Renovating for Efficiency, Flexibility, and Connection
Date Posted: August 8, 2024
Posted In: Discussion,
From Building Design + Construction: What does the research space of the future look like? And can it be housed in older buildings (or does it require new construction)?
In a previous article, I laid out a series of concerns that need to be considered when designing for the future of higher education research spaces. On the one hand, I described the close relationship between scientific research and the space in which it takes place, establishing the need for those spaces to evolve to keep up with changing research methods and agendas. This established the need for updated research spaces (if not new ones altogether). On the other hand, I described the difficult financial situation in which many colleges and universities find themselves. Overbuilt and underfunded, they face a growing backlog of deferred maintenance costs and an impending decline in enrollment.
In short, while acknowledging the need to invest in research facilities, I also suggested the wisdom of considering renovations rather than defaulting to new construction. Smart renovations of existing spaces can do a lot to increase their efficiency and productivity while turning them into spaces that boost collaboration and attract talent.
Effective renovations of research spaces offer an opportunity to:
1. Recalibrate existing lab space, increasing efficiency and productivity.
Though I described the accelerating changes in how labs work (from technological changes to the expectation that they provide a healthier, more supportive environment), the fact is that labs have been changing for a long time.
Academic labs, in particular, tend to grow through a long process of accretion. They often slowly expand into empty adjacent spaces or add new instruments wherever they happen to fit. So, rather than fitting new machines into the workflow of an existing space, researchers often end up working around the new machine (wherever it lands). In my experience, researchers are quite inventive in figuring out how to adapt their space to accommodate additional equipment, but that doesn’t necessarily produce the optimal environment for research discoveries.