Collaboration and Transparency in the Architecture of Contemporary Science Sandra Kaji-O’Grady University of Sydney

Abstract

Architecture has emerged as a key site for the mythical construction and

expression of experimental science as a collaborative enterprise accountable

to the public. The belief that architecture can influence social behavior is a

critical piece of that construction, as is the idea that material transparency is

equivalent to informational transparency. Three Australian case study

buildings were studied, originally with the aim of gauging their success in

fostering new research collaborations. It was found that the success of these

buildings lies not so much in increasing the ‘connectivity’ of people and

spaces, but rather in the expression of socializing as a public good. It will be

argued that the myths of architectural determinism and direct architectural

communication have been resurrected to counter a myth of greater proportion

and burden, that of the evil scientist alone in the basement laboratory.

Introduction

The development of experimental science in the 17th Century provoked a new

architectural site: the laboratory.1 The emergence of the laboratory as a word and space

“accompanied the new practice of creating phenomena using artefacts operated and

interpreted by a skilled elite.”2 Science, Owen Hannaway writes, “no longer was simply a

kind of knowledge; it increasingly became a form of activity. That there should have

arisen in this period a place specially set aside for such activity and bearing a new name

serves to measure the force of that shift.”3

Originally a single room in a house or learned society, by the 20th Century the laboratory

was a stand-alone, single-program building. In the last two decades the shifting

economics of intellectual capital have led to the establishment of multidisciplinary

research centres and science precincts with multiple funding sources, organisations, and

stakeholders.4 The scientific research centre retains the laboratory benches of the older

model, yet its focus on public and social spaces reflects shifts in the way scientific

knowledge is funded, produced and disseminated. Indeed, Bruno Latour proposes that

the culture of ‘science’ has been replaced by a culture of ‘research’ engages ideology and

emotion.5 He believes that contemporary research responds to public interests in ways

that science, with its professed autonomy from military and state interests, did not.6

The development of a culture of research is coincident with the corporatization of the

university and the theorization of innovation as geographical and organizational.7 In this

new context, the contemporary research centre has become the site of iconic and self-

conscious architectural expression, something previously seen in just a handful of

exceptional laboratory buildings such as those designed by Louis Kahn in the mid-20th

Century. Architecture has emerged as a key site for the mythical construction and

expression of experimental science as a collaborative enterprise accountable to the

public. Good research, it is believed, is borne out of serendipitous exchange and, by

extension, the good researcher seeks out social interaction and exchange in the work

place. The belief that architecture can influence social behavior is a critical piece of that

construction, as is the idea that material transparency is equivalent to informational

transparency. Both ideas have a long history in architecture, and while this paper will not

track their origins or subscription, it will examine their specific history and currency in the

laboratory research building.

Case Study Laboratory Research Centres

In gauging the penetration of these myths, as well as their congruency with actual

practice, three recently completed Australian scientific research centres were studied.8 All

provide PC2 laboratories and research animal facilities for multidisciplinary research

centres with diverse funding streams that straddle University and commercial interests.9

Each case-study building has received professional acclaim and industry awards.

1. Bio21 Institute David Pennington Building at The University of Melbourne by

Design Inc opened in 2005 and is focused on interdisciplinary research in health-

related molecular science and biotechnology. The Bio21 Institute includes 21

member organisations. In 2005 the building won the Property Council of

Australia’s Rider Hunt Award, the RAIA Margaret Mahony Award for Interior

Architecture and Science Industry Australia’s Laboratory of the Year Award.

2. The Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland designed by

John Wardle architects and Wilson Architects in Association opened in October

2007. The QBI is focused on discovering the fundamental mechanisms that

regulate brain function. QBI comprises 12 laboratories named after and led by

leading researchers. The building was partly funded by a significant donation from

Atlantic Philanthropies. In 2008 the building won the RAIA Queensland Award for

Public Architecture, RAIA QLD Award for Interior Architecture, RAIA QLD Award

for Art and Architecture, RAIA Brisbane’s Building of the Year and the RAIA

National Commendation for Interior Architecture.

3. The Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of New South Wales by Lahz

Nimmo Architects and Wilson Architects, opened in 2010. It brings together

researchers in adult cancer from the UNSW, the Centre for Vascular Research

and the independently funded Children’s Cancer Institute Australia. Their work

spans laboratory sciences, clinical practice and health policy. In 2011 the building,

named after its largest private donor, Frank Lowy, won the Asia Pacific Property

Awards for Australia in the category of Public Services Architecture and the RAIA

NSW Commendation for Public Architecture.

The study involved semi-structured interviews with at least ten scientists working in each

of the three buildings. Interviews were conducted with the architects, research managers,

project and facility managers. Drawings and documents related to briefing, procurement

and design development were examined. Close observation of the buildings in use and

analysis of their spatial organization in plan and section was made. Published statements

about the buildings and their facilities were also taken into account. While structured

around the three case studies, the questions driving the research are not directed at

establishing the individual performance of the buildings as post-occupancy studies

typically are.10 The research more broadly questions the architectural ambitions and

design strategies in contemporary research buildings for science. What are scientists

hoping architecture will do for them? Is there concurrence between the aspirations of

scientists for their buildings and those of architects? What are the consequences for

scientists of employing architects to transform their image and work practices?

While architecture in one sense is always customised to its client and locale, comparison

with equivalent buildings abroad confirms that the design strategies and intentions of

Australian research centres are consistent with the building type. The three buildings

represent the two current generic organisational diagrams for the building type11:

1. Two or more wings of stacked floors comprising laboratory and write-up spaces

with an atrium or courtyard between (Bio21, Agribio at Latrobe University,

Biochemistry at Oxford University, the James H. Clark Center for Bio-X at

Stanford University, the Landcare Research building in Auckland);

2. a single stacked wing of laboratory and write-up spaces with an atrium and social

spaces at one end (QBI, the Lowy Cancer Research Centre, Paul O’Gorman

Building at the University College London).

Figure 1. Diagram of the Lowy Cancer Research Centre showing

the laboratory core in blue running perpendicular to the volume containing foyer, break out, meeting rooms and circulation to the

adjoining Medical Faculty building.

Figure 2. Diagram of Bio21 showing the two wings of laboratory

core in blue flanking a central atrium. Glazed walls on the write up areas allow constant surveillance of the atrium.

Science Studies, Place and the Social

Laboratory science involves the observation and manipulation of nature by means of

specialized instruments, techniques, and apparatus that require specialised skills for their

construction and operation. The raison d’etre of the laboratory lies in the exclusion of

variables—vibration, moisture, noise, dust and particulates, light, unauthorized

personnel—that are not a defined part of the experimental set-up; along with the

containment of all materials and waste products that pertain to the experiment. In the

scientific tradition, architecture is a neutral support that lies outside of the experiment and

in its neutrality guarantees the repeatability of the experiment. Steven Shapin observes,

Of all forms of culture, science has been thought least marked by the places in

which it is made and evaluated. The universal validity of scientific knowledge has

been taken as a testimony to the irrelevance of the particular physical and social

sites in which it happened to be produced.12

Shapin, Schaffer, Hannaway, Hacking, Galison, de Bont and Latour, amongst others,

have queried science’s claims to universality and placelessless and have demonstrated

the importance of the design and location of the scientific laboratory on science since the

seventeenth century.13 Science has been shown to take place in a context that brings its

own limits and potentials to research problems and experimental set-ups. These include

the social interactions between scientists at the lab bench, the stories researchers tell

and the language they use, the manufacture and distribution of scientific instrumentation

and other organic and non-organic research materials, and the broader social, economic

and cultural contexts in which knowledge is produced and disseminated.14 Ethnographic

science studies, pioneered by Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life: The Social

Construction of Scientific Facts (1979), have made it clear that contemporary science is

as subject to place and space as was science in history.15

In studies of historical and contemporary laboratories the thorniest questions revolve

around the impact on the production of scientific knowledge of the social relationships

between scientists, and between scientists and the public. It is in this area, rather than

the provision of functional space, that the influence of architecture on science is complex

and uncertain. In its organisation of space and flows, architecture plays a role in

supporting, directing and obstructing social relationships. In its formal expression it plays

a part in communicating social relationships, institutional standing and relationships with

other organizations.

Throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries there was tension between the privacy of the

laboratory and the public’s interests in what scientists were doing. Giovanni Cassini, a

seventeenth century astronomer wrote of his laboratory,

I had had all entrances to this place blocked in advance, with the exception of a

storeroom leading onto it but I had that closed off with a door; I thus had an

underground cabinet in a vast enclosure where, in silence and total isolation, I

could carry out these observations since I was always alone.16

Scientists were divided between the desire for solitude and the demands of society. The

older tradition of individuals working alone to make logical or mathematical knowledge

persisted but, as Thomas Kuhn has pointed out, was now joined by a new type of

scientific work that involved expensive equipment and the pooling of empirical

experience.17 The new laboratories were open only to an elite whose membership

became defined as the members of new scientific societies, their associates and

employees, and were much like other kinds of closed clubs. Ian Hacking writes of the

social character of the laboratory,

The laboratory was to be a space at once open and shut. It had to be public

because according to the doctrine that evolved, any work done in a laboratory can

be done by anyone with adequate skills and checked by anyone who is a good

observer. It had to be private because only a self-selecting few could know what

was going on, make anything work, or even tell when apparatus was working.18

Shapin proposes that these early laboratories were characterised by a presumption of

mutual trust and reliability among the small elite involved in them.19 In the 17th Century

the veracity of what a person said lay in their social standing as a gentleman. By contrast,

Shapin observes,

trust is no longer bestowed on familiar individuals; it is accorded to institutions . . .

we trust the truth of specialized and esoteric scientific knowledge without knowing

the scientists who are the authors of its claims. Abstracted from systems of

familiarity, trust is differently reposed but vastly extended.20

The design of laboratory buildings can be read as symptomatic of the vicissitudes of

public trust in science. Laboratory buildings of the 1960s, for example, the Hoffman

Laboratory of Experimental Geology at Harvard University (1960) by Gropius’ The

Architects Collaborative (TAC) and the Howard Florey Research Laboratory Buildings at

the University of Melbourne (1963) by Yuncken Freeman Architects, reflect the relative

confidence and trust of the public in the University and scientific endeavour. They were

occupied and frequented only by experts and those in training for a professional scientific

career. Buried deep in the campus and funded, owned and managed by one university

they were not designed for the broader public to visit or to see the working laboratories.

During this same period, the equipment used in some experimental fields—microphysics

especially—grew from table-top sized, to warehoused-sized structures to civil-

engineering projects measured in the kilometres. Experiments grew dramatically in costs,

the numbers of personnel required and the time required to complete them. These shifts

in scale began to put new demands on the funding, the management and structures of

scientific research organisations, and on the interaction between scientific and technical-

industrial cultures. As laboratories expanded and sought greater and more diverse

funding, so did public demand for transparency and accountability.

Visibility and Sociality in the Contemporary Research Centre

The distinct innovation of the contemporary laboratory is that it serves as a mode of

expression: communicating directly to the public, funding bodies and governments.

Architecture is charged with the work of articulating the scene of research as

collaborative, socially engaged, transparent and accessible. The significant role played by

architecture in ‘branding’ science can be seen by the engagement of Laureates of the

Pritzker Architecture Prize: Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Rafael Moneo and Zaha Hadid

are responsible for, respectively, the Stata Center at Stanford University, Bio-X at

Stanford University, LISE at Harvard University and Biopolis in Singapore. These

architects were not commissioned because they could deliver a no-nonsense functional

laboratory, but because they contribute status and formal and spatial innovation. The

research centre has joined the museum and the gallery as a building type deserving of a

‘signature’ architect.

The message architecture is charged to convey is that scientific research is being carried

out collaboratively, and that there is nothing to hide. Yet as Shapin points out, “despite

various characterizations of science as ‘public knowledge’” in contemporary society,

science “is made and evaluated in some of our most private places . . . you do not

wander into CERN or SLAC. We typically now enter the places where scientific

knowledge is made only by special arrangement and on a special basis: we come as

visitors, as guests in a house where nobody lives.”21 While impenetrable to the wider

public, institutional ‘openness’ is conveyed by visibility in the urban context, transparency

of envelope and bold architectural expression. The laboratory function has been wrapped

in a layer of architecture that is theatrical and, essentially, itself experimental. Indeed,

John Wardle, architect of QBI describes the building as a ‘Theatre of Research’ that

considers the “activities of the players and the experience of the audience.”22

Figure 3. Diagram of QBI showing the laboratory core in blue and the ‘theatrical’ spaces for socialising and public events sitting at

one end and on the top floor.

Figure 4. Internal view of QBI showing the visibility of the

laboratories from the open staircase above the public foyer. Photograph Christopher Frederick Jones, courtesy John Wardle

Architects.

The theatrical presentation of science to the public cannot be uncoupled from the

presentation of an ideal way of working to the scientific community within. Through its

cafes and lounges bordering internal ‘streets’ and atria, its open-pan and glazed work

areas, the contemporary research centre presents an image of teamwork and

collaboration that is addressed as much to the scientist as to the non-scientist. The

research centre aims to induce collaborative and interdisciplinary research by increasing

informal meetings between its occupants. The underlying conviction is that scientific

discoveries are the outcome of serendipitous exchange and interdisciplinary

collaboration. Typical of the rhetoric around the architecture of the new centres is that for

the LISE building designed by Rafael Moneo for the emerging field of small-scale science

at Harvard, On the announcement of the project in 2004 the University declared,

If, as many researchers contend, the future of academic science lies in breaking

down the barriers between the traditional disciplines, a stunning new building . . .

may become the most forward-looking to grace the Harvard campus . . . among

LISE’s most eagerly awaited features is the ground-floor café and patio that will

give scientists from different disciplines a central place to meet and discuss their

work . . .23

Following completion in 2007, Harvard reiterated the building’s role in fostering

conversation,

The building seeks to integrate the work of numerous labs by providing open

spaces that facilitate the exchange of ideas. The aroma of Peet’s Coffee from the

well-stocked café permeates the building, and there are sunlit collaboration areas

on the upper floors. Physics Professor Charles M. Marcus said he believes that the

many places for discussion in LISE serve as a catalyst for scientific progress. ‘Put

simply, people are lazy,’ Marcus said. ‘If having a conversation with a colleague is

easy, they will do it. If not, they won’t. Luckily, the LISE building makes

collaboration easy.24

MIT’s Stata Center is similarly described by one architectural critic as ‘throw(ing) people

together so that every researcher has a shot at encountering the person he never thought

of who turns out to have a skill that’s needed.”25

The belief that a building might provoke more significant research is held by scientists,

architects, funding bodies and managers. Even the former Prime Minister of Australia,

Kevin Rudd subscribes. Opening the Lowy Cancer Research Centre in May 2010, Rudd

stated “We have to break down silos and translate research into practice.”26 What is the

origin of this belief and what are its consequences? Many of those involved view the

design of the contemporary research centre as something of an experiment. The Director

of Bio21 admits, “It’s an experiment in many ways this institute, both in terms of the

space, the tenants and the concept.”27 On the subject of relocating to the new Gehry-

designed Ray and Maria Stata Center, the laboratory director told Wired magazine

“Maybe it will destroy us. Who knows? I prefer to be optimistic.”28 Spencer Reiss

counters, “Stata may be MIT's most expensive experiment ever, but it has the cynical

virtue of being what researchers call non-falsifiable - there will be no way to know what

might have happened had Tech Square's residents never heard of Frank Gehry.”29 The

building cost US$283.5 million in 2004 and this represents just a small portion of the

salary and running costs over the lifetime of the building. Significant investment appears

to rest on the hope that researchers, presumed to have come from a prior condition of

isolation and fragmentation, will be provoked into spontaneous and fruitful discussion on

the basis of free-flowing coffee and a sunlit conversation nook.

Space-Syntax Studies and the Laboratory

It is necessary to first recognize the origins of the assumption. Interest (and belief) in

spatial strategies that serve socialization permeates the design of contemporary

workplaces, yet of particular relevance are the conclusions made by Space-Syntax

pioneers Hillier and Penn for laboratory design. Hillier and Penn propose that spatial

structure and the organization of a group of people, can work conservatively to reproduce

the status quo or generatively to produce new patterns of social relationships.30 Following

their study of two laboratories in the 1980s, Hiller and Penn recommend strategies to

facilitate unplanned meetings between “people that one does not know one needs to talk

to.”31 They affirm “the natural generation of more randomized co-presence with others—

the need for which seems to grow the more the objectives of research are unknown.”32

Hillier and Penn claim that their findings “may surprise the proponents of scientific

solitude” yet readers familiar with the field will know that they and their associates tend to

favor more frequent social encounters. There is, though, no evidence of how these can

be increased for the laboratory program or how they then relate to research activity. Their

study did not track research and Hillier and Penn admit “we cannot yet demonstrate that

these have effects on research productivity.”33 Evaluating research productivity and

quality is a problem for any study of laboratory buildings for it is impossible to accurately

measure longitudinal changes in significance or the degree of cross-disciplinary

innovation. These are organisations that over the long-term are volatile in their staffing

and funding. Research suggests that changing funding models have much greater impact

on the kinds of science being pursued than does architecture.34 Even if one were able to

track changes in research behaviour, it would be impossible to tie these back to the social

component of the architectural setting. Sites for knowledge transfer extend beyond the

campus and to the virtual spaces of journals and social networking sites.

Closer examination of their methodology, findings and conclusions reveals many

limitations to the Space-Syntax method, beginning with the problem of its lack of

dimensionality and verticality as pointed out by Carlo Ratti.35 Hillier and Penn’s research

covered seven laboratory buildings and five sites in the UK, but it did so floor by floor.

While seemingly precise in their calculations, Hillier and his colleagues are prone to over-

reaching their findings.36 Their method is also fairly blunt in its understanding of

psychosocial constructs. Face-to-face communication and interactionare just one of many

factors in the workplace.37 Rashid and Zimring argue that control, supervision,

territoriality, and privacy are equally significant and that all psychosocial constructs are

complex, multidimensional and interrelated. Selecting one over the others inevitably gives

a distorted and incomplete picture of sociality in space.38 Further, Hillier and Penn do not

take into account the impact of organizational attributes such as rules, roles and

hierarchies, which often form the basis for office design and for subsequent

relationships.39 They dismiss forms of sociality that are “simply added on by special-event

socializing-such as going to shared coffee locations or having joint seminars.”40 Yet, in

laboratory buildings, the programming of shared events and other managerial incentives

is crucial to the socialization of bench scientists.

There also disjunctions between the recommendations that Penn and Hillier and make

and the functional demands of laboratory buildings. Increasing movement and circulation

past workstations is not appropriate for laboratory buildings with physical containment

classification of laboratories.41 A subsequent study of interactions in a large research and

development organization in the Netherlands that 78% of interactions occurred at a

workplace, rather than in informal social spaces or formal meeting rooms, and that “the

hallway or coffee machine also do not accommodate many unscheduled meetings.”42

Less than a third of interactions were because people happened to bump into each

other.43

Surveillance and Security

While resistant to the social critique of science, to the point where the 90s were

characterized by the so-called ‘science wars’, scientists have, paradoxically, embraced

the belief that the design of new research centres will support their efforts towards

collaboration. There is no suggestion that scientists, nor even their architects, have been

reading Hillier and Penn’s recommendations. Rather, powerful narratives within science

about the transformative experience of mathematicians, theorists and engineers from

Europe and America working together during the war at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and

MIT’s RadLab are at work.44 These narratives, along with funding regimes and problems

that provoke interdisciplinary collaboration, have made scientist clients receptive to

architectural proposals that are intended to further interaction and collaboration.

Awareness of the social aspirations of the buildings they use colours the response

scientists have to them. Researchers were eager to reflect on their success, but saw

socialization as a management objective. One scientist at QBI, for example, reported

“You can stay on your level for the whole time and not have to interact and I think they

were trying to make us interact more and I don’t think its worked as well as they hoped.”45

The correlate of the idea that good research breaks down silos, is the idea that the good

researcher seeks out social connections in the workplace, while the ‘bad’ researcher

shuns interaction and prefers to work alone and undisturbed. Interviewees immediately

recognized that their answer to a simple question such as “where do you eat your lunch?”

might entail a judgement about their performance as a researcher. To that question one

of the researchers at the Lowy Cancer Research, answered defensively, “I can eat lunch

at my desk and keep working. . . some people would frown upon that and you should get

out, but I quite like that. I probably do get more done.”46 Other researchers suggested

that the model of intense social interaction in the work place was not appropriate for

everybody: “Some people are just more interactive than others. Some people like working

very much as a solo if you like.”47 Another pointed out that “Research is actually very

individualistic, your main interaction is with the person above you” and admitted to

working from home so as to better focus on the work at hand.48

Spatial analysis and discussion revealed significant improvements in the working lives of

researchers, particularly in the provision of write-up spaces with attractive outlooks and

interior furnishings. Yet the case study buildings revealed several limitations to the

models currently being used. For example, research leaders and managers continue to

be housed in individual enclosed offices adjacent the open plan work areas and

laboratories of their teams. This set up assumes, incorrectly, that productive knowledge

exchange and socialisation occurs amongst researchers at the junior level, not their

leaders. In fact it is the research leaders who have the aggregate view of research

findings, formulate new projects and apply for funding and who would best benefit from

enhanced communication with each other. Junior researchers were typically engaged in

narrow aspects of a project requiring great concentration.

Especially common in the larger research centres, is a vertical atrium or arcade space,

usually lined with glazed walls, through which circulation passes and which allows

horizontal and diagonal visibility between floors on opposite sides of the building. The

second form given to social spaces is a smaller area equipped with casual seating, a

kitchenette and views back into the building through the atrium or workspaces. These

tend to be evenly distributed across buildings. Both forms are accessible only to those

working in the research centre, yet at the same time are easily observed by occupants in

other parts of the building. Both have a higher level of informal and actual surveillance

than did the walkways, verandas, courtyards and garden spaces of the older campus in

which laboratory buildings were located. Informal socialisation is not only internalized

and given its own space, it is under covert surveillance.

Figure 5. Internal view of the Lowy from the circulation atrium demonstrating views between informal social spaces and the

laboratories. Photograph Brett Boardman, courtesy Lahznimmo Architects.

Lastly, we found that the internal, often invisible, boundaries maintained by security

access systems to manage the flow of people and preserve the physical containment of

laboratory matter and waste frequently thwart spatial layouts intended to increase

porosity and connectivity. Laboratory experiments can be very vulnerable to

environmental change and use costly infrastructure and consumables. Data sets may

involve protocols that arise out of ethical and legal considerations and there are also

issues of intellectual property and commercial confidence. For the single organization,

these security issues can be managed to some degree at the building’s perimeter with

another security line around the laboratory proper. The management of internal security

is more complex for research centres housing multiple organizations with different

funding streams, incompatible financial systems and each with their own policies and

practices regarding occupational health and safety, employment, work supervision and

reporting, etc. Internal security regimes were all handled by swipe card or smart card

proximity technology that allowed inexpensive and customised levels of access within the

building. At the Lowy, internal security access was cited as the key obstacle to

interaction: “The main issue now is access. OH&S [needs] have made the laboratories

difficult to access. That’s actually been restrictive in terms of people mixing”; “I like the

building. I love everything about it, but the only downside is you have to swipe the swipe

card all the time”; “it comes down to how security controls people in the buildings of the

university, there’s kind of walls and boundaries that are put up through need really, it’s

the health and safety issues.”49 At Bio21 we heard the same concern: “There are still too

many keys and entry points and restrictions to truly make it an open environment.”50

Conclusion

Given that research productivity and innovation cannot be easily measured, and there is

some evidence that strategies to increase interaction are defeated by operational needs

for securing flows of people and goods, is there an alternative explanation to what is

going on?

The widely held image of the scientist is of a man, working alone, preoccupied,

undisturbed and disengaged from the public.51 In the depictions of science fiction—

extending back to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein—the solitary and secretive

habits of the scientist are deeply suspect.52 Mad scientist stories are more broadly

condemnations of rationalist science and, for this reason, Tourney argues scientists need

to be concerned to refute it. But “because the personality of the scientist is the principal

symbol of the evil of science, any change in that character’s personality is likely to

change the critique.”53 The eagerness to represent research activity—to the public and

back to the researchers themselves—as a collaborative effort responsive to the

community through architectural transparency and porosity, is strategic in this sense,

even if it remains at the level of image. Recognizing that we are dealing with an image is

the first step to unpicking its operation and effects.

Contemporary science is decentred and data-based. Collaborations exist between teams

of researchers who never see each other face-to-face, who operate machines remotely

and analyse data in different laboratories across different countries.54 Collaboration and

information flows have long broken out of the confines of single buildings and traverse the

virtual and multi-national networks of what Galison calls Trading Zones.55 In the context

of the endeavours and economics of globalised scientific research, the deployment of

glazing in laboratory buildings may seem a trivial issue, until one considers how this fits

into what Gregory and Miller call ‘The Movement for Public Understanding of Science.’56

They point out that scientists are under pressure to communicate more science in the

wake of industrial pollution and military nuclear issues that have made the public

ambivalent or distrustful. The phenomenon of the science museum goes only part of the

way since visitors are aware of its ‘curation.’ The public demand access to the processes

and very sites of scientific experimentation. For the contemporary research centre this

means a ‘shopfront’, visibility and a public program of tours and events. Describing the

biochemistry laboratory at the University of Oxford (2008) Georgina Ferry writes that,

The traditional layout is reversed here, labs are on the outside, divided by clear

glass walls from the write-up areas, which are open to the vast, five-storey atrium.

Everyone is visible.57

Director Chris Boshoff explains of the Paul O’Gorman building (2009),

This building, which houses the new UCL Cancer Institute, does something exciting

by opening up an often opaque and private area of study. The transparency and

accessibility of the building reflect a desire to enhance UCL’s national and

international profile in cancer research.58

It is significant that the degree of visibility between spaces is most often found in inverse

proportion to the actual accessibility and flow of information. That is, material

transparency is maximized at the very lines of greatest security and access control—the

envelope between outside and inside, between public foyer and beyond, and around the

laboratories. What is internalized by the scientists and conveyed to the public is the idea

that ‘everyone is visible’.

The logical conclusion, architecturally, can be found in SAHMRI in Adelaide—now under

construction. SAHMRI aims to “demystify research and make it tangible for the wider

community through welcoming, engaging and interactive public spaces and

programming.”59 Designed by WoodsBagot, the SAHMRI building has an entirely glazed

curvaceous envelope and the architectural presence is reduced to a bleached white

skeleton that eliminates corners and enclosure.

Figure 6. Rendering of the entry and atrium of SAHMRI. Courtesy

of WoodsBagot.

Endnotes

1 Socio-historical accounts of the emergence of the laboratory in the seventeenth century can be found in: Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (New York: Princeton University Press, 1985); Simon Schaffer, ‘Physics Laboratories and the Victorian Country House’, in Smith, C. and Agar, J., (eds.), Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1998), 149–80. 2 Ian Hacking, ‘Artificial Phenomena’, British Journal for the History of Science, 24, (1991), 239. 3 Owen Hannaway, ‘Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe’, ISIS 77 (1986), 586. 4 Lynn Meek and Fiona Wood, ‘The Market as a New Steering Strategy for Australian Higher Education’, Higher Education Policy, 10, 3/4, 253-274; Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997). 5 Bruno Latour, ‘From the World of Science to the World of Research’, Science, 280, 5361(1988), 208. 6 Latour cites as evidence the research into the human genome undertaken by the independent French Muscular Dystrophy Association through funds raised by an annual telethon (Latour, ‘From the World of Science to the World of Research’, 209). 7 Latour, ‘From the World of Science to the World of Research’, 209. 8 This paper presents a small part of the findings from an ARC funded project ‘The Architecture of Academic Research’, with Industry Partner, Woods Bagot. Many people contributed to the larger project and the author would like to acknowledge: Martin Kornberger, Cristina Giardino-Freeman and Anuradha Chatterjee for setting the agenda; Georgia Singleton from WoodsBagot for smoothing the way; Tarsha Finney and Antoinette Trimble for their work as Research Assistants; DRAW architects and Jesse Thomas for architectural diagrams; architects John Wardle and Stefan Mie, Hamilton Wilson, Christon Batey Smith of DesignInc, Annabel Lahz and Andrew Nimmo for allowing access to original material and interviews; and lastly, all the scientists and managers who allowed themselves to be interviewed. 9 Research facilities are certified to one of four levels of containment and referred to as PC1 through to PC4, for pathogen or protection level. The highest level of containment, PC4 laboratories, houses diseases that presently have no known cure, such the Marburg and Ebola viruses. PC3 is for pathogens that usually cause serious human, plant or animal disease and could present a risk if spread in the community or environment. HIV is considered risk group 3.

Most University research laboratories are PC2 and safety features include: sterilization of all materials that have been in contact with microorganisms, restrictions on food and drink, sealed seams and smooth surfaces in the construction of the space, the wearing of sterile gloves, and restricted access. A facility working with tissues or culture from genetically modified animals, for example, would be PC2. Observance of laboratory protocols is essential to the effectiveness of physical containment. 10 Post-occupancy evaluations of science buildings reported in George Baird, Sustainable Buildings in Practice (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2010) focus on environmental performance and users’ perceptions of comfort and amenity and are representative of the prevailing approach in architecture to assessing workplaces. 11 There are variations within these two types. At QBI and the Lowy, for example, the animal facilities are located in the basement and major auditoria and social spaces are on the top floor, whereas at Bio21 these two distinct programmatic areas are reversed in their location. 12 Steven Shapin, Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as If It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority, (Baltimore: JHU Press, 2010), 57. 13 See for example: Owen Hannaway, ‘Laboratory Design and the Aim of Science: Andreas Libavius versus Tycho Brahe’, ISIS 77,4 (1986), 584-610; Steven Shapin, ‘ “The Mind is Its Own Place”: Science and Solitude in Seventeenth Century England’, Science in Context 4, 1 (1990), 191-218; Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, (New York: Princeton University Press, 1985); Thomas Kuhn (ed.), The Essential Tension: Selected Studies of Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). 14 Kathryn Montgomery Hunter, ‘Narrative, Literature and the Clinical Exercise of Practical Reason,’ Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 21, 3, 303–320; Paul Atkinson, The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Constructions of Reality (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1990); Paul Atkinson, Medical Talk and Medical Work (New York: Sage, 1995); Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1987); Joan Fujimura, ‘Crafting Science: Standardized Packages, Boundary Objects, and ‘Translation’,’ in Andrew Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 169-211; Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 15 See for example: Karin Knorr-Cetina, ‘The Couch, the Cathedral, and the Laboratory: On the Relationship between Experiment and Laboratory in Science’, in Andrew Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 113—38; Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar (eds.), Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). 16 Quoted in Michael Callon, ‘The Increasing Involvement of Concerned Groups in R&D policies: What Lessons for Public Powers?’ in Aldo Guena, Ammon J. Salter and W. Edward Steinmueller (eds.) Science and Innovation: Rethinking the Rationales for Funding and Governance (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003), 35. 17 Thomas Kuhn, ‘Mathematical versus Experimental Traditions in the Development of Physical Science’, in Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies of Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 31-65. 18 Ian Hacking, ‘Artificial Phenomena’, British Journal for the History of Science, 24, (1991), 235-241. 19 Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 20 Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 411. 21 Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 410. 22 John Wardle Architects, Excerpt from the Original Competition Entry, 2003. 23 Steve Bradt, ‘LISE Project’, Harvard University Gazette, June 3, 2004 http://www.construction.fas.harvard.edu/fasprojects/lise/LISE.htm accessed July 2010. 24 Nan Ni, ‘A Big Lab for Small Science’, The Harvard Crimson, November 29, 2007 http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/11/29/a-big-lab-for-small-science/ accessed July 2010. 25 James S. Russell, ‘Bashing Architects with Lawsuit, as MIT Did, Kills Innovation’, Bloomberg, August 17, 2010, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-17/bashing-architects-with-lawsuit-only-kills-innovation-james-s-russell.html, accessed 18 October, 2008.

26 ‘Kevin Rudd Speech Opening the Lowy Cancer Research Centre’, World News, Friday 28 May, 2010 http://australia.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3040:kevin-rudd-speech-opening-the-lowy-cancer-research-centre&catid=101:australian-news&Itemid=167 27 Tony Bacic, Interview with the Author, Bio21, Melbourne, 22 October, 2008. 28 Spencer Reiss, ‘Frank Gehry’s Geek Palace’, Wired, 12, 5, May 2004, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/mit.html, 1. 29 Reiss, ‘Frank Gehry’s Geek Palace’, 4 30 Bill Hillier and Alan Penn, ‘Visible Colleges: Structure and Randomness in the Place of Discovery’, Science in Context 4, 1 (1991), 36 31 Hillier and Penn, ‘Visible Colleges’, 46. 32 Hillier and Penn, ‘Visible Colleges’, 47. 33 Hillier and Penn, ‘Visible Colleges’, 45. 34 Laura Himanen, Otto Auranen, Hanna-Mari Puuska and Mika Nieminen, ‘Influence of Research Funding and Science Policy on University Research Performance: A Comparison of Five Countries’, Science and Public Policy, 36, 6 (2009), 419-430. 35 Carlo Ratti, ‘Urban Texture and Space Syntax: Some Inconsistencies’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 32 (2004), 487-499. 36 On the basis of analyzing the ground floor plans of three domestic buildings Hillier and Penn propose, for example, ‘English suburban houses reproduce more social knowledge than do the French rural examples.’ (Hillier and Penn, ‘Visible Colleges’, 33). 37 There are a handful of other studies in the ‘space and environment’ field of how people use laboratory buildings, all with similarly narrow focus on measuring the frequency and location of interaction in the absence of measures of the content or quality of that interaction. These include: Margaret Serrato and Jean Wineman, ‘Spatial and Communication Patterns in Research & Development Facilities’ in F. de Holanda (ed.) Proceedings of the 2nd International Space Syntax Symposium 1 ( Brasilia: Instituto Central de Cijncias, 1999); Allen J. Thomas and Alan R. Fustfeld, ‘Research Laboratory Architecture and the Structuring of Communications’, R&D Management 5, 2 (1975),153-64. 38 Mahbub Rashid and Craig Zimring, ‘On Psychosocial Constructs in Office Settings: A Review of the Empirical Literature’, edra 36 (2005), 114. 39 Rashid and Zimring, ‘On Psychosocial Constructs in Office Settings’, 114. 40 Hillier and Penn, ‘Visible Colleges’, 46. 41 Alan Penn and Bill Hillier, ‘The Social Potential of Buildings: Spatial Structure and the Innovative Milieu in Scientific Research laboratories,’ in Corporate Space and Architecture, Proceedings of the International Symposium, (Lille and Paris, 30 June-3 July 1992), 41 42 Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, ‘Knowledge Sharing in Research Buildings and About Their Design’, in Daniel Koch, Lars Marcus and Jesper Steen (eds.) Proceedings of the 7th International Space Syntax Symposium, (Stockholm: KTH, 2009), 004:7. http://www.sss7.org/Proceedings/04%20Building%20Morphology%20and%20Emergent%20Performativity/004_AppelMeulenbroek.pdf 43 Appel-Meulenbroek, ‘Knowledge Sharing in Research Buildings and About Their Design’, 004:8. 44 Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997). 45 Scientist, Interview with the Author, Queensland Brain Institute, Brisbane, 17 September, 2008. 46 Scientist, Interview with the Author, Lowy Cancer Research Institute, UNSW, 11 March, 2010. 47 Facility Manager, Interview with the Author, Lowy Cancer Research Institute, UNSW, 11 March, 2010. 48 Junior Research Scientist, Interview with the Author, Lowy Cancer Research Institute, UNSW, 11 March, 2010. 49 Research Scientist, Interview with the Author, Lowy Cancer Research Institute, UNSW, 11 March, 2010. 50 Tony Bacic, Interview with the Author, Bio21, Melbourne, 22 October, 2008. 51 Studies such as the one carried out by Mead and Metraux in the 1950s confirm that in the popular imaginary the scientist is a solitary figure, much closer to the alchemist of old, than the man of reason. The composite portrait which Mead and Metraux drew of the scientist based on their research with high school students is this: “The scientist is a man who wears a white coat and works in a laboratory. He is elderly or middle aged and wears glasses. . . he may wear a beard. . . he is surrounded by equipment: test tubes, Bunsen burners, flasks and bottles. . . One day he may

straighten up and shout: “I’ve found it! I’ve found it! . . . he has to keep dangerous secrets . . . he is always reading a book.” (Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux, ‘The Image of the Scientist Among High School Students: A Pilot Study, Science, 126, 3270 (1957), 386, 387 52 David Wade Chambers, ‘Stereotypic Images of the Scientist: The Draw-A-Scientist Test’, Science Education, 67, 2 (1983), 256. 53 Christopher P. Tourney, ‘The Moral Character of Mad Scientists: A Cultural Critique of Science’, Science, Technology & Human Values 17 (1992), 434 54 Peter Galison, ‘Three Laboratories: Technology and the Rest of Culture’, Social Research 64/3, (1997), 1127-1155. 55 Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997). 56 Jane Gregory and Steve Miller, Science in Public: Communication, Culture and Credibility (New York: Plenum Press, 1998). 57 Georgina Ferry, ‘The Art of Laboratory Design’, Nature 457, 541(29 January 2009), <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7229/full/457541a/html>p. 1 of 3 58 ‘UCL Cancer Institute’, Architonic, http://www.architonic.com/aisht/ucl-cancer-institute-grimshaw/5100072 accessed 24 April 2012. 59 Mark Kelly, ‘Collaboration and Translation-SAHMRI’, Tertiary Education Management Conference, Gold Coast 14-17 August, 2011. http://www.temc.org.au/temc-2011 accessed 22 February 2012