I invite all readers to send their comments and additions. If you have ideas or information about problems or good things to add to buildings send them to me by e-mail and I will add them to this document. If you wish, I will identify you as the person making the suggestion or I will leave it anonymous if you wish.

All of the links listed in this text were active as of July 15, 2000. The web-based document will be frequently updated and I will invite and add comments from others who have been through the design and construction process. Also, note that this is a very rough, early version of this text, but I felt that it was important to get the information and ideas out as soon as possible rather than wait to polish this work.

This work is still in its early stages, but I felt that it was important to get the information out as soon as possible since many schools are planning construction at this time so I have put this up and will continue to improve both the content and the readability as often as I can.

The purpose of this treatise is to help others to avoid problems in designing and constructing new science buildings. This is not intended as a guidebook. There are already several good books that cover the whole process. I have references to some of these texts in this treatise. What I hope to convey is some of the good ideas that I have seen, and also cover some of the many ways that people can royally screw up a building. I am not going to be tactful in my delivery, but I will not mention any names to protect the guilty.

The following text has been developed from my experience in being involved with four different science building construction/renovation projects at undergraduate institutions. Brief descriptions of these projects are provided in Appendix B. The content of this article is highly biased by my beliefs about how good teaching of science should be, but rarely is done. The four projects were quite different, involving different departments and different types of construction. My personal goal in each of the projects was in achieving a building that aided in the teaching of science while minimizing the disruption of the educational experiences of existing students, many of whom would not benefit from the finished construction due to graduation. The reality of these projects, in my view, was that only one of them came close to meeting my expectations. Some faculty who were involved in these projects were pleased with the results, but often their response was "this is so much better than what we had!" One reason for this is the attitude is that in all four cases the construction was greatly overdue, often 20 to 30 years after the change was really needed. It seems like this is fairly common and the situation almost has to reach a crisis level before administrators will begin to think about new science facilities. An unsafe science building is probably the strongest motivator to get administrators thinking about a replacement or renovation. The only other strong motivator is an unsightly science building, which in our society which values style over substance is viewed as a hindrance to attracting students by administrators.

The best way that I can describe the response of administrators is, "wait, wait wait, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!" In all but one case, the existing building was left until it was badly outdated and dangerous, then they rushed into the project and wanted to get it done immediately, with insufficient thought. Another tendency is to try to do too much with the available resources. External driving forces for speed included the availability of funds either from state or private sources. Another driving force for speed, which was often present, but never stated, was that the administrators wanted to add the new building to their resumes as soon as possible. The fact that all too many administrators are always focused on their NEXT position often leads them to do the quick fix, band-aide approaches that give immediate results, often at the expense of the long term vitality of the institution. After all, any building listed on a resume seems the same as any other. The resume will never list if the building was good, bad or indifferent, and if the building is bad, no one on the campus will admit it since they will want to see the administrator move on. Also, I have noticed an almost universal avoidance of ever admitting that an administrator has ever made a mistake. This leads to them carry out project to their completion no matter what the results will be.

I will make many mentions of shortcomings of the projects that I was involved in, but I will not identify the schools or any specific persons by name, since most of my comments are not flattering.  In two of the cases the projects were doomed from the start by the fact that the administrators budgeted too little money for what was being done.  In one case $7.5 million was budgeted for a building for a new building for the biology, chemistry, math & computer science and physics departments.  The first cost estimate was almost twice that much, but the administration felt they could not raise any more than $7.5 million, but they still continued with the whole plan.  This building was very disapointing and there was very little money for sorely needed new equipment.  In another project $34 million was budgeted for a renovation/addition for biology, chemistry, geology, physics and nursing. What was really needed was about $48 million and the resulting building had small inflexible classrooms, and absolutely no room for growth even though the initial plan was to have taken into acount a 60% increase in student numbers in the near future.

When I mention generic architects and administrators, I am referring to those that I have worked with and do not mean to label all members of these groups.

Special Note: As I said above, this work has been developed from my own experiences, and you will find that my opinion of the efforts of architects and administrators in the planning of science building is not very high. However, this is my experience and I know that out there somewhere there may exist administrators and architects who have a clue as to the needs of science faculty and a concern for the quality of the education instead of just the appearance of a building. If you have had the benefit of working with such people and they did not have other agendas then you are greatly blessed.

I was disturbed whenever the planning process shortchanged the function of buildings for aesthetics or when aesthetic add-ons used up scarce financial resources that were then not available for either useful floor space or equipment. What the institution and users need to remember in this process is that the new construction will affect the vitality of the programs housed in it for at least the next twenty years. Most people will never get another chance to change the way the building is designed in their careers, so you had better get it right the first time! When I started into the different projects I had envisioned what they could be and when they fell far short I was disappointed. However, in each case there were some good things that I will share with you as well as warnings of how not to go about planning and designing a science building.

One very good comment on the effects of buildings on how we do things is credited to Winston Churchill. The quote which I found in the Project Kaleidoscope book on designing science buildings is, "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."

By users I mean the people who are going to work in a science building, the faculty, administrators and staff. To give the building a reasonable chance of being a functional building the users must be responsible and hold up their end of the planning and oversight of the construction. In my experience, the users who put in the least amount of effort in the planning process were the ones who complained the loudest and most frequently when the building did not meet their needs and expectations. I have to note here that in at least one case staff persons were not made to feel that their participation was vital, so it is important to get ALL users involved in the project.

For the project to be able to produce a functional building ALL users MUST:

1. learn to interpret the printed plans! If needed, someone from the architecture or engineering firms should be available to give a short talk about the different parts of the plans and how to read them.
2. put in the time to evaluate current practices and how these can be improved. The time involved will be substantial, from 10+ hours for staff with jobs in limited areas of the building to hundreds of hours for planning committee members, department heads and deans.
3. examine every set of plans that are produced to see how the areas in which you will work are evolving and making comments about any problems you might see or changes that you feel might make the spaces better. (Note: The administration and project leaders must make sure that all users are made to feel safe in voicing objections!)
4. participate in good faith when the time comes for making cuts from the initial "wish list" to keep the project within the budget.
5. be somewhat flexible. If a building was custom built to exactly fit the needs and preferences of each person involved, then it will rapidly become less useful or need renovation as personnel change. It is almost a guarantee that some of the people involved in the early planning will be gone by the time the building is finished.

Do enough recursions

The design of a building is a recursive process in that you tell the architects what you want, then they come up with a design. You then look at the design to see how it fits your needs. This must be done until everyone is satisfied. Also, cost, site, building codes and other factors are brought into this process. There need to be enough recursions to bring the building to a close enough approximation of your needs, within the budget limitations.

Spend enough time on the details

While examining plans, a great deal of attention must be given to the details. This may seem trivial, but when a lab is built with outlets in the wrong places or a door is not wide enough to get the equipment through the door, a brand new lab suddenly does not seem so great.

The very beginning of a building project is probably the most important part. At this point priorities for the building are set and a budget is set. Unfortunately, all-too-often, the people who are to use the building are not included in these first meetings. One result is that the administrators, most of whom are not scientists, commit to making an attractive building. This is the pretty building syndrome. In a recent report published by the Research Corporation, The Midas Touch: Do Soaring Endowments Have Any Impact of College Science?, Research Corporation Annual Report 1998. Michael Doyle, Vice President of the Corporation said, "the building is an elegant shell without modern instrumentation or flexibility for future use." This was a major problem in the second building program that I was involved in, where a very handsome electron microscope suite was built for both scanning and transmission scopes, and which now, almost ten years later, still does not have even one electron microscope.

In my opinion the best thing that faculty could do in the early part of the planning, before any architects are involved is to get an agreement from the administration that the purpose of the building is to educate and that promoting the education of the students and producing a functional building is the first priority. This agreement should be in writing! Then when the architect starts pushing expensive "aesthetic" features this agreement can be used to give some leverage for supporting the functional design of the building.

When an architect proposes any changes for aesthetic purposes the cost of these changes should be considered. In my experience the architects simply say that their changes "will not cost much" while any changes for function proposed by faculty often get the response that they "will cost a great deal". The architects should also provide drawings and/or models to show how their changes will affect the appearance of the building and how it would look without the addition of the additional aesthetic changes. Most people do not have the fine tuned aesthetic sense of an architect so in my opinion, many of the aesthetic gingerbread additions are wasted money and usually leave less money for the functional parts of the building.

Another important ground rule to set and stick to during a project is that all planning must go through the same process. Many problems and animosities have been started because faculty and other related persons went around the planning process to lobby the president of the institution for their personal needs at the expense of other departments. A good administrator would not allow this to happen and would refer the lobbyists to the committee, but this rule should be stated early and often.

Also, at the very beginning, the departments to be housed in a building must be chosen. It is then important to stick to this list. In all too many cases, after the budget is set more departments or functions are added to the building, which reduces the money, and space, that is available for each department. This also happened in my second project, where a five year old estimate for a biology and chemistry building was used and then the departments of physics, mathematics and computer science were added to the final building. This left facilities for biology and chemistry just barely able to handle existing courses and minimal research with absolutely no room to grow. Many faculty were happy to get even this since the old building was decrepit and should have been replaced at least 30 years earlier.

Once departments are chosen, these departments need to do a thorough analysis of their current programs and what they think and hope that their programs will become. This includes numbers of students and courses, research, outreach activities, and also teaching methods. If faculty from other departments teach courses in the existing facility this must also be considered. In one project, this was ignored until very late in the planning and then it was found that twice as many classrooms were needed than were included in the plan. This lead to cramped classrooms and cutting out of other important areas of the building since the funds available was fixed at that point. One major casualty was the loss of student study areas, an important factor in developing a learning community.
 
 

Project Kaleidoscope is an organization funded by the NSF that focuses upon improving undergraduate science, math, engineering and technology education. One of the focuses of this organization has been the design and construction of SME&T education buildings. One recommendation that they make is that there be a "project shepherd" for all building projects. The role of the project shepherd is defined in the following quote from the Project Kaleidoscope web site.
 

"The project shepherd typically is a faculty member from one of
the departments which will be housed in the new structure. S/he is
an indispensable facet of the project and therefore should possess
leadership skills, a knowledge of construction and planning, and
effective listening skills in order to best communicate the needs
and wishes of the people that s/he represents. The project
shepherd is also responsible for ensuring that the space works for
the people who will utilize it. This faculty member is responsible
for facilitating communication between and among all committees
and individuals involved in the planning. In representing the
viewpoints, needs, and educational goals of faculty colleagues,
s/he must be open to debate and disagreements and understand
how to challenge individuals and departments to ask questions in a
context of mutual respect and shared commitments. Ideally, the
project shepherd should have released time at critical stages in the
planning and construction process."

http://www.pkal.org/facility/people/planners.html.

None of the projects that I was involved in had a project shepherd, and I believe that such a person would have improved the results greatly. One role that is not mentioned above, but that I think would be very important would be to keep all users actively involved, even to the extent of personally reviewing plan changes with less active users. It was all too common for many of the faculty to decrease their efforts as the project went along.  Also, the project shepherd should also others by interpreting the drawings and helping them to visualize what the space will be like.  The use of masking tape on the floor of a large room will help people to be able to see how large each space will be where there is a question.

In the first project in which I was involved, and which in my opinion had the best result, was mainly an addition of biology facilities. The department chair had a strong personality and acted as a de facto project shepherd, which may have been one of the reasons that this project worked so well. In the last project they considered having a project shepherd, but decided not to have one because they hired a project management company. I would strongly recommend that you have both a construction management company AND a project shepherd, since they really perform different roles and bring different skills and knowledge to the project. The construction manager is the link to the architects and contractors, while the project shepherd is the link to the users of the facility.

In any building program communication is exceedingly important and errors in communication are frequent. The error rate in projects is very high because communication lines are often long, and there are people from very different backgrounds working together. The typical communication path is an inverted "U" (see diagram below) where information passes up one leg and down the other. For example, in one case I communicated a need for a change to my department head, who passed it along to the assistant provost, who passed it to the project manager, who passed it to the architect, who passed it through his company to the person doing the actual drawings. About six weeks later the person doing the drawings called me to clear up what was wanted. In other cases I have had to request plan changes three times before the change was made properly in the plans. Yet another time, when our plans changed, we knew that in one room the ceiling was going to need to be raised and the lighting and outlets needed changing. However, because of the long communication lines the work continued in this room for four weeks during which the ceiling was finished at the wrong height, the wrong lights were installed and the wrong outlets were put into the walls. This work then had to be undone before the desired configuration was achieved. You should not let these communication problems frustrate your efforts, you must be persistent. Sometimes the errors can be amusing one time in an early drawing a rectangle indicating a table in the middle of a room was drawn with the title, periodic table. This had come from a sketch made by the architect pointing to a blank wall where a periodic table could be placed. Apparently the CAD operator hadn’t taken chemistry.

Another problem that crops up later in a project is that people notice that things were changed, and then no one knows who requested or made the change. The only way to stop this type of problem is with accurate and thorough record keeping.

Both of the above communication problems might be able to be minimized if the structure of the communications procedure was modified. Here is an untested plan that might help.

First, one person, probably the project shepherd would become the center of communication. This person would be supplied with a dedicated computer with a large hard drive, a document scanner, and a freeform database program such as AskSam. Any time two parties in the project communicated, they would need to send an e-mail or paper copy to the center. The center would then scan in paper communications and enter the files or e-mail messages into the database. E-mail would be the preferred method since it is more direct and the e-mail would be saved and e-mail program could work as a simple database program. By doing this, the source of any change could be readily identified. The center could also shorten the lines of communication when necessary by acting as a jumper across the two legs of the inverted "U" when necessary. In the case above, where construction continued, the center could have told the subcontractor to stop working in that room until further notice. Of course, whenever the center short circuited the communication lines he or she would notify all of the people in between.

I feel that one of the biggest problems in getting a building that functions well is the THWADI (That’s How We Always Did It) syndrome. When this syndrome hits, the new building is just the same as the old building, only newer. This syndrome can strike for a number of reasons. The faculty can be so overloaded that they have little time to think about anything but getting each day’s work done. The initial planning can be rushed. The faculty feel that they should teach the way that they were taught, because if it was good enough for them then it is good enough for their students. The faculty may also lack a single creative bone among the lot.

The PKAL book on science building design stresses the importance of spending enough time in the initial planning to have each department individually examine the states of their programs and how they think that they will change in the future, and to think about how they could improve their programs. Next, all of the departments should get together to see how they can work together to improve the quality of the students’ education. To do this programmatic planning should probably take at least two years and probably even longer. Often it takes time for new ideas to develop in people’s minds. Often new ideas will come up months after one first starts thinking about making changes. This early planning is often cut short because of the desire to get a new building as soon as possible. If the planning is rushed, the users then have many long years to regret the results of their decisions that were made in haste. In one of the W.M Keck – PKAL consultant reports whose link appears below, the consultant recommended the institution rethink the timetable for completion of their building project because

"The seeming unreadiness of the faculty to consider new
pedagogical approaches and curricular designs suggests that rushing
to construction will result in a facility that will ultimately not serve
your institution well."        http://www.pkal.org/keck/report1.html

I feel that faculty of this type, who either lack any creative ability or refuse to exercise the ability that they possess should be identified and excluded from the building planning committee (if not from the profession). Designing a building that will enhance the educational program of a school for the next 20 to 50+ years requires a great deal of creativity and a great deal of time!
 
 

In one case the administration hired a well known architectural firm to do a preliminary study to determine the best course to follow in producing new science facilities. The report produced by this firm stated that a renovation/addition project would not be able to achieve all of the needs that were listed by the users, but the recommended that the school should proceed with a renovation/addition program. It took me a while to figure this one out, but it appears that the president of the institution had already decided upon renovation to protect a pet project of his. The architecture firm appears to have responded to this by agreeing with him since they wanted the contract to design the new building. Unfortunately for them another firm was chosen. I do not believe that a firm hired as a consultant in such a situation should be put in the position of having a conflict of interest as this firm did. The consultant firm should be disqualified from bidding for the final job.
 
 

Often when decisions are made without including those who will have to live with the project, major renovation of an entire building is chosen. Often the argument is made that renovation is less expensive than new construction. In fact, depending upon the situation, the cost may be about the same or even greater than new construction. Sometimes there are ulterior motives to choose renovation over a new building, but often the administration makes this decision because it is easier (for the administrators) to make a case to donors and/or legislators since renovation appears to be more fiscally responsible. What they ignore are the hidden costs of renovation some of which are:

1. The noise, dirt and other factors lower the quality of education that the students receive during the construction. Often classes are taught in makeshift rooms, faculty offices are often moved far from where students can get to them and often some classes are not offered during the construction due to lack of proper laboratory space. This cost is hard to quantify, but later in this section I will give one possible way to place a value on the lost education.
2. Faculty and staff have to work around construction, which means that they spend less time working with students (see #1) and doing research and other duties. While this inconvenience is temporary for faculty and staff, the effect upon student learning during the construction and lost research time is permanent.
3. The quality of the space is never as good as it could be in a new building because the need to work with an existing building adds many limiting factors to planning. One of the biggest problems often is the floor-to-floor height of older buildings. I will discuss this in greater detail below. Another factor is that you are stuck with the existing bay sizes, which can limit room design greatly. In the renovation/new construction project that our administration had heralded as being so great the chemistry labs were left almost unchanged and the old faculty offices were converted into research closets. They started as rooms of about 100 sq ft, but after the addition of a hood and benches there was little space for even one research student.
4. Renovation always means that there is more moving of people and equipment to get out of the way of construction. Use of campus staff for additional moves and temporary construction. Often campus plant operations staff are used to help with the additional moves required when a major renovation is performed. They are also used to build and then dismantle temporary classrooms, labs and offices. In the cases that I have been involved the cost of labor and materials for these actions was not added to the building cost, but was hidden in physical plant budget and will show up later as deferred maintenance in other campus facilities. These costs are almost never included in the initial renovation cost estimates, making them appear better than they really are.
5. Another important factor in major renovation is the "oops" factor. This is when the existing building is found to have deficiencies that were not considered in earlier planning. Architects usually put in a 10% contingency line item in the budget and often the "oops" factor eats up most of this money. This makes the original optimistic renovation savings a total sham. Some of the "oopses" that I have seen were: warped concrete floors in a 50 year old building which required substantial additional steel bracing and concrete added to level, floor-to-floor heights that were less than the blueprints used to make early plans, hidden deterioration from water damage and foundation problems.
6. One big problem that happens when there is renovation with and addition is that the new addition has to have a separate foundation and it is not rigidly connected to the old structure. This must be done since the two parts settle in different ways. There is only a flexible joint between to two parts, which leads to the inevitable problem of roof leaks. It may or may not leak at first, but I guarantee that any such joint will eventually leak as the two portions of the structure go their own ways.

One way in which one might calculate a value of the loss of educational quality is to determine the number of student credit hours that will be affected by the renovation. Then estimate the percentage decrease in the educational experience of the students. An estimate of 10% would be conservative in cases where laboratory experiments must be dropped or whole course’s laboratories skipped for a year due to lack of proper lab space the percentage should be much higher. The total cost would be then calculated by the following equation:

# of student credit hours X (cost/student credit hour) X 0.10 = hidden cost

In one case at a small state school the cost calculation would have been as below:

25,000 schrs X ($150/schr) X 0.10 = $375,000.

At a private school with higher tuition, this would be a much bigger factor.

In buildings built before the 80’s floor-to-floor heights were usually less than 12 feet and occasionally as little as 10 feet. Modern ventilation requirements for science buildings are difficult to retrofit into such spaces. Since the ducts must be made small to fit in the narrow space available, the air must be moved at high velocity, which requires more powerful, and expensive to purchase and operate. The high air velocities also make the building much noisier. New science buildings typically have floor-to-floor heights of 14 to 16 feet which allows the use of large ducts and low power fans which means less expensive construction and operating costs as well as a quieter building. Also, since there is more room to work above suspended ceilings, maintenance is easier and cheaper and it is easier to make changes later, increasing the flexibility of the space.

The low ceilings also limit classroom design. Low ceilings eliminate the possibility of using both a projector (either overhead or computer) and the blackboard at the same time. In the infamous building that was so wonderful there were several classrooms with ceilings which I could touch (< 8feet high). These classrooms were crammed full of desks and had ceiling mounted video projectors in the center aisle which made anyone over 6 feet tall duck to get under. They also projected an image that was too low to be seen by many of the students in the room.

Another problem in renovation with addition is that often a new addition will be made with larger floor-to-floor heights, which then requires the addition of ramps to meet accessibility requirements. The worst case that I have seen is at a major mid-western university, which connected three separate buildings. In between the buildings were PacMan style mazes of switchback ramps. Which these met the letter of the code I would doubt that they would really enable a person in an electric wheelchair to actually get between buildings between class periods.
 
 

If possible, a science building should not be built near a major road, high voltage power lines, or over a subway. The resulting vibrations and electro-magnetic interference will compromise the results of many modern instruments. Some of this problems can be minimized, but not eliminated, but with additional cost. Also, a site close to other related departments will increase the possibility of interdisciplinary ventures. At one school I proposed the placement of a new building that would attach to the building housing the engineering and the math/computer science departments which was across the campus. In the past there had been essentially no communication between those departments and the science department. I lost and the departments will remain separated. Even with electronic communications the old adage, "out of sight, out of mind" is still true.
 
 

All too often users will defer to architect’s experience, particularly when firm has built science buildings and allow things to be built in ways that the users thought would not work. There are a few things that you need to remember in cases such as this. The architect has never taught a science course or lab and often the users’ experience is much greater, so if something seems wrong to you, you should push to have it changed. While the architectural firm may have built science buildings before, the buildings might have been different types of buildings, with different uses and people than yours. Also, the actual architects assigned to your project may not have been involved in the design of a science building before. And finally, they may have built science buildings before, but they may have been poorly designed science buildings.

In one case, our stockroom manager had a conversation with an employee of the hazardous waste firm. The employee, a recent graduate of another school, mentioned that that school had a building that looked just like ours. When the stockroom manager mentioned the problems that we were having with the design, the employee mentioned that their building, built six years earlier had been plagued by many of the same problems. We then checked with the PKAL web site and found out that the same architecture firm had designed both buildings. It seems that not all people learn from their mistakes.

I have seen many elementary mistakes made by architecture firms that had built science buildings before. In one case they provided two inch diameter steel and plastic exhaust tubes which were connected to galvanized vent pipes in the wall to vent atomic absorption and ICP spectrometers. The airflow was a fraction of the minimum of 200 cubic feet per minute recommended by the AA manufacturer, and the plastic parts would have melted immediately and the steel would have rusted away in less than a year. Manufacturers of most instruments provide installation requirements. For flame AA and ICP the Perkin-Elmer manual recommended an air flow of 200 to 600 cfm with 6 inch diameter stainless steel duct with minimum bends. The same architectural firm that designated the inadequate vents also was planning to use a standard hood for a radioisotope hood. It took me about ten minutes on the web to supply them with several references showing the proper type of hood for this use. (See the URL’s at the end of this article.) I could tell several other horror stories, but the main thing is not to leave any of the details up to the architects without checking them before the plans are finalized.

If the architect says that they have successfully done something before that does not seem right to you, find out where this was done, and contact the users to see how it works for them. Also, find out about the users and how their program operates, since what works for one department may not work for yours.

In spite of many people saying that we should leave the design up to the design professionals, I do not trust them to produce a functional building. Few if any of the design professionals have ever taught science, and after all, when the project is done they take their checks and leave and you are left with the results for as many as thirty or more years.
 
 

The mindset of architects can be seen by what they show you when they are trying to get the job. The vast majority of what they will show you will usually consist of pictures of the outsides of buildings or of the atriums or hallways and stairways. Unfortunately these areas are not where the classes and labs take place. Also, they will usually discuss the aesthetics and symbolism of their designs. While I am not a total philistine, what I have seen is design that is disconnected from the function of the building. I have seen a building that the architect tried to make look like a ship, a stair tower turned into a lighthouse, and an entrance made to look like a glass elevator, but only at night. In another case in trying to force ambient light from the second floor to the first floor one architect took space from the general chemistry labs, leaving only three lineal feet of bench available for each student. My main objection is when the esthetic values are emphasized at the expense of function, either by making a building design which limits the functional use of the building or when the cost of the esthetic features requires cuts in function.

One design feature that limits functionality is curved walls, which often lead to dead spaces in the building and also are more expensive to build. Curved walls are the current rage in architecture, because they are more "organic". When I have asked architects about the added cost of curved walls, they have responded with "not very much". However, construction people have another opinion. Another almost knee-jerk response that I have gotten from architects when I have proposed changes to make a lab or room more functional is that the change would cost "too much". This was especially true if the change threatened their aesthetic features.

During the design process, the architects start with asking about the teaching and working spaces that the users need. After they get this information, they take the spaces and turn them into simple square footages. They then design their exterior, followed by the entryway and hallways. Then they see if they can cram the offices, classrooms and labs into the space remaining.

Most people will agree that trees are beautiful, and their shape came about from the need to get as much leaf surface exposed to light. If the random processes of evolution can produce beauty from function, I cannot see why a team of highly paid architects also cannot produce a beautiful building by letting the function drive the form, without adding gimmicks and gingerbread. A good example of functional design that is also attractive is the Golden Gate Bridge, a structure that has little decoration.

One approach might be to design labs and classrooms, then cut out foam plastic shapes to scale, define which units must be adjacent and tell the architects that they can do anything they want as long as they do not change the shapes and sizes of the labs and classrooms. If a school would have the courage to do this, then we would find out who the really good architects are.

A current trend among architects seems to be that with each building, they must make an artistic statement. They often seem to feel that this is their own building and the needs of the future occupants often takes second place to their artistic sense. There also are fads that architects follow in designing buildings. In the 1980’s the fad was facades with fake peaks and rose windows. In the 90’s the fad was curved walls, which not only add to the cost of construction, but also often make the internal space less functional.

Many of the items which architects add to complete their statements look rather unusual and even ugly to those of us without a finely honed sense of artistic style.

In my second building project the architect added a large number of esthetic features, which added to the cost and cut out functional parts. These included decorative walls outside of the entrances, a 50 foot X 10 foot brick wall to hide a loading dock, four foot high walls above the roofs to hide vents which also block the views from the interior, columns at two corners of the third floor, chair rails in the halls, which were placed too high to protect the walls from carts, expensive and useless sconces, that added little to the lighting, and steel beams to the outside of the observatory dome, that were only there because someone had commented that the dome looked "too round". These beams also interfered with the use of small telescopes on the deck around the dome.

A passion common to almost all architects is large areas of glass. Unfortunately, these large expanses of glass often wind up where they do the most harm and the least good. Large windows on the east south or west sides of a building that let sunlight into labs are a major problem with instruments and with chemical reactions. The intense light heats up equipment and reagents and also produces glare that makes it hard to see. I have also seen many cases where large expanses of glass are exposed to north winds in cold climates, and since the glass and metal frames have different coefficients of thermal expansion they will eventually leak. This is also true with skylights, which, unless they have a plastic top, which is curved over the edges to seal out water, the question is not if they will leak, but WHEN they WILL leak. In one building, which was touted by one school’s administrators as being a fantastic building there was a large expanse of glass and skylight which was skillfully placed to produce maximum solar heat gain in the summer and almost none in the winter.

Sometimes I wonder if all of the absurdities that architects push on their clients is some sort of competition within the profession to see how many outrageous and impractical ideas that they can force their rube clients into accepting. The extreme is the current "rock star" architect who designs buildings that look as if they are in a science fiction movie with warped space, or are in the process of falling down. In one case a large medical school paid extra, not only to get this "rock star" to design their new center for molecular studies building, but surely paid a premium in the construction of the wavy walls and odd-shaped windows. In a recent article in a technical trade magazine the author gushed over the design and stated that, "The architectural design should draw more scientists and students…" to the school. I don’t know about you, but I never asked who the architect of the building was when I chose a school. This building also has very large windows, which "flood the open laboratories with light." See below, in the laboratory design section where I describe how "wonderful" it is to have sunlight shining into a laboratory. Interestingly enough, this edition of the trade magazine had many advertisements placed by the architectural and construction firms featured in the articles. It must just be a coincidence.
 
 

Many types of floors are available. If you have anything other than bare concrete, get some of the scraps from the installation to test for removing stains, particularly in the organic lab. Carpets in hallways will minimize noise, but may be somewhat more expensive to maintain.

Most new science buildings are being built with steel stud walls covered with wallboard. One thing that is important to add to offices and classrooms is soundproofing, which is usually in the form of a special glass fiber batting. Concrete block walls are no longer common. Also, architects do not seem to care about upkeep. Walls are being painted with flat white, which reflects and diffuses light, but shows dirt and scuff marks rapidly. These stark white walls also make the building seem sterile to me.

Making the halls look good has gone to great extremes recently. Typically there are only a few bulletin board on which to place notices and the flat painted walls will be damaged if one is to tape anything to them. In one building, the chemistry department bought several glass-enclosed bulletin boards for posting exam answers. These could not be placed in the main hallway since they did not match the woodwork! This building also had chair rails that were too high to protect the walls from carts, and the area below the rails was flat white, with a fabric covering above. The white area had to be repainted within a year of finishing the building because it had been scuffed up and marked. In one case, to eliminate the electrical circuit breaker boxes from the halls, these boxes were put into labs, where often they interfered with the use of the walls in the labs. Obviously the architect felt it was more important to have neat (sterile) halls than to get the maximum use out of the labs.
 
 

The design of a lab can dramatically affect the way that it is used by both the faculty and students. In one older building that has since been renovated many of the biology department’s labs were set up in rows of low, narrow benches. The students sat facing forward and there was a large blackboard and demonstration table. When using these labs I noticed that the instructors spent a large amount of time lecturing in front of the class, and the students did a relatively small amount of lab work. I am certain that the lab design helped lead to this tendency since the same faculty in other labs did not do as much lecturing.

Laboratory designs have recently taken three different paths. First there is the standard lab where a blackboard is stuck in a corner for prelab lectures. The second more recent design adds an adjacent "discussion room" for prelab lectures and inter and postlab discussions. The discussion room setup has problems in that it takes time to move students back and forth and the half-life of the information presented in a prelab lecture is very short. Also, it takes time to get students back into the discussion room for post-lab discussions, and if one wished to stop in the middle of a lab and then have a discussion and then return to the lab this would use a large portion of the lab period. Another real disadvantage of the discussion room setup is the extra floor space needed, which is not used very efficiently. The use of discussion rooms can be increased some by using them as classrooms when there are no labs scheduled. This is especially true if there are only afternoon labs. The third and newest trend is toward "studio laboratories" where the lecture and lab are held in the same place. This third choice seems to me to be a possible improvement over the others. As you will see later, my "ideal" design can be used as a studio lab. The students remain in the same place through most of the period and the class can rapidly transition from lecture/discussion to lab/discovery formats with little loss of time. Here is a recent reference Bailey, Christina; Kingsbury, Kevin; Kulinowski, Kristen; Paradis, Jeffrey; Schoonover, Rod, An Integrated Lecture-Laboratory Environment for General Chemistry, J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 195-199.

In my opinion, laboratories should be designed to both maximize safety and to minimize the amount of walking that students need to do to complete their labs. In all of my time as a student and as an instructor, I have seen few labs that were designed for efficient use of time. All too often students would spend large amounts of time walking back and forth and passing by other students working at their lab stations which creates a safety problem. They also need to carry reagents, some hazardous, across the lab increasing chances for spills.

Another important factor in designing labs is the need to accomodate people with physical difficulties.  The best reference for this that I have found is a booklet from the AAAS which can be ordered at the following URL:

http://ehrweb.aaas.org/cgi-bin/add.pl#Barrier

In redesigning labs for efficiency, the first things that need to go are the balance rooms. If the air in the lab is not good enough for the balances, then it is not good enough for people. Since almost everyone uses electronic balances, they can be placed on the benches near students, minimizing the need to walk to the balances and eliminating the bottleneck at the door to the balance room. Another benefit is cost savings, since separate balance rooms require more walls which add to the cost of construction and decrease usable space. In one case in which I entered late in the project the general chemistry labs had separate balance rooms with sitting height benches because that is what they had in their existing 50 year old building. Now that electronic balances have replaced the old single pan Mettler analytical balances, it takes less time to perform a weighing than it does to sit down. Also, the chairs in the balance rooms make it difficult to move around in this area. The main rule here is to think about how it is best to do things, not just how you have done them in the past.

Another common lab practice that needs to be changed is the placement of a single set of large bottles of reagents in a hood in one corner of the lab. This means that students waste time waiting in line and then must carry reagents through the work areas of other students to return to their stations. Also, when reagents are put out in large bottles, students tend to take large amounts which leads to more waste. Another problem with this type of arrangement occurs when a student gets to the reagent shelf and forgets how much of the reagent is needed. The student then proceeds to take the bottle to his or her work place and then usually does not return it making other students hunt around the lab. Also, if a single large bottle is dropped and broken the spill is more severe and the whole lab section’s supply is gone. A larger number of smaller bottles of reagents should be placed around the lab area so students do not need to go very far.

Below are designs for a general chemistry and an upper level lab that limit student movements to a small area and students do not need to cross through other students’ areas. They also provide several areas to place reagent containers and balances.

Here is a detailed elevation drawing of a general chemistry bench unit. There would be one computer for each two students and end units for balances and reagents. Each student would have about 4.5 feet wide of bench space.

Below is an elevation drawing of the end units for the balances reagents which also has a space for a printer and some storage. The printers would be connected to the computers throught the campus network.

Here is a design for an upper level quant lab with more sinks since there is usually more washing of labware in this course.

Here is an elevation view of the bench unit for the quant lab.

Here is the elevation view of the end unit for the quant lab. It is essentially identical to the general chem end unit.

Both of the lab designs could be used for studio-type classes by adding a whiteboard on a vertical track on one side of the lab in front of the hoods, and adding slide out writing tables to each bench next to the knee space so students could face the hoods and write. The whiteboard could then be raised to give access to the hoods behind it. Another useful way to get info to the students would be by sending to all of the computers as in the article about the studio labs that I mentioned earlier.

New organic labs have, in most cases, been designed so that all student work is done in a hood. There are two major designs. The first has the hoods on the outside walls with a center island for reagents and instruments. In my opinion this is the best working design since students do not have to move around the lab to get reagents and perform tests, but it also tends to require a larger space. The other option is rows of hoods with glass walls. This option does not give the instructor a full view of what all students are doing and also requires students to walk back and forth and pass thorough others’ working spaces, however this design requires less floor space.

I have heard of a case where the faculty designed an organic lab with the hoods around the perimeter, but the architects told the administration that they could save $150,000 by putting the hoods in the middle of the room. They did not add glass panels to the back of the lab so the instructor could only see half of the students at any one time. Of course the faculty member was not consulted about this cut.

Instrument room bench tops must have a minimum depth of 36 inches! If they are not that deep then many instruments will stick out past the bench and there will not be any space for solutions, so students will set their solutions on top of the instruments where they can get spilled and do considerable damage. Also if you use computers on top of narrower benches there is not enough room for a decent sized monitor and the keyboard and mouse. Also, since most computers come in tower configurations the neatest way to set up a system is to have the power and network connections beneath the bench in the knee space and have a grommet hole in the back of the bench to connect the computer below the bench with the monitor, keyboard and mouse on top. Another improvement is to have a slide-out keyboard/mouse drawer beneath the bench top. Also, the computer should be mounted on a wire rack attached to the bench top or the cabinets on the side of the knee space, which will prevent the computer cooling fan from sucking up dirt from the floor and make it easy to secure from theft.

If possible, have access to rear of instrument room benches to enable easy access to connections that are on the rear of most instruments. This can be done by running two rows of benches back-to-back with an aisle of two to three feet wide between. This back aisle can be lined with plug mold and have a manifold of needed gas lines (air, N2, He, acetylene, etc.) with T’s with shutoff valves to supply each instrument. I have set these up using Swagelock connectors and ¼ inch copper or stainless steel tubing.

Most lab bench tops will be made of cast black epoxy that is the only material that will withstand chemical spills, heat and stains without looking terrible after a few years. For benches where only computers are used, laminate tops are cheaper, but chemicals and heat will damage or stain these.

One problem that catches people unaware in modern cabinetwork for labs is the construction of drawers. In older labs, the front of the drawer was a good indicator of the inside dimensions of the drawer. In many modern lab furniture the inside dimensions of the drawers are considerably smaller than the front. Many makers use ball bearing drawer slides on the sides of the drawers that narrow the inside by about two inches. Old drawers simply slid on the wood beneath. Also, the bottoms of the drawers are often raised up as much as an inch and there is a lowered board where the drawer closes. This often leads to people finding out that they cannot fit all of the glassware into the new drawers that was in the old drawers.

Drawers: many drawers in modern lab furniture are much smaller than their fronts. (ADD DRAWINGS)
 
 

The design of utilities in a building is one of those small things often overlooked. Overlooking these small things often will cause great problems later. Placement of electrical outlets and their capacities is very important for the functioning of labs.

One of my pet peeves about architects and utilities is the current fad for bringing utilities down from the ceiling instead of up from the floor. This leaves the labs with metal chases from the ceiling down to the benches which blocks the instructor’s view of students working in the lab. The metal chases also become scratched and rust in a few years and are an eyesore. The argument for this practice is that it makes it easier to make changes later. I do not understand this since the workers still have to go into the ceiling, whether it is the ceiling in the lab or on the floor below should not make a difference. Leaving a few extra holes in the floor under the benches filled with firestop foam will allow new utilities to be added later from beneath. Also, in my experience, renovations occur very infrequently, while labs are taught every day. It makes little sense to me to simplify the renovation that will happen in twenty or more years, while interfering with every lab class until that day. In another lab design long booms containing utilities extended across the lab over the benches. One major problem that I can envision is that with water taps above instruments, it is only a matter of time before someone turns the wrong knob and soaks down tens of thousands of dollars of instrumentation.

Compressed Air:

Another thing that seems useless to me is the addition of compressed air to all lab benches, which costs extra with little gain in most cases. The main (mis)use of compressed air is the "drying" of glassware by students. This usually is not taught to the students and often results in glassware spotted with oil and rusty water or in broken glassware after it shoots off of the jet.

Compressed air in labs does have its uses. Many instruments need compressed air with pressures typically between 50 and 100 psi for combustion or to operate valves or other mechanical parts. Also compressed air after scrubbing the carbon dioxide and water vapor is used to purge IR spectrometers. The other main us is for driving flash chromatography columns. Here the pressure needs to be in the range of 20 psi. The need for different pressures can cause problems, since if the compressor is set to supply air at 100 psi for instruments it could burst the glass flash chromatography columns. Either two separate systems are needed (very expensive), or in-line regulators are needed. By putting regulators at branches in lines, the air pressure whole labs can be controlled by a few regulators. In one case a single regulator was used to control each floor of a whole wing, with several labs being controlled by each regulator.

Electric Power:

Electric power is needed in much larger amounts in current laboratories. Often a single bench will be wired with a 40 ampere circuit. Standard 120 volt AC outlets should be placed liberally about a lab. The use of plugmold systems to provide many outlets is very useful. One important thing to be careful with is the placement of enough 240/220/208 volt outlets. These three voltages are often, but not always, interchangeable since many instruments and pieces of lab equipment can be set to work with any of them with a fairly simple wiring change or even just by flipping a switch. If you have equipment that needs special power you must make sure that it is available in the right place, since retrofitting is often expensive and messy. Another factor to consider is the type of plugs that your instruments have. A little checking early on can save time when moving into the building. However, if you do miss a few plugs can be changed either in the wall outlet or on the equipment. My favorite connectors are the twist-lock type connectors, since they stay in the outlet. It is generally cheaper and more convenient in the long run to make sure that you put in higher voltage plugs in any lab than could conceivably need them, since retrofitting these after a building is built can be expensive.

Water:

I feel strongly that there should be a sufficient number of sinks for washing labware and these should be equipped with hot and cold water mixers. Nothing is worse than having to wash glassware in the middle of the winter with cold water that is barely above freezing. Warm water also does a better job of cleaning, and allows students to start with hotter water when making hot water baths, which saves time for more useful activities.

In the area of deionized/distilled water (which I will refer to as purified water) the best choice in most cases is a reverse osmosis purifier. This is usually the most cost and energy efficient method of producing purified water. However, some water supplies are unsuitable for this system, so you will need to have the water tested.

In the placement of taps for purified water I have seen two extremes. In one project, against my advice, purified water taps were placed at every sink, in every lab. To compound the problem of waste of purified water the architect, to save money and without our knowledge, substituted pvc faucets with valves that stayed open for the metal faucets with spring loaded automatic shutoff valves that we had specified. At the other extreme another project had only a single purified water tap in each lab, which caused congestion problems in lab. This choice was made by the users before I was involved in the project. However, this system was somewhat over-designed in one aspect since it provides 18 megaohm water with lowered organic content and has a flow capacity of 25 gallons per minute.

One problem that arose when a biology department connected their autoclave and electric glass still to the deionized water supply to minimize scale problems. The glass still uses a large amount of water for condensing the steam and the autoclave used a large amount of water to cool steam that was vented and then run down the drain. These added loads used up the ion exchange tanks in about a month. Since the school was far from the supplier, the shipping costs for the cylinders was very large and the cost exceeded $600 per month.

Natural Gas:

In one construction, where I got involved after construction was about 25% done, the faculty had decided to not install gas jets on lab benches in any lab. I feel that this decision limits the number of experiments that can be done in the lab. Proper instruction in the use of bunsen burners can help students to better understand chemistry, since they learn about fuel-rich and fuel-lean flames, which helps in understanding stoichiometry. The understanding of rich and lean flames also relates to automobiles and air pollution. I found out that the main reason for deciding not to put gas on the lab benches was an incident years earlier. An unknown person had opened all of the gas cocks in a lab that was not in use and filled the lab with gas. There was no explosion or fire, but that experience weighed heavily on the minds of the faculty. Had I been involved in the early planning I would have pressed to include gas on the benches, since there are several ways to prevent a recurrence of the problem without undue effort. First, labs with gas should be equipped with electronic shutoff switches similar to the switches used to control heavy equipment. (A raise red shutoff button and depressed green on button.) The addition of a keyed on switch would prevent unauthorized use. The addition of flammable gas detectors connected to the lab shutoff valve could add a level of redundancy. Since most buildings have computer HVAC and safety controls a second level of redundancy could be added by having the computer shutoff the gas in labs not in use.

Building wide vacuum systems:

In order to conserve water the addition of central vacuum systems to replace aspirators is increasing. Users have to somewhat more careful in using traps to prevent contamination or having water enter the lines. In one case there was a communication problem. An engineering firm which was used to working with hospitals designed the system and did not meet the users requirements. The users had initially requested a vacuum of about 10 torr, but the system specifications that got to the engineering firm were for 19 inches of vacuum that corresponds to about 300 torr. The system when installed had a maximum vacuum of 27 inches (50 torr) that rose to about 17 inches (350 torr) before the pumps turned on and pumped the system back down to 50 torr in about two minutes. This range of pressures caused problems with rotovaps since the solution would heat up as the pressure rose and then the rapid pressure drop would cause the solution to bump. We are still trying to resolve this problem, which should be possible by adjusting the pump controller set points.
 
 

All to often classrooms are simply crammed into any leftover space in the building, with little thought about their design. This leads to classrooms with terrible sight angles and student placement. Also, there is usually too little space per student in these classrooms, leaving little room to move through aisles and having students sitting in very close proximity to each other, which can be a problem during tests.

As far as making a classroom flexible enough to be efficient for a range of teaching styles a flat floor with desks that have the large roughly rectanglar writing surface on  the front is probably the best way to go.  With this setup the desks can be set up in rows, in circles or any sized groups.  When desks are facing each other very close you get a good approximation of a table without the problems of moving large tables around.  If the classroom is large enough to have more than about four rows of chairs there should be a raise area by the blackboards or else the students in the back will not be able to see much of the writing surface.  Also, the ceiling for classrooms should be high enough so that sufficiently large projection screens can be placed above the blackboard, to allow the simultaneous use of the blackboard and projected material.  I know there have been times when I would have liked to have had two overhead projectors and a blackboard available.

There have been many studies about classroom design and there is at least one book available about classroom design and there are several sites on the web that have information about how to design a functional classroom.  See Appendix A for some URL's that I have found useful.

Here is the URL for the order form for what has to be the definitive book on classroom design. It is a bargain at $20 per copy, and contains 90 pages and includes listings of additional references and resources.

http://www.inform.umd.edu/TeachTech/Staff/clabaugh/designmanual.html
 
 

Architects are enamored with indirect lighting, especially since they do not have to pay the electric bills. They ignore the fact that a white surface typically reflects only about 50 to 70 % of the light that strikes it. Thus an upward facing sconce adds almost no light at floor level since the light has been reflected off of several surfaces before it gets directed to the floor. In one building, which had a row of direct lighting fluorescent lights on one side of the hall and sconces with 13 watt compact fluorescent tubes on the other, I measured a maximum difference in light intensity of only 5% when the sconces were on as compared to when they were off. Over most of the hallway the difference was unmeasurable!

In laboratories the lighting is almost always designed without taking the positions of the benches into account. This leads to some benches having good lighting and others having very poor lighting. Another problem occurs when the lighting in a lab is too even, which makes it exceedingly difficult to read a meniscus. I am not sure where the lights should be placed to give the best light on a bench, but I am sure that someone has studied this. Another case where the room furnishings were ignored when the lighting layout was designed was a stockroom where the single row of fluorescent lights was positioned only about one foot above the top of a row of shelves that were four feet wide. These shelves were painted dark blue, so very little light got to the areas that it was needed.

Also, most architects seem to be behind the times in modern lighting design. In a building just completed in 2000 there are several classrooms with incandescent lights hooked up to dimmers. These are the main lighting for the rooms. There are now dimmable fluorescent lights with color temperatures that are very similar to incandescent lamps, but these were not installed.
 
 

No matter how large the budget seemed initially, in the end some cuts will need to be made to fit the budget. Our desires are always larger than our pocketbooks. The most important thing that must be done during cuts is that all of the users of the building must be in the loop when cuts are made. In my second project, the faculty were not involved at all in the cuts, and were not even informed about what was being cut. I only found out that the benches in the instrument room had been cut back to 30" deep from the 36" deep requested. This left instruments hanging over the edges of the benches and left no place to put solutions. Students, not seeing any place to set down their flasks, were placing their solutions on top of our new $25,000 FTIR! However, this saved about $2 per lineal foot of bench, for a net savings of about $600, enough to pay for three of the 30 or so sconces in the halls that lit up only the walls and ceilings. In this building there is also a very nice electron microscopy suite with rooms for scanning and transmission electron microscopes, plus a dark room and sample preparation area. However, since the aesthetic features cost so much, there was no money left to equip this suite and now almost ten years after the building was completed the suite is only being used for storage.

One cut that almost always has to be made is in the number of fume hoods. Chemists always want more, but hoods are not only expensive to install, but they are expensive to operate and put a large load on the HVAC system of a building. One reason for this problem seems to be the fact that codes now require hoods to be operating at all times. The only exception seems to be that if a teaching lab is not in use during a summer the hoods can be shut off. This must be done in the mechanical room since there are no switches in the lab. One thing that I have heard, but cannot verify, is that if all chemical reagents are removed from labs when they are not in use that the hoods can be shutdown. Thus if chemicals were stored on carts which were only in the labs during operating times the hoods could be off and apparently even the construction requirements were somewhat less in regards to fire walls etc. since the fire hazard was lowered. As I said, I cannot verify this and it may only be true in certain states, so the architects and engineers will have to check the codes in your locality.

When several departments are involved in a project making cuts can be a problem since the initial requests for space were often made with different levels. Some departments may have asked for the sun and moon and everything that they could think of, while others were very conservative. Cutting is easy for the former group, but difficult for the latter. If the project leader demands equal cuts from each department this can lead to tensions. This is one case where the project shepherd can be an important job. The best rule of thumb is to ask for everything you want at the start, since if you don’t ask for something, you will definitely not get it. Sometimes if you are bold in asking you will find out that you can get more than you thought.
 
 

When the day finally comes to move in (Yes, it will eventually come.) there are many things to do. However, one important thing is to check out every detail to detect any problems with the construction. This is a VERY tedious task, but it is important to catch potential problems before they happen. In one case the fact that the cup sinks in several hoods had not been grouted into place and when the tube from a condenser raised up out of the sink the water ran down under the hood onto the floor and into the ceiling of the floor below. I have also found improperly wired outlets with a $5 LED outlet tested. In every building there will be problems. When these are found they are put onto a "punch list" so that there is a record of the problem and also an eventual record of its repair.
 
 

Below are some relevant web links. I do not make any claims about the accuracy of any of the following links. These links were all active as of 7/5/00.

The web resource that I probably the best for science education building design is the Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) web site. Project Kaleidoscope is an NSF funded project that has been working on science, math engineering and technology education improvements for about ten year. The link to their home page is: http://www.pkal.org/ .

Here are some links to specific pages on their website which apply to building design.

Here is the URL for the portion of the website focusing on facilities. This includes information on how to purchase the book, Volume III : Structures for Science: A Handbook on Planning Facilities for Undergraduate Natural Science Communities. There is also an upcoming supplement to this book which is due in Fall 1997 according to the web page. One point on which I disagree with the PKAL info, is that it recommends deferring to the "design professionals" even though these people have not ever been science faculty and may not even have taken more than one science course in their lifetimes.

http://www.pkal.org/facility/index.html

Below is an excerpt from the book above about the people and committees needed.

http://www.pkal.org/facility/people/planners.html

Below are links about and from the W. M. Keck – PKAL consultant visits, a service that you can apply for through PKAL.

http://www.pkal.org/keck/index.htmlhttp://www.pkal.org/keck/facilities.html

http://www.pkal.org/keck/report1.htmlhttp://www.pkal.org/keck/report5.html

http://www.pkal.org/keck/report4.html
 
 

Here is a link to an online book of science building design that concentrates on research spaces. It does however have a good description of the process of design and a good glossary of the terms that are used by architects and construction people. It also can be read and downloaded online free. One caveat that I have for this book is that they tend to tell the users to defer to the "design professionals". As I said above several times, I am not sure that they have all of the answers. Another thing about this book is that it tends to use vague "buzzwords" at times.

http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9799.html

Note: The National Academy Press also has many good on-line books of science education, etc, and as I said above, the price is right.
 
 

"Green" building links

Here is a link for the Greendesign.net

http://www.greendesign.net/

Here is a link to Building Concerns (formerly Interior Concerns Environmental Resources), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in the state of California, compiles, provides, and disseminates information in order to foster a better understanding of environmentally appropriate designing, building and development principles and standards, and to facilitate these practices in the United States and globally.

http://www.interiorconcerns.org/

Here is a link to Environmental Building News. Environmental Building News is supported solely by subscriptions to the newsletter and sale of its associated products. We carry no outside advertising.

http://www.buildinggreen.com/

Below is a link for APP-TECH Incorporated (APP-TECH, a firm specializing in assisting clients on issues related to Energy Efficient Building Design and Commercial Lighting Design.

http://www.app-techinc.com/
 
 

Lighting

The National Lighting Product Information Program's (NLPIP) web site with the latest info about lighting, including energy efficient lighting.

http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/NLPIP/Online/index.html

Links about fume hoods

http://www.acns.nwu.edu/research-safety/labsafe/hoods/index.htm

http://www.louisville.edu/admin/dehs/lsfume.htmhttp://www.dehs.umn.edu/procedures/fumehoods.html
 
 

Classroom design links:

Web site of classroom consultant DR. DANIEL NIEMEYER. This contains sizes for screens for rooms etc.

http://www.classrooms.com/index.html

Bibliography of electronic classroom design

http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~janicke/Abstracts.html

Web page about a classroom modernization

http://www.oc.nps.navy.mil/~garwood/classroom/

Smart classroom design page

http://charlotte.acns.nwu.edu/gretchen/design/smart.htm

Computer classroom design page

http://wwwenglish.ucdavis.edu/compos/compcai/report.htm
 
 

I am listing these projects in arbitrary order so that no one can easily figure out the identities of the schools involved.

Project A

This project was a complete new building connected to an existing, very old (60+ years) science building at one hallway. The new structure housed the biology, chemistry, math & computer science and physics departments. The budget was set using a five-year-old estimate for the cost of a chem-bio building. Also, about a year into the program the math/CS department added computer labs and computer based classrooms. The architecture firm employed had not built any previous science buildings, but had specialized in heavy construction (power plants) and professional buildings. The final result definitely looked like a typical doctor’s office building. I dubbed this building the Rolls Royce building with a go-kart engine. It was mostly all show, no-go building. Because of the additions of math/CS and physics and the old cost estimate, the spaces for chemistry and biology were just adequate for existing needs, with little or no room for growth. Given that the architect had had no experience with science building design, the results were not bad when one considered the small budget available. The cost of this building was about $100 per square foot in 1992, which was very low! However, some of the work was done by college personnel, which appeared later as deferred maintenance elsewhere on campus, and the amount of money spent on equipment for the departments was very low. The chemistry department got only $100,000, much of which went for basics such as ring stands.

Good points of this building:

1. The general chem labs were almost the ideal design that I showed above. At that point we thought that sinks should be at the ends of the benches, which eliminated the balance/reagent areas. The hoods were at the ends of the benches . These labs were quite spacious, so students were not crowded and the instructor could easily reach any student to answer questions.
2. The chemistry prep room was well designed, not overly large, but efficient and it was located close to all chem labs.
3. The analytical lab had balance/reagent tables at one end of the benches and the hoods at the other end, which meant that students did not need to walk very far to get to either.
4. A space beneath the main lecture hall was used for a small library/study/computer area that was well used by students. It included a small room where up to six students could view videos without disturbing the rest.
5. The biology prep room was large and had doors directly to many of the biology labs, which made it easy to move the carts of equipment into the labs without having to go into the halls.

1. While the general chem labs were good, the analytical, organic and p-chem labs had posts through some of the benches because the architect decided to step the building back to blend into the hillside on which it was built.
2. There were many added ornamental items added to the building that used up money that could have been used for functional purposes. Some of these were not particularly attractive, and they appeared to be tacked on, such a low brick walls outside of the entrances, a long brick wall to "hide" a loading dock from one direction only, some round pillars inserted at the edges of the third floor and sconces in the hallways which only wasted electricity to light up the upper wall and ceiling.
3. The classrooms mostly were just stuck in where there was spare room. Even though there was room above, low, suspended ceilings were added, which eliminated the possibilities of screens above the blackboards.
4. The chemistry labs were on the lowest level of three, which meant that a large amount of floor space on upper floors was lost to the chases for the ducting. The reason for this decision was that the physics department did not want water leaking into their labs, so they insisted on being on the top floor.
5. In the chemistry laboratories there was not enough money for suspended ceilings, so they just hung lights from the ceilings and did not even add any sound absorbing material. This resulted in labs that were echo chambers, making it difficult to understand the instructor giving the lab introduction. For some reason, the administration did not want to put in the metal grid with light units, which is relatively inexpensive, and then put in the expensive tiles later. The hanging lights that were installed were more expensive than the grid and will make it more expensive to add a ceiling later. What was even more interesting was that the architects had a new office where they had put in an empty grid.
6. The main lecture hall had a very steep slope with no modesty panels beneath the student tables, thus making it somewhat embarrassing for the instructor, particularly since short skirts were coming into fashion at the time. Fortunately, I found that my optical center of my brain was good at editing out portions of the view. This lecture hall also had a place where the instructor got his or her voice echoed back from the rounded rear wall.

I entered this project after it was well under way. This was a renovation of a forty-year-old building with an addition of about equal area. The addition was in the space that was occupied by a large lecture hall, which was demolished. Renovation was chosen because this campus had little spare room for new construction in the area of the existing academic buildings. The building housed the chemistry and physics departments. The new addition contained one smaller lecture hall for each department and four chemistry teaching laboratories and several smaller instrument rooms for the chemistry department. During the renovation of the old section, which would contain all of the physics laboratories, temporary physics labs were set up in other buildings. There was little space for research, so research programs either stopped for the duration, or shared space in the teaching labs. One additional expense for this renovation came when the chemical storeroom for bulk and flammables was needed for construction support. New flammable and corrosive material storage cabinets were purchased and distributed throughout the labs. Once the new addition was finished, the cabinets were no longer needed since there were flammable and corrosive materials storage rooms and built-in flammable and corrosive cabinets under many hoods. Fortunately there was another department that could use most of these, otherwise they all would have been discarded.

The pre-planning stage of this project was rushed, which lead to some problems later. At first the plan was to purchase a new 200 MHz FT-NMR and house it in the new section of the building and also get two 100 MHz FT-NMR’s . These would be used for the organic teaching lab. The existing ten-year-old 300MHz was to be upgraded and moved to a new room in the renovated section. Changes in the NMR market have eliminated 100 and 200 MHz instruments. The new plan was to get a 400 MHz FT-NMR, which had to be housed in the new section because of grant restrictions. Unfortunately there were no rooms large enough for a standard 400MHz instrument, so a 400 MHz shielded magnet system was purchased. The room to house this had to be modified, and the instrument was installed. The room is just barely large enough since the setup includes an auto sample changer so that the samples from the organic teaching lab can be handled easily.

Another change in plans that happened was that the department has decided to make several smaller (40 – 60 students each) sections of general chemistry rather than one or two large (100 – 150 students each). Unfortunately a 150-seat lecture hall had already been built. This room has plush chairs with tablet arms that are very small, that makes group work difficult.

Project C

The first project in which I was involved was at a small (1,500 students) liberal arts college. This project was probably the most successful one in my view. This project was completed in three stages spread over 20 years. In 1974 the first part of the building had been built and occupied by the chemistry and math & computer science departments and the science library. In the mid-1980’s an addition which doubled the floor area was added and was occupied by the biology and physics departments, with an expansion of the library, addition of a new shared chemistry-biology stockroom and unfinished space for the psychology department. This space was finished and the department moved in in the mid-1990’s. This was a good example of not trying to do too much at once and having enough funds to complete each section well.

Some high points of this building were:

1. The chemistry department labs were essentially one big lab with a central instrument room. This saved the space and cost normally associated with walls and hallways. Since the whole section of the building was open, at night the whole section was locked off, including some study areas and a seminar room. Junior and senior majors, who had a project-based lab had keys to get into this area and could work in the lab if at least two people were present. They also studied up there often which lead to a very close knit community of chemistry majors.
2. The lab benches were made to be flexible with only the sink units connected to the floor. However, as far as I know I was the only one to ever move these benches for two experiments and they are still in the same place that they were in 1974. So much for flexibility! I believe that flexibility is probably more important in research spaces than in teaching spaces.
3. Many of the benches in the instrument room were accessible from the rear, making it easier to work on instruments.
4. There were several attractive areas in this building where students could gather and talk or study.
5. The biology department had several glass-covered bulletin boards that they filled with pictures of biology majors, electron micrographs and reports of student research.

1. During the addition, there was an attempt to add vents to the ceiling to introduce tempered air into the rooms at the faces of the hoods to minimize energy costs. This system never worked well and alternately gave out gusts of hot or cold air. The HVAC system of this building was also notorious for having hot and cold spots that moved around from day-to-day.
2. The shared stockroom took some time for people to adjust their ways to not interfere with others. Recently a stockroom manager was added which I am sure helped this situation.

Project D

This project was a renovation/addition, where the addition extended around 2 ½ sides of the building. The departments involved were biology, chemistry, geology, physics and nursing. The old building had very low floor-to-floor height that complicated the design. I fought to try to get this project changed to a new building since the campus had several good places for a new building that were better than the existing site. However, because of other agendas supported by the administration, the project became a renovation/addition and I am no longer working at that school. This construction was tremendously disruptive of the educational programs, and there had to be a large number of compromises made due to the renovation.
 
 
 
 

Good points of this building:

1. I was successful in getting the classrooms designed so that projection screens and the blackboards could be used simultaneously. The classrooms were all in the same area, so the first floor classrooms were dug down into the ground to give a 12 foot ceiling and the second floor rooms had a raised roof to give the same clearance. All of the rooms were equipped with computer projection equipment and two rooms were set up so that they could be used for remote teaching. UPDATE: I have since found out that these features were cut due to cost overruns. Also, there were no computers or projectors installed and to use an overhead projector the instructor must sit in the second row of tables and thus cannot easily get back to the board. Thus this is now a bad feature!
2. One good design plan that was already in place in the old building and is being continued is that the faculty offices were not segregated by department, but were chosen by seniority. This led to contacts with faculty in other disciplines that did not happen often in other schools. The seniority system was a big thing in the old building since there were significant differences among the offices available, both in size and in quality. The largest offices were more than twice the size of the smallest and also these had windows, which the others lacked. In the new construction the offices were almost all the same size which made seniority less of an issue.
3. All of the chemistry teaching labs were in the new addition to minimize the disruption of the program since it would have been difficult to find temporary space that would be adequate for chem labs.
4. There were some good student study areas in this building, but they were heavily used when only the chemistry and part of the biology programs were using the new space. However, when the physics, geology, nursing and the rest of the biology programs movee into the renovated area which contain no additional study areas these areas will probably be overloaded, especially since this school has many commuter students.

1. The building was very close (about 30 feet) to one of the busiest streets in town, which added vibration and EMF interference.
2. The floor-to-floor distance was very small, which required extra effort in design and construction. The design efforts in getting around this problem were a major factor in the winning of an award by the architects. However, the building has very low ceilings now (<8 feet) which makes it somewhat claustrophobic.
3. In the chemistry labs the architects specified a laminate bench top surface with a pattern which was not durable enough and is going to be replaced with epoxy tops even before the construction is complete. (This architecture firm has designed several other science buildings, so they are apparently slow learners.) To save costs, bench tops in the chemistry research, instrument and prep areas is a gray laminate which will definitely show signs of wear very quickly.
4. The teaching labs had high center shelves that also had metal partitions covering the area below which greatly limited the view of students working in the lab. The faculty had specifically asked that the labs NOT have these, but they were installed. Some of the metal has been removed, but there was some that could not be removed due to utility connections. This project had a laboratory designer as a consultant, but my dealing with the person assigned showed that he had little knowledge or sympathy for the problems of teaching labs. It appeared that most of his work had been with research labs.
5. Other problems with the labs were with areas that were too dark since the lighting system was run perpendicular to the benches. The labs also had round knobs on the gas jets, which look nice, but make it impossible to tell if the valve is shut off without touching it. With the traditional lever handled valves the instructor can instantly see is all of the gas jets are shut off. In the general chemistry labs there is only about three feet of bench space per student which is too small. These labs are so small because there are open sections between the floors. The sinks are also stainless steel rather than epoxy which will increase the noise level and which will become unsightly.