 1994

Top Quark (Fermilab/SLAC) - 1995

Microprocessor (Intel), Kevlar - 1971

DynaTac Cell Phone - 1984

Big Bang Theory (Hawking) - 1970CERN- Large HadronCollider & International Space Station - 1998

November Revolution (quarks, mesons) - 1974

Quantum Computing (Feynman) - 1980


Fortran Programming Language - 1957

First Satellite - 1958

Strong Interactions - 1962

Self Cleaning Oven - 1963

Laser (Bell Labs)- 1961Hand Held Calculator

1967

BiologyWI-38 Cell Line(L. Hayflick) - 1962

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Institute of Physics Humbolt University

Berlin-Aldershof, GermanyAgustin & Frank, 2004

Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment

Princeton Univ., NJTod Williams & Billy Tsien, 2015

University of Michigan Biomed. Science Research

Building, Ann Arbor, MI Ennead Architects, 2006

Vassar College Integrated Science Commons -

Poughkeepsie, NYEnnead Architects, 2016

CERN Large Hadron Collider

Near Geneva, SwitzerlandNo architect, 2008

MIT Media LabCambridge, MA

Fumihiko Maki, 2010

WHAT IS THE LAB OF

THE FUTURE?

2003 2004 2006 2008 2010 2015 2016 2030


Grid Cells in the Brain (Moser, Moser) - 2005

CRISPR cas9 Genome Editing Enzyme (Doudna, Charpentier) - 2012

Robotic Limbs Controlled by the Brain (Duke Univ.) - 2014

$1,000 Genome Sequencing - 2016

RNA Interference Nobel Prize (Fire, Mello) - 2006

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (Yamanaka) - 2006 Precision Medicine Initiative - 2015 Cryo-Electronic Microscope

(Dubochety, Frank, Henderson) - 2017

Role of Telomeres and Telomerase (Blackburn, Greider, Szostak) - 2009

Synthetic DNA, Mycoplasma Laboratorium (Venter) - 2010 Organs on a Chip (Stem Cell Engineering) - 2013

Social Media, Facebook - 2004

Development of Graphene Applications - 2005

YouTube - 2005

Apple i-Phone (S. Jobs) - 2007

Carbon Sequestration - 2008

National Ignition Facility (Fusion Potential) - 2009

Self-Driving Car - 2011Curiosity Rover- 2012

Apple i-Pad - 2010

Discovery of Higgs Boson Particle (CERN)- 2012

Gravitational Waves Detected (Barish, Thorne, Weiss) - 2015

Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, Google - 2014

Biology

Clark Center, Bio-XStanford University

Palo Alto, CAFoster & Partners, 2003

Segway - 2001

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4 The Buildings Stories, Details, and Floor Plans

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The Foundation

The Cavendish Lab Cambridge, England 1874

The Cavendish was one of the world's first purpose-built lab buildings, and was designed specifically for experimentation and education in physics. This was before Einstein’s time, but the foundation for his theory of relativity and modern physics was laid here through the research of J.J. Thomsen, Ernest Rutherford, and other physicists. The building was large by 19th century standards and was set within the context of the traditional Victorian campus of Cambridge, surrounded by museums. The choice of a museological setting was deliberate because just prior to this time, engineering and the natural sciences were taught from museum collections.

The design and layout of the building embodied the idea of the lab as the center of measurement and calculation. It included three floors of labs and a basement for specialized experiments. The windows were intentionally large to provide steady, bright illumination for experiments. Exterior window platforms were intended for spectroscopes, prisms, and lenses to study the phenomenon of light.8

The history of discovery at the Cavendish has been nothing less than extraordinary: Nearly 30 Nobel laureates conducted their work here. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick, in collaboration with Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, elucidated the structure of DNA at the Cavendish.

Upper-level floor plan

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Large laboratory

Professor’s private room

Apparatus room

Professor’s laboratory

Lecture room

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Architect: James Clerk Maxwell

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Thomas Edison Laboratories West Orange, NJ 1888

Thomas Alva Edison brought his ambitious plan for a world-class laboratory and research-and-development facility to West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887. He also purchased a large estate and mansion only a couple of miles from his new lab. When it was built, the West Orange lab complex was probably one of the largest in the world. His goals for the lab were as lofty as his inventions:

I will have the best equipped and largest facility extant, incomparably superior to any other for rapid and 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

and delicate fine-tooled components, a drafting room, and chemical labs. A two-story library near the entrance served as Edison’s office and meeting location with investors. Four smaller one-story satellite lab structures were situated perpendicular to the main lab. The phonograph, refinement of the electric light-bulb, and magnetic storage batteries were among the hundreds of inventions conceived, developed, and produced here. The main lab building and its satellite labs still stand today as a great model for an R&D incubator.

The R&D FactoryLower-level floor plan

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Repair shop

Boiler room

Heavy machine shop

Lab

Library and Edison’s desk

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Architect: Henry Hudson Holly

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

Marie Curie is likely to remain the only two-time winner of the Nobel Prize to have carried out much of her scientific work in a shed. She was awarded the prizes in both physics and chemistry for her discovery of radioactivity, opening the doors to 20th-century atomic physics. Most scientists did not have room for experimentation at this time and had to make do with 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

While not ideal, it served its purpose, and it’s worth noting that the shed had some desirable architectural features: high bay space that was open, flexible, and flooded with daylight from an industrial skylight; a little space for interaction at the stove and chalkboard; and direct access to a courtyard so that experiments could be moved outside when necessary.

The ShedFloor plan (reconstructed)

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Exterior court

Vestibule

Lab equipment

Lab

2 1

3 4 3

Architect: unknown

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Schermerhorn Hall Columbia University, New York 1898

At Columbia University in the 1890s the sciences were driving the campus. The need to compete with European institutions like the Cavendish lab and German research universities was critical for science to flourish in America. Science pavilions with large windows were among the first buildings at Columbia's Morningside Heights campus.11 These Italian Renaissance-style buildings were part of the masterplan for the campus designed by architects McKim, Mead & White.

Schermerhorn Hall was built to house the departments 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.

The building is perhaps best known for the “fly lab”— an important location in the history of science. It was here in this 16 - by 23-foot lab that Thomas Hunt Morgan and his team studied mutations in the Drosophila fruit fly between 1907 and 1928 and discovered that genes are arranged on chromosomes, thus transforming biology forever. The small lab held three to four scientists who worked as an interactive unit, communicating their findings as soon as they observed them. The room was reconstructed for the biographical film "The Fly Room” (2014) featuring Morgan’s team.

The Fly LabUpper level floor plan (4th floor in 1898)

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The "Fly Lab"

Office

Lab

Classroom

Library

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Architect: McKim, Mead & White

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The Rockefeller Institute Flexner Hall, New York 1917

The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (known today as Rockefeller University) was founded in 1901 with a gift from John D. Rockefeller. At that time, there was no place in the United States devoted exclusively to medical research to address infectious diseases—the leading causes of death in the country.

The Institute was a revolutionary idea at a time when few medical schools offered students opportunities for pure research. Under the leadership of Simon Flexner and others, the Institute was organized around 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

this concept, and the result was somewhat compartmentalized, though this was balanced by communal spaces in the facility such as the formal dining hall.

The legacy of discovery at Rockefeller is nearly unmatched. Seminal work on genetics was conducted here in 1944 by Oswald Avery and his team, who identified and isolated the substance of heredity, DNA (although its structure would not be deciphered until 1953).

The InstituteUpper level floor plan

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Library

Lab

Office

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Architect: Coolidge & Shattuck

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The Einstein Tower Potsdam, Germany 1922

Designed to represent as well as facilitate the study of Einstein’s theory of relativity, the tower bearing the great physicist’s name is perhaps one of architectural history’s most potent examples of German expressionism. Intended as a concrete structure, but built of brick covered with a sculptural layer of reinforced concrete, it makes an "unmistakenly 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

The building is typical of Mendelsohn’s architecture, with no right angle in sight, giving the impression of space distorted both vertically in the observatory tower and horizontally on the lower research floors15. The resulting plan expresses the centralized observatory, banded by rings of sculpted windows on four floors sitting above a wavelike platform.

The Expressionist IconLower level floor plan

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Base of observatory

Lab

Study area

Equipment

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Architect: Erich Mendelsohn

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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Long Island, NY 1930s

Since their inception in 1890, the labs at Cold Spring Harbor on the North Shore of Long Island have been the cradle of molecular biology in the United States. The institution took root in 1895 with the Jones Lab, pictured here, which was designed to accommodate summer programs for students focused on marine biology, zoology, botany, and anatomy (and still in use today). Over the ensuing decades, individual structures, often designed in the community's 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

The Science Village

Floor plan (renovated)

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Entry

Lab

Dark room

Cold room

Mechanical

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Architect: Sidney Watson (original 1895 Jones Lab)

Delbruck, Barbara McClintock, Phil Sharp, and Carol Greider. Starting in 1933, symposia were organized for the duration of the summer, attracting large groups to collaborate on common research interests. The researchers at Cold Spring Harbor have written extensively about the vibrant community of colleagues gathered in a retreat-like setting surrounded by nature, and how that environment contributed to advances in their work.

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MIT RadLab (Building 20) Cambridge, MA 1943

Building 20 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was an artifact of wartime haste.16 Built as a temporary facility in 1943, its primary purpose was to provide research and testing space for engineers focused on the development of radar to help win World War II.

In fact, the mission statement given to the architects stated: “Life of said building to be for the duration of the war and six months thereafter.” 17 Remarkably, the building continued to be used for inter-disciplinary research and engineering until 1998 when it was finally demolished. Designed in about two weeks in 1943, the building was ready for occupancy by radar researchers six months later. Steel was unavailable because of the war, so the building was framed with heavy wood timber and designed to accommodate

almost any intended use. The layout of five low, narrow wings provided excellent daylight and created courtyards that could accommodate projects that were bursting through the building's walls.18 Many researchers who spent time in Building 20 talk about its absence of architecture, its glorious disorganization and flexibility:

“What was great about it was the ability to personalize your space and shape it to various purposes. If you don’t like a wall, just stick your elbow through it. If you want to bore a hole in the floor to get a little extra space, you do it. You don’t ask. It’s the best experimental building ever built.” 19

The Plywood PalaceUpper level floor plan (reconstructed)

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Office and lab wing

Radar lab wing

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Architect: McCreery & Theriault

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Items should be spaced .15” apart (can use this square as a marker)

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NYU Medical Sciences Building New York 1952

Designed as New York University’s Bellevue Medical Center campus by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the medical science facility covered almost eleven acres on the east side of Manhattan from 30th to 34th Streets and between First Avenue and the East River.20

The new buildings included both high and mid-rise structures designed in a clean-edged modernist composition of interlocking volumes. They consisted of medical laboratories, the university hospital tower, a residence hall, and an alumni pavilion, all planned as an asymmetric arrangement of functionally disparate units 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

thus: “In relating these functionally separate units…the architects have made a practical contribution as well as a contribution to the dream of all modern architects to change the monotony of the 19th-century city pattern.” 21

The mid-rise laboratory, known today as the Medical Sciences Building, is perhaps one of the earliest examples of a lab in the modernist idiom. It was designed to 1950s standards of lab planning with self-contained individual labs located along a central corridor.

The MasterplanUpper level floor plan

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Lab support

Lab

Office

Mix of labs, offices, and meeting space

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212

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Architect: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

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Max Planck Institute for Physics Munich, Germany 1958

The Modernist Pavilions

Ground level floor plan

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Laboratory pavilion

Lecture hall

Portico

Workshops

Experimental hall1

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Architect: Sep Ruf

Well established throughout Germany, with numerous research facilities built for a diversity of scientific disciplines, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science sought to expand and democratize its facilities in the post-war era, which were to be characterized by the sober pragmatism of modern architecture of the 1950s.22

In 1958 the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Werner Heisenberg was named director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics & Astrophysics, and a new facility was to be built in Munich under his direction. Heisenberg commissioned the modernist architect Sep Ruf, who was lauded as one of the most influential theoreticians and practitioners in Germany. His work personified the new democratic understanding of architecture in the wake of the war, perceived as a

symbolic position against buildings designed “to keep things secret.”23

Ruf ’s judicious use of glass reflects these values, and the innovative design for the lab complex was in striking contrast to the Society’s earlier research buildings, which were created in the style of bourgeois villas.24 Each function of Ruf's complex, which included an experimental hall, a workshop, a laboratory wing, and a lecture hall, was allotted a pavilion of its own. The architecture conveys a sense of transparency and weightlessness through the balanced distribution of monumental solid elements and glazed curtain walls.

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Bell Labs Holmdel Township, NJ 1961

The Black Box

The output of Bell Labs from the 1920s to the 1980s has become so entrenched in our everyday technology that it is easy to forget how innovative this work was at the time it was conceived. As the research and development arm of AT&T, Bell was the biggest industrial lab in the world, turning out innovations that changed society, including the vacuum tube, the transistor, the silicon solar cell, the maser, the laser, and the first fiber optic systems. It is "where the future, which is what we now call the present, was conceived and designed."25

There was a true culture of innovation at Bell Labs. Teams of scientists focused on a specific problem were able to roam free and gather knowledge through theory, experimentation, testing, and

development. The primary Bell Lab buildings were built in 1925 in New York City, 1945 in Murray Hill, NJ, and 1961 in Holmdel, NJ. The Holmdel lab is an enormous six-story steel and glass box designed by Eero Saarinen. Set on 460 landscaped acres, the building spans 2 million square feet and houses about 5,000 people. The interior includes a soaring atrium. Modular labs were designed to provide maximum flexibility, since the demands of research projects could often not be foreseen. Saarinen placed the building's long connecting hallways on its glass perimeter, with the windowless offices and labs in the interior. "Gone completely are the old claustrophobic, dreary, prison-like corridors." 26

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Entrance

Laboratory wing (labs and offices)

Central atrium

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Architect: Eero Saarinen

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Teijin Institute for Chemical & Polymer Research Tokyo (Hino City), Japan 1963

Teijin Ltd., a manufacturer of synthetic fibers, intended to build a large new research facility in 1961. Chairman Shinzo Ohya declared that he wanted his laboratory to be the most advanced in Japan, not only in its function but in its physical design. It was to be an example for Japanese companies still recovering from the war.27

Architect James Stewart Polshek, then only 31 years old, was approached to design the 300,000 square foot facility—his first major commission. With his family, he moved to Japan to direct the design and oversee construction of the project.

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

type of research in the building involved polymers and rayon fibers which required that the labs have no direct solar exposure. These design factors and a limited building height of 24 meters effectively set up the plan into a long linear bar with south-facing research offices and vertical service cores separated from the north-facing laboratory units by an access corridor. The highly sculpted north facade, the vertical towers of the south facade, and the low reception pavilion and grounds display a modern sensibility that draws inspiration from traditional Japanese temples, palaces, and gardens.

The Self-Designed Machineupper level floor plan

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Lab units

Offices

Entry pavilion below

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Architect: James Stewart Polshek

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By 1957, the foundation for eradicating polio had achieved its goal and had a generous endowment due to the success of Jonas Salk’s vaccine. Salk began discussing a new institute that would foster further medical research. A site was identified in La Jolla, California, on a mesa overlooking the Pacific Ocean that would resonate with Salk’s goals of linking science and research with the humanities—as he stated, he “would like to invite Picasso to the laboratories”. 28

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

selected. Each lab block was column-free, permitting ultimate flexibility. Office and study spaces were separated rather than embedded within the lab areas, with each study room offering a view of the ocean. The plaza that unites the two lab wings was originally to be planted entirely with trees, but Kahn reconsidered this after meeting with Luis Barragan. It was the Mexican architect who suggested, “I would not put a single tree in this area. I would make a plaza…If you make a plaza, you will have another façade to the sky.” 29

Salk Institute for Biological Studies La Jolla, CA 1965

The Research Monastery

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Plaza level & mezzanine level composite plan

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Architect: Louis Kahn

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The Wistar Institute Cancer Research Building Philadelphia, PA 1975

A noticeable pattern in U.S. lab architecture emerges in the 1970s, when the buildings seem to close in on themselves. The heroic and innovative research complexes of the previous decade evolve into opaque masonry boxes that look inward rather than outward. Many of the labs also fall into a category of vernacular building that uses a modern architectural language to contribute to a sense of place, but is not considered significant or as a candidate for preservation.30

The Wistar Institute's Cancer Research Building and Vivarium are an example of this building genre. The Wistar Institute has a fascinating history beginning with a Victorian building dedicated in 1894 designed to host the Institute’s museological collection of anatomy specimens and to house research programs in anatomy and biology. In 1972, Wistar became the first National Cancer Institute (NCI)— designated cancer

center in the nation dedicated solely to basic research. The Cancer Research Building and Vivarium were added to renovate and extend the Institute's facilities to accommodate the expanding cancer research program. The Institute's more than half-century achievements in vaccine development have saved countless lives globally and Wistar scientists have been pioneers in the study of infectious diseases and the genetic basis of cancer.

The typical floor plan of the cancer research lab includes a series of enclosed labs. An internalized, narrow, double-loaded corridor separates the labs and equipment spaces. In 2014 a new glassy addition— The Robert and Penny Fox Research Tower brought about the most significant architectural transformation since the original 1894 Victorian era structure was built.

The Mid-Century MundaneUpper level floor plan

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Architect: Mansell, Lewis & Fugate

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Lewis Thomas Laboratory Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 1986

The Manor House

Advances in the field of molecular biology in the late 1970s and early 1980s prompted Princeton University in 1983 to build a new facility that would attract the most prominent scientists. Influenced by Elizabethan manor houses and New England mills,31 the highly patterned brick and stone post-modernist facades designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown reflect Princeton’s use of traditional building materials.

The building planning was developed around the 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.

Departing from the discrete and closed labs of the 1970s, the planning made use of an implied internal lab corridor on one side, thus allowing for an “open lab” concept to emerge. The openness was further articulated by the use of interior glass dividing walls between labs and departments to “create visual connections and promote greater awareness of fellow researchers.”33 Small lounge spaces at the ends of the lab block facilitated interactive behavior on each lab floor.

Upper level floor plan

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Architect: Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown

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NYU Langone Skirball Institute for Biomolecular Medicine & Residence Tower New York 1993

The Tower

Conceptual planning with Polshek Partnership Architects began in 1987 on a new biomolecular medical research building on the NYU campus. It was to be the largest building project in the university’s history. The mission of the project was to attract the finest talent in the field and secure the university’s identity as one of the city’s preeminent medical research and healthcare institutions.

The 25-story facility served as the new “front door” to NYU’s urban campus and integrated with the city’s architectural fabric while accommodating an unprecedented mix of uses. Due to the limits on developable site area, the architects decided to stack the needed programs into a tower fronting York Avenue. At the concourse level, a double-height

honorific entrance lobby, which filters 7,000 people daily, connects the new and pre-existing elements of the entire hospital and medical school. The first four floors above the ground level concourse house 60,000 square feet of research labs; the next four floors house faculty practice offices; and the remaining twelve floors house residential units for staff. The research labs are individualized but connected with offices between, and are located along the east and west primary facades to catch morning and afternoon daylight. A central corridor accommodates lab equipment and access to labs and lab support spaces. The east pavilion provides shared collaboration spaces.

Upper level lab floor plan

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Architect: Polshek Partnership Architects (Ennead)

Concourse Entry

Research Laboratories

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James H. Clark Center Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 2003

The Inside-Out Lab

In 1998 James Spudich and Steven Chu at Stanford hatched the “Bio-X.” initiative at a time when science, was suggesting new avenues of research and giving rise to new disciplines of study. Major progress was being made in the biological sciences and the Human Genome Project would soon be complete, "opening the floodgate of new information"34 Bio-X was to provide an imminent response to this rapid progress by strengthening collaborations by physically locating the disciplines of bioinformatics, computer science, biology, engineering, and physics in one place.

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

a fluid and transparent lab setting that is inviting and open. This was a new paradigm for lab planning—allowing passersby to see directly into the building. The traditional lab building had been effectively turned inside-out,36 with enclosed lab support spaces massed on the exterior of the building and open labs located on the interior courtyard side. Enhancing the idea of a building that can respond to rapidly changing patterns of trans-disciplinary research, all interior furnishings, including workstations, are on wheels, allowing teams to group and regroup on short notice.


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Architect: Foster & Partners

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Institute of Physics, Humbolt University (Lise Meitner Haus) Berlin-Aldershof, Germany 2004

Der Endlos Durchgang

The Berlin Senate in 1999 decided to relocate its center for mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences to Humbolt University in Aldershof. The new Institute for Physics was named for Lise Meitner, who with Otto Hahn in the 1930s made important discoveries in nuclear physics. This was an extraordinary achievement at the time, given that women in Berlin were not allowed to work in labs or attend university. (Meitner, who was Jewish, fled Germany for Sweden in late 1938.) Hahn would go on to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1944, but Meitner's contributions were not recognized.

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

of the institute.37 The dimensionally varied internal corridor (durchgang) links departments in a spatially dynamic way by alternating between internal core and outside edge, allowing occupants to circulate continuously and thus increasing the potential for interactions. The modules of the building are optimized and repeated based on their function, allowing for expansion and future growth. The facades become an experience from both the inside and the outside: internally, occupants can circulate among the facades; externally, passersby can see through large façade openings into the garden.


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Architect: Augustin & Frank

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The Atrium

With biomedical research breakthroughs such as the completion of the Human Genome Project (2000) and the imminent work on stem cell advancements (2006), the University of Michigan wished to build a world-class biomedical research building.

Ennead’s design solution took its cues from the site and the requirement to create a distinct identity and “front door” for the medical school campus. The insularity of the standard research environment with compartmentalized labs is turned completely around. The architecture recalls and reinterprets the great open labs from the 1960’s including the Salk Institute and Bell Labs. Here, the L-shaped lab block is separated from the sinuous ribbon of faculty offices by an internal sky-lit atrium, which

penetrates the building’s core. Bridges across the atrium connect the offices and labs, emphasizing the idea of community.

The large floor plates promote increased collabo-rations. In fact, a study in 2014 completed by the university’s Institute for Social Research gathered data on the building’s use patterns and found that the co-lo-cation of research groups on the same floor showed a dramatic increase in the formation of interdisciplinary collaborations. It also found that overlapping “shared” zones created more opportunities for scientists to collaborate and secure joint funding.

University of Michigan Biomedical Science Research Building Ann Arbor, MI 2006

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 for “passive contacts” in innovative workplaces, developing alternative measures is imperative. We 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 the public or shared spaces that the person is likely to use on a regular basis (restrooms). Two people 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 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 pair or dyad. Consider Figure 6, which represents the work paths of two hypothetical investigators who share a floor in the BSRB building. The path outlined in orange traverses the shortest walking routes connecting Person 1’s assigned office, lab space, the nearest elevator and the nearest relevant restroom. The blue path does the same for Person 2.

Zonal OverlapFor every 100 feet of zonal overlap, collaboration between scientists increased by 20 percent, and grant funding increased by 21–30 percent.


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CERN Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS Detector near Geneva, Switzerland 2008

The Collider

What about big physics? How do these enormous collaboration projects that are shrouded in mystery fit into the context of labs? They are labs after all, or perhaps better defined as experiments on a monumental scale. If not considered architecture, their engineering is a wonder, all in the service of better understanding the universe.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is a network of circular particle accelerators located 100 meters underground and as large as 27 kilometers in circumference. Particles such as protons traveling 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

countries. Thus the architecture becomes a network of international collaborators who are not only connected by data, but who also physically build portions of the project remotely and deliver their components to the Geneva site.

As one physicist said, “It is no longer clear where the experiment can be said to be. The experiment cannot be localized, for the circus tent spans the globe.”38

The Higgs-Boson particle was discovered in 2012 at CERN, completing the Standard Model of particle physics.

Architect: none

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MIT Media Lab Cambridge, MA 2010

The Glass Lab

The guiding concept of the original MIT Media Lab, completed in 1985, was defined by MIT president Jerry Weisner and visionary professor Nicholas Negroponte, whose mantra was that the “best way to predict the future is to invent it.”1 Their mission was to define the keystone technologies of the future. The Media Lab was to transcend known boundaries and disciplines by fostering an unconventional mix of research areas, including technology, media, the human/machine interface, sciences, art, and design.39 That mission is still true today. In 2004 a plan was initiated to expand the Media Lab with a new 163,000-square-foot facility.

Designed by Fumihiko Maki, “the master of delicacy, precision, and understatement,”40 the exterior and interior of the building celebrate the use of glass and employ a pristine palette of whiteness, transparency, and light-diffusing materials. In direct contrast, the interdisciplinary Media Lab research groups represent messiness and entropy with their clutter of new and abandoned experiments. The architecture thus encapsulates the carefully arranged, double-height space labs in glass with the goal of making everyone’s work visible to everyone else. The collision of the composed, immaculate architecture and the chaotic world of the preoccupied researcher fits the original mission of the Media Lab: mixing disciplines.


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Architect: Fumihiko Maki

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Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment Princeton University, Princeton NJ 2015

The Garden

Designed to connect and enhance Princeton’s existing engineering quadrangle and create inviting indoor and outdoor spaces accessible to all Princeton students and faculty, the Andlinger Center is a refreshing approach to laboratory design. Because of its sensitivity to the Princeton campus scale and its landscape traditions, the building never feels like an ordinary science building; in fact, it shares qualities and characteristics often found in monasteries and museums—yet it is a building for serious research with state-of-the art scientific tools.

The site is bound on two sides by a classical masonry wall designed in 1911 by McKim, Mead & White. This

fragment of history was preserved and inspired the architectural concept of the new building as a series of interconnected masses that create varied garden courtyards. Because the highly sensitive research equipment had to be located in lower level labs, the architects Tod Williams and BillieTsien developed the idea of an “orthogonal geological massing that pushes into the earth using a system of site cuts and courts to bring daylight deep into the interiors.”41 The building is clad in a pale gray elongated brick manufactured in Denmark, which lends the building a sense of scale and craft. On the interiors, felt wall coverings include enlarged sketches from the notebooks of Galileo, Marie Curie, and Einstein.


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Architect: Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

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Vassar College Integrated Science Commons Poughkeepsie, NY 2016

The Bridge

Founded in 1861, Vassar College was one of the first women’s colleges in the United States. From the earliest days, the sciences were a vital part of its curriculum. Renowned astronomer Maria Mitchell was Vassar’s first professor in 1865, and a state-of-the-art observatory was built for her right on campus. The commitment to the sciences remains strong today with the completion in 2016 of the Integrated Science Commons designed by Ennead Architects.

Previously scattered across the campus in disparate departments, the new Bridge for Laboratory Science 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,

physics, astronomy, and psychology. Together, the four buildings form a vibrant hub to promote the advancement of scientific instruction and inquiry, while weaving together the natural landscape of the acclaimed campus, well known as an arboretum.

Siting for the 80,000 square-foot Bridge Building fulfilled the aim of creating the cohesive science precinct with a minimal footprint. A true “building in the trees,”42 its slow curvature prompts visitors, students, and faculty to casually experience each part of the building as it unfolds.


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5 What is the Lab of the Future?

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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.

The Lab of the Future Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments

University of Texas at AustinCockrell School of EngineeringEngineering Education and Research CenterEnnead Architects

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The lab of the future must build strong scientific communities and promote connectivity between many disciplinary groups. This will increasingly involve connecting with expertise well outside the primary discipline of the research focus including design disciplines, public policy, environmental policy, and development and business models. The research community must offer a range of spaces in which to be productive. This includes spaces not just for experimentation but for socialization, collaboration, and contemplation.

A strategy for building community and connectivity is in many ways driven by context. An isolated research campus is different from an embedded urban research university; a growing research university is different from one with a 150-year legacy; an entrepreneurial start-up lab is different from a corporate pharmaceutical company 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 as shared conference rooms, seminar halls, and

Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments 1. Community & Connectivity

How can architecture help connect separate imaginations in different human minds?

even cafes—play an increasingly important role for successful research facilities. While in decades past, a small coffee station might have been sufficient, today’s scientists—like people of all occupations—demand greater variety in their “work-play” environment.

Ennead designed Stanford University’s Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health (ChEM-H) and Neurosciences Institute complex to create a vital scientific community that connects the schools of engineering and medicine. The inner elliptical courtyard creates an outdoor room that can be used for meeting and gathering for the primary disciplines in the building: biochemistry and neuroscience. Around the courtyard, enclosed by a glass curtain wall, an interior double-height living room space acts as a buffer to the lab research bench spaces. The building even has a pub where colleagues can gather after long hours in the lab to unwind over a casual drink.

Stanford University ChEM-H & Wu Tsai Neurosciences BuildingEnnead Architects

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The lab of the future must be flexible, but how much flexibility is needed or can be afforded? The concept of the flexible lab has been preached for decades. Scientists have always known that the more easily they can change their labs in response to new developments, the quicker they can respond to needs and speed their discoveries. This was evident in the 1888 Thomas Edison Labs in New Jersey, where benches and desks were movable, and utilities were overhead and easily accessible. The labs at MIT's Building 20 from 1943 were easy to alter due to the flexible design of the partitions and the robustness of the superstructure. Flexibility is one of the underlying concepts of Louis Kahn's 1960 design for the Salk Institute, where the lab space is free of columns, and a walkable mechanical interstitial space above the labs offers full access to all utilities.

Flexible design is even more important today, with the rapid advancement of equipment technology and research pursuits. Flexibility does come at a price, and careful decisions must be made relative to budget requirements. However, an investment

How do we design labs for the unforeseeable?

in smart infrastructure; mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems laid out to facilitate future changes; and labs with well-considered repeating modules all have enduring value.

At the Biological Sciences Building (BSB) at the University of Michigan, Ennead addressed flexibility and growth at three levels: the building, the floor plate, and the laboratory neighborhood. Here, three individual lab towers are divided into six equal research neighborhoods per floor. Each neighborhood is designed to flex according to need, and a common shared equipment corridor connects all of the neighborhoods along one side of the building. The module allows for an intensive wet lab design, or the same space can be easily designed for computational workspace—increasingly prevalent in research facilities focused on data driven applications.

Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments 2. Flexibility & Growth

Computational Lab

Wet LabWith Write-up Desks Separated From Bench Area

Shared Equipment Corridor

University of MichiganBiological Sciences BuildingEnnead Architects

With write-up desks separated from bench area

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The lab of the future must provide a comfortable environment that is balanced accordingly, with an abundance of daylight in work and collaboration spaces and highly controlled or no daylight in spaces dedicated to equipment and specialized experimentation. While this is a fundamental and timeless principle, there are examples in the history of the lab typology where daylight or comfort were not high priorities. Marie Curie’s “shed” lab was sparse, drafty, and in disrepair. If it had been comfortable, conditioned, and well equipped would the Curies have proceeded more healthfully and more rapidly to their discovery? Furthermore, many U.S. labs built in the 1970s seemed indifferent to the need for daylit spaces. Perhaps this was a response to the energy crisis, or the design may have been driven purely by function and process.

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

3. Comfort, Daylight & Transparency

Three Transforming Principles of Research Environments

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

activity, places for reflection and contemplation, and the use of interior finishes that create warmth and a sense of comfort and cleanliness are all mechanisms that are important to promote the physical and psychological well-being of the building’s users.

At the University of Oregon, Ennead’s Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact implements sustainable principles to provide indoor and outdoor spaces that create a sense of wellness, comfort, and transparency. The primary facades include sunscreen curtain walls made of high-performance glass to shade the lab and office spaces to reduce solar heat gains and improve visual comfort. For a portion of its structure, the building features exposed cross-laminated timber construction—a beautiful, locally sourced low-carbon footprint material that contributes to the users’ connection to place.

University of OregonKnight Campus for Accelerating Scientific ImpactEnnead Architects

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6 EpilogueInventing the Future

The purpose-built research building is a young typology relative to its peers in architecture. And just as science over time has been explaining the laws of the universe and of life itself, the architectural response to this continuum of discovery is evolving as priorities of research shift. The history of science is replete with architectural lessons and concepts that can be interpreted in new ways.

In 1874 cutting-edge discoveries in the laws of physics prompted a new lab building in Cambridge, England, cloaked as a Victorian Gothic museum. Two decades later in Paris, a brilliant physicist/chemist and her husband needed a lab in which to confirm their hypotheses on radioactivity—any type of space, even a shed, would do. In the U.S. around the same time, a leading university was building big in order to compete with its European counterparts, while a summer retreat where the seeds of molecular biology were sown was beginning to evolve into a picturesque, renowned research institution. A hastily constructed 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

that lent to easy manipulation of its spaces. And as the lab typology became increasingly refined, a revered modern architect designed a masterpiece: an ocean-side cathedral to scientific pursuit and intellectual contemplation.

As breakthroughs have continued, the laboratories that facilitate them have evolved apace. In the 21st century, the sequencing of the human genome spawned countless iterations of biological lab buildings, all competing for attention and identity, designed to attract, retain, and nurture the finest scientific minds.

This rich architectural history helps us to construct a new conceptual framework for the future of research communities. Like their predecessors, these buildings will embody the visions and goals of their inhabitants, cultivating the intellectual curiosity, commitment, and collaboration necessary to achieve greatness in science—as mankind moves forward, inventing the future.

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IMAGE CREDITSAll photos © Ennead Architects, except where noted.Images for each page are credited clockwise from top.

cover: Fermilab, Interactions.org4: Fermilab, Interactions.org6: ID 61271339 © Vvoevale | Dreamstime.com6: The Rockefeller University6: Leicester University. Photo credit: NotFromUtrecht6: © Frank Oudeman/OTTO (OT1142228; Columbia University’s Jerome L. Greene Science Center)8: Fermilab, Interactions.org10: The School of Athens, Raphael10: Amphitheater Sapientiae Aeternae, Heinrich Khunrath11: Chemical Laboratory in the middle of the eighteenth century11: Faraday at work in his laboratory at the Royal Institution, Wellcome Collection gallery12: Fermilab, Interactions.org14: A History of the Cavendish Laboratory (1910)14: Perspective View Of the Edison Enterprises, Including the Laboratory Complex. From an insurance map dated April 22, 1922.14: Musée Curie (Coll. ACJC)14: Historical Findings Photo: Schermerhorn Hall15: The Rockefeller University15: Erich Mendelsohn. © Kunstbibliotek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Dietmar Katz15: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory15: Courtesy MIT Museum16: Ezra Stoller/Esto16: Max Planck Institute for Physics. ©Kai Otto Architects. 16: Ezra Stoller/Esto16: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office17: Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Alfred Essa 17: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Archtects17: Don Weinreich/Ennead Architects17: Jeff Goldberg/Esto18: Stanford University, Foster and Partners18: Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin18: Jeff Goldberg/Esto18: CERN19: Anton Grassl/Esto19: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects 19: Richard Barnes

20: Fermilab, Interactions.org22: A History of the Cavendish Laboratory (1910)22: Rosalind Elsie Franklin by Elliot & Fry. © National Portrait Gallery22: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory22: The Architect and Building News24: Thomas A. Edison Laboratories. Photo credit: Jet Lowe.24: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects24: Science Source24: Perspective View Of the Edison Enterprises, Including the Laboratory Complex. From an insurance map dated April 22, 1922.24: Jazz Guy; Flickr26: Musée Curie (Coll. ACJC) - All28: Schermerhorn Hall and Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University, New York, New York, 1895. Photo by Geo. P. Hall & Son/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images.28: McKim, Mead and White, Campus Plan28: Party in the Fly Room at Columbia on January 2, 191928: University Archives, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries28: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects30: The Rockefeller University30: Rockefeller University Archives, R.G. 110032: Erich Mendelsohn. © Kunstbibliotek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Dietmar Katz32: R. Arlt, AIP32: Erich Mendelsohn. © Kunstbibliotek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Dietmar Katz34: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory34: Barbara McClintock Collection, American Philosophical Society 34: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects34: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory36: Courtesy MIT Museum - All38: Ezra Stoller/Esto38: Ezra Stoller/Esto40: Max Planck Institute for Physics. ©Kai Otto Architects. 41: Max Planck Institute for Physics. ©Kai Otto Architects. 42: Ezra Stoller/Esto

42: Bell Labs42: Ezra Stoller/Esto42: Bell Labs44: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office44: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office44: Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office44: Mount Fuji, Mauiuy9246: Salk Institute46: Salk Institute46: Salk Institute48: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects48: Wistar Institute 50: Lewis Thomas Laboratory, aadair450: Princeton University50: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects52: Jeff Goldberg/Esto - All54: Stanford University, Foster and Partners54: Timothy Hartung/Ennead Architects56: Humboldt University, Andreas Levers56: Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn in their Berlin laboratory, 1913. (Smithsonian Institution)56: Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin56: Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin58: Jeff Goldberg/Esto58: Aislinn Weidele/Ennead Architects58: Jeff Goldberg/Esto60: CERN60: The Large Hadron Collider/ATLAS. Credit: xenotar Getty Images62: Anton Grassl/Esto - All64: © Michael Moran/OTTO (OT1127424; Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment)64: Craig McIlhenny/Ennead Architects64: Princeton University, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.65: Princeton University, Tod Williams Billie Tsien66: Ricahrd Barnes 66: ID 08.06.08, Archives & Special Coll., Vassar College Lib.66: Richard Barnes 68: Fermilab, Interactions.org70: Jeff Goldberg/Esto78: Fermilab, Interactions.org

BOOK CREDITSAuthor Craig M. McIlhenny AIADesigners Tess Fleming, Aislinn Weidele Editor Carolyn Horwitz Contributors Keri Murawski, Oliver Winters, Yeng-Tse Wu Permissions Sanjiv Dhodapkar, Michael Hassett

CHAPTER OPENER IMAGESThe cover and chapter opener images are photographs of particle tracks and collisions recorded in bubble chamber devices used to make precision measurements of high-speed atomic particles. The devices were used in the study of high-energy physics and subatomic atomic particles, particularly in the 1960s. The particle paths and collisions recorded produce images of great interest and beauty: art at the subatomic level.

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1 CBS 60 Minutes, April 22, 2018. Original quote by Alan Kay, 1982.2 Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization. 2013.3 Arthur Herman, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization. 2013.4 The Design of Research Laboratories, The Nuffield Foundation Division for Architectural Studies. Oxford University Press. 1961.5 Mark C. Fishman, Lab- Building a Home for Scientists. Lars Muller Publishers.6 Paul de Kruif, Microbe Hunters. 1941.7 The Design of Research Laboratories, The Nuffield Foundation Division for Architectural Studies. Oxford University Press. 1961.8 Simon Schafer, A Tour Around the Old Cavendis Laboratory- The Founding. 2007.9 Neil Baldwin, Edison, Inventing the Century. 2001.10 Rosalynd Pflaum, Grand Obsession: Madame Curie and Her World. 1989.11 Janet Parks, "POSTINGS: 100 Years of Morningside Heights; Columbia Past, Columbia Not," The New York Times. October 26, 1997.12 Elizabeth Hanson, The Rockefeller University, Achievements: A Century of Science for the Benefit of Mankind, 1901-2001.13 Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman, Architecturefrom Pre-History to Post-Modernism / The Western Tradition. 1986.14 Gaynor Aaltonen, The History of Architecture- Iconic Buildings Through the Ages. 2008.15 Charlotte Klonk. New Laboratories. 2016.16 Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, What Happens After They Are Built. 1994.17 "Magical Incubator," MIT Infinite History. https:// infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/mits-building-20- magicalincubator18 Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, What Happens After They Are Built. 1994.19 Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, What Happens After They Are Built. 1994.20 Museum of Modern Art Bulletin. Skidmore Owings & Merrill Architects, USA. Fall, 1950.21 Museum of Modern Art Bulletin. Skidmore Owings Merrill Architects, USA. Fall, 1950.22 History. Max Planck Institute. https://www.mpg. de/955787/12_event7-1956

23 Christina Landbrecht, "The Myth of Transparency."24 New Laboratories (Charlotte Klonk). 2016. Christina Landbrecht, "The Myth of Transparency." New Laboratories (Charlotte Klonk). 2016.25 Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation. 2012.26 Eero Saarinen (original quote). The Idea Factory- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (Jon Gertner). 2012.27 James Stewart Polshek, Build, Memory. 2014.28 Leslie Thomas, Louis I. Khan- Building Art, Building Science. 2005.29 Leslie Thomas, Louis I. Khan- Building Art, Building Science. 2005.30 Mid-Century Mundane: the most exciting of mundane mid- century architecture. https://midcenturymundane.wordpresscom/ 2011/08/09/thewistarinstitutephiladelphia-pa/. August 9, 2011.31 James Collins, Jr., "The Design Process for the Human Workplace." The Architecture of Science (Peter Galison and Emily Thompson). 1999.32 James Collins, Jr., "The Design Process for the Human Workplace." The Architecture of Science (Peter Galison and Emily Thompson). 1999.33 James Collins, Jr., "The Design Process for the Human Workplace." The Architecture of Science (Peter Galison and Emily Thompson). 1999.34 https://news.stanford.edu/news/1999/june9/biox-69.html35 Christina Landbrecht, "The Myth of Transparency." New Laboratories (Charlotte Klonk). 2016.36 Brian Griffin, Laboratory Design Guide, 3rd Edition.37 Robyn Beaver, Contemporary Architecture Publication. 2004.38 Peter Galison and Caroline A. Jones, "Factory, Laboratory, Studio: Dispersing Sites of Production." The Architecture of Science (Peter Galison and Emily Thompson). 1999.39 MIT Media Lab at a Glance. https://dam-prod.media.mit. edu/x/2018/10/15/at-a-glance-2018.pdf40 Robert Campbell, "MIT Media Lab Aims to Elevate Transparency." The Boston Globe. http://archive.boston. com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/12/06/mit_media_ lab_elevates_transparency/. Dec. 6, 2009.41 "The Style of Substance- A look at recent work from Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects / Partners." Architect- The Journal of the American Institute of Architects. https://www.architectmagazine. com/design/the-style-of-substance_o. April 8, 201542 "Vassar College Completes Integrated Sciencec Commons, A Group of Four Dynamic Buildings to Advance Scientific Instruction, Inquiry and Collaboration." Vassar Info. http://info. vassar.edu/news/2015-2016/160504-integrated- sciencecommons-completed.html. May 4, 2016.

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