Description
Research institutes of largely varying size, layout, and purpose are places dedicated to the quest for cognition. As such, they are no invention of our times but have always been forward-looking institutions accompanying and dependent on the further development of the disciplines and of knowledge. New issues lead to new architectural solutions for the individual laboratory as well as for complex institute buildings.
The schools of the ancient world, for example the Museion at Alexandria, the Atheneum at Athens, the Medrese in Cordoba, Toledo, Syracuse, Baghdad, Damascus, or Samarkand – even though teaching medicine, mathematics, and astronomy – did not comprise laboratories. At the beginning of occidental history, the preparation of remedies was carried out in a manual non-scientific way on the basis of tradition and empirical experience.
In the Occident, reading The Book of Nature meant looking at Creation and was an act of worship; again, research of natural correlations was a secondary issue here. In the 10th and 11th century, when the first European universities in Bologna, Paris, and Oxford had not yet been established, students from Andalusia, France, and even England came to study at Fez’s Kairouine University together with students from Tunisia, Tripoli, and Egypt. The centrally located university equally served as caravanserai, library, and mosque. Despite natural scientific activities and growing observation of and regard for nature, this university did not encompass laboratories.
At the turn of the 13th century so-called ”universitates magistrorum et scholarum” were established in Italy, France, and England in cities with a venerable scholar tradition like Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. The replacement of the traditional knowledge of scholasticism with rational thinking (ratio) significantly enhanced intellectual life and encouraged the formation of new intellectual topics and methods. Now, experiments became a crucial aid for those striving for cognition and enlightenment in the field of natural sciences. This gave a substantial impulse to the historical development of research buildings.
The beginnings of the laboratory building are closely connected to the emergence of pharmacies from the 13th century onwards. As a result of the Constitutions of Melfi and the first basic medical regulations the professions of doctor and pharmacist were separated. Pharmacy-like establishments came into being. However, at the end of the Middle Ages above all kitchens of alchemists and furnaces of steelworks attained importance. These facilities contained early types of tools such as retorts and mortars, which were essential for the work in chemical laboratories, and are still used today in a more sophisticated form. Chemical stoves with exhaust hoods became precursors of today’s fume cupboards. They became a trademark of ”distillation places” as pictured by scientist and doctor Georg Bauer, also known as Agricola (1494–1555), or as used by natural philosopher, doctor, and chemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) in Basle. It was mainly Paracelsus who fought against the scholastic tradition of the times and rated knowledge derived from scientific experiment higher than traditional knowledge from books.
It was only in the 17th century that the separation of manual craft and science began to materialise. In the field of physics, mechanics formed a central part of practical life at that time. However, neither Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) nor Isaac Newton (1642–1727) required a special laboratory for their theoretical work which was carried out in study rooms. In the field of medicine, on the contrary, the beginnings of scientific pharmaceutics called for a change of programme: the ”offizin” for sales and dispensing, an additional storage room for materials and herbs, the laboratory, and a cool storage for medications in the basement became one functional unit.
By the end of the 17th century, mining research, for instance in the field of silver mining, looked closer into mineralogical and chemical phenomena related to increasingly injurious effects during the melting process. In mining, the workshops of early experimentalists and clerks started to resemble simple laboratories. The ”Royal Swedish Laboratory” established in 1686 is an example for a chemical laboratory in the proper sense; it was used for the examination of ores, minerals, and chemical products. In the 18th century it was also Sweden which became the centre of mineral and metal analysis. The scientific impulses of this research discipline triggered Sweden’s significant and highly developed ore mining and processing industry.
If one looks at images of ”witches’ kitchens” and early laboratories it is striking that these were also places for intellectual exchange of ideas and scientific discussion. The schemes and realised visions extend from notions of ascetic solitariness in monasteries (separation) to the development of ideas in a social academic environment and inspiring atmosphere (communication) following the model of classical antiquity. Libavius (1540–1616) even incorporated arcades, baths, and taverns into his laboratory schemes. Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s utopian design for an ideal university complex including all kinds of facilities, housing etc. within its walls, drafted at the height of European enlightenment in 1750, takes this idea to the extreme.
A sound foundation for scientific knowledge soon became a public priority. While powerful kings like Augustus the Strong, who in 1701 funded Johann Friedrich Böttger’s laboratory in Dresden in his pursuit to transform metals into gold, displayed a strong ”private” interest. The public interest in scientific research also grew and expressed the need to make knowledge commonly accessible and usable. Thus, demands on sciences increased. The steam engine soon became the heart of production in England and then France. The required raw materials were no longer precious metals, but iron, coal, and steel; hence, every aspect of theoretical and practical research focussed on these materials. No longer did merely large quantities of chemical substances count, but also their purity. New analytical methods, particularly wet chemical research procedures, were required. In 1774, Karl Wilhelm Scheele and – simultaneously yet independently – Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen. By doing so, they contributed substantially to the explanation of combustion processes and gas analysis. Lavoisier for the first time made a distinction between the actual chemical elements – he classified them into metals and non-metals – and chemical compounds. Between 1760 and 1830, chemistry as well as electrical and mechanical engineering entered the work and production processes. Thus, requirements of chemistry became a decisive factor for the equipment of modern laboratories for research and applied sciences.
Over the last 200 years, a broad range of research disciplines creating new knowledge has evolved. In the 19th century, government and industry erected research institutes that often supplemented each other. The chemical-analytical laboratory of Justus von Liebig at Gießen University, which he started to equip in 1824, became a model for almost all German universities and colleges. At that time, famous scientists all over Europe maintained more or less personal contact – just like the worldwide elite today. Hence the laboratories that were built were almost identical.
After 1870, laboratories and research institutes of the industry could be found at paint and chemical producers BASF, Hoechst, Bayer, and Agfa, and at large companies, for example Krupp (from 1863 on) and Siemens (after 1905). In 1928, AEG began building one of the most modern industrial research institutes, but also Schering, Zeiss, Schott, and many other firms recognised the necessity of research for their entrepreneurial future. Over time, the new institutes for chemistry, pharmacy, astronomy, physics, etc. developed specific requirements in terms of natural lighting and vibration control. They started to be a nuisance for others and it became impossible to share facilities with the humanities. This marked the beginning of specialised laboratory planning which focussed on the optimisation of lighting and ventilation of working spaces. From now on, ventilation and natural lighting became major factors for the usability of experimental spaces: air ducts supplying cool air from the basement, thrust ventilation, filters, heat coils to pre-heat air, moisturisers (moisture towels), and, a little later, exhaust pipes, were incorporated.
The single and double-loaded layouts of the beginning were soon followed by more complex solutions such as arrangements with two double-loaded corridors enclosing a central dark zone. Here, special rooms such as weigh rooms, equipment rooms, incubators, cool storage, and rooms with constant temperature were located. Building sections reveal horizontal and vertical installation ducts. The differentiation of building’s spaces evolved in accordance with the principle of zoning of areas and disentanglement of mechanical services – encompassing office and study zones with natural daylight and ordinary building service systems, day-lit zones with individual or central shafts containing complex laboratory service systems, and central dark, highly equipped service zones for special purposes.
In the mid-sixties, apart from research standards and types of research, the coordination of structural and interior dimensions and the proliferation of rationalised grids and modules to shorten planning and construction periods became major factors of the progressing standardisation. Often, the entire design of large and highly complex volumes was determined by these industrial standards. The modular vertical and horizontal structure of a building manifested itself down to laboratory desks which for the first time became truly prefabricated flexible elements.
Yet only a few years later diversified, individual, sometimes organically shaped buildings emerged that were based on the idea of communication. They provided places for social interaction and identification of the users with their built environment. Once again, it had to have a human scale. The typical architectural feature for social interaction and scientific debate was the central atrium. The many variations of this building type became flagships of a new communicative architecture that was to encourage the generation of new ideas as a result of face-to-face contacts.
Today, education and lifelong qualification have become a priority. The innovative potential of the teamwork-based, pluralist, and ever more global research and science sector needs to be backed up by suitable measures – among them the architectural design – that foster flexibility and competition.
Apart from life sciences in the broadest sense, new important inter- and transdisciplinary research fields emerged: nanotechnology, merging electronic and biological systems, new hard- and software systems and their multimedia applications, and the development of new sustainable products and methods. In view of global demographic developments, the humanities have also gained importance for the evaluation and understanding of human cultural heritage and the bridging of the gap between natural sciences and man. Last but not least, the use of computers is now no longer limited to IT but has also spread to the humanities, who have begun conducting computer-supported experiments in laboratories.
1Based on the research of Bonsal, according to H. Eggert, C. Junk et al.
2According to L. Boehm and R. A. Müller, the university of the Middle Ages arose out of the formation of professional associations of teachers and scholars motivated by social and scientific commitment.
3The Constitutions of Melfi, initiated 1231 in Capua, put a stop to the power of territorial lords and the games of quack doctors and charlatans.
H. Eggert, C. Junk, C. Körner, E. Schmidt, Gebäude für Erziehung, Wissenschaft und Kunst; Handbuch der Architektur, vol. IV, part 6, issue 2.a., 1905
Laetitia Boehm, Rainer A. Müller, Hermes Handlexikon – Universitäten und Hochschulen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, Düsseldorf 1983
Eberhard Horst, Friedrich der Staufer, Düsseldorf 1976
Hardo Braun, Die Entwicklung des Institutsbaus, doctoral thesis 1987
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V., ”Bauten der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft”, series, edited by the General Administration in Munich
Hardo Braun, Dieter Grömling, Carl-Egon Heintz, Alfred Schmucker, Building for Science, Basel, Berlin, Boston 1999
Originally published in: Hardo Braun, Dieter Grömling, Research and Technology Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2005.