The title may sound a little abstract and philosophical, but I mean it in the literal sense. How does the layout of buildings, labs, offices, benches, meeting rooms affect how science is done by the people occupying those spaces?

This was a topic that came up yesterday at our pub night in Cambridge. There’s been such a buzz about collaborative research lately and the need to build buildings in ways that encourage more interaction. But some people pointed out yesterday, experiments in science architecture can go awry.

Some are built to be so open that people never feel like they have any privacy and they can’t get any peace and quiet to, you know, get work done.

Some are built in such a siloed way that people from one lab never see those from the lab next door.

And others are somehow able to get the balance just right.

Examples mentioned last night of new buildings that try to achieve these aims are Stanford’s Clark Center, HHMI’s Janelia Farm, the Broad Institute here in Cambridge, the environmentally friendly Genzyme building near MIT. (I won’t say which ones were criticized and which were praised!)

What are some other research buildings that are not your typical rooms-coming-off-long-hallways? And do they work in getting people to interact more? How?