teaching aids Some Trends in Planning Chemical laboratories by M. G. Mellon Chemical lahoratories serve many purposes. In general, the desians have incorporated facilities for work in industry, gov&nmental units, research institutes, and academic institutions. The primary purpose of this article is to summarize what the author considers some trends in planning lahoratories for colleges and universities. Assuming that facilities are included for teaching and research, for both undergraduate and graduate students, most modern lahoratories are superficially much alike. The usual areas are teaching and research laboratories, class, seminar, and lecture rooms, offices, store and dispensing rooms, shops of several kinds, and space for utilities. Although architects liave faced the same general problem in designing structures for these facilities, i t is interesting how different the solutions have been during the past few decades. Anyone familiar with the changes in experimental chemistry during recent years knows the difficulty of planning ahead for unforeseen and unpredictable requirements. Who, for example, could have planned a huilding in 1930 to accept easily in 1970 a modern laboratory for high level radiochemical work? Because of such uncertainty, President W. A. Jessup of the State University of Iowa stated, in 1921, that it is foolish to build an experimental lahoratory designed to last more than a quarter of a century. No one seems to have taken his advice seriously. Modern structures, with steel and reinforced concrete columns, supporting heavy concrete floors will not be abandoned in two or three decades. The trend, although slow, has been rather to try . to -plan the huilding, together with its service features, to be as adaptable and-flexible as possible. without too much change and expense. TO accomplish this planning effectively two persons are most responsible. First is the departmental planner, who must tell the architect what is wanted. Few architects know much from prior experience about the specific features of chemical lahoratories, and even less about what a given department needs. The planner's problem is essentially the interior arrangements, i.e., what is needed, and where and how, within structural limitations, this can he done. Before an architect can settle on the structural details outlined below he must have general information from the planner on a t least the following items: kind, number, and sizes of lahoratories; number and sizes of lecture, class, and seminar rooms; receiving, storing, and dispensing rooms for chemicals and apparatus; number and sizes of offices; shops and other service rooms; elevators; and the libraly. The functional interrelationships of these areas are important. Other required information involves various details on heating, ventilating, air conditioning, plumbing and electricity. The architect's problem is structural, mechanical, electrical, and artistic. He tries to design a building which will provide what the chemists need. Also he is concerned with economy, efficiency, and conformity of the building
with its environment. As architect and planner work together, many compromises are inevitable. In considering the general problem of planning, the discussion is divided between structural and non-structural items. Included are features involved to accommodate changes in the nature of experimental work and/or to provide for more and more sophisticated instrumentation. In the drawings some dimensions were taken directly from working drawings; others had to he estimated from small scale reproductions. Structural Features Some of the more important structural features found in modern lahoratories are discussed briefly. Shape of Buildings
With few exceptions, the shape is rectangular, and generally oblong. Some are very long and narrow, and an occasional one is nearly square. The variations in ratio of width to length are usually attributable to the site available and/or to the different kinds of rooms and service areas required inside the structure. A strong argument for rectangular structures is the ease of fitting standard laboratory furniture in the rooms. Nearly all such equipment, such as desks, tables, hoods, and related items, are rectangular. Of course, if necessary, more expensive tailor-made pieces can he designed for non-rectangular areas. Several rectangular units may be joined together to form a workable complex. Thus, at Florida State University three nearly square laboratories (55 ft X 60 f t ) are interconnected by offices and various services areas to form a 3-leaf clover arrangement. On the ground floor the stem of the "clover" is the entrance. Short corridors lead directly to elevators and laboratories. Because of constricted building sites, all corners of a building may not he 90". Thus, the shape of the templelike Mellon Institute building is a symmetrical trapezium, surrounded by 62 monolithic columns. Two examples of something different may be cited. One is the recent (Fig. 1, ah) science huilding a t Calvin College, in which the general floor plan is a symmetrical hexagon. Lines from the six corners to the central service shaft yield six pieces of "pie" in the form of isosceles triangles. There result many 60" and 120" angles in the rooms. The laboratories a t the Interlochen Arts Academy (Michigan) are one-eighth segments of an octagonal building. The second example is the huilding complex of the National Environmental Research Center a t Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The overall arrangement is a symmetrical decagon. There are six segments, 48 f t X 134 ft, connected to each other by five 36" triangular nodes. In place of the four missing segments of the decagon, but connected to the others, are a number of general service rectangular units, such as lecture and classrooms, cafeteria, and green houses. Volume 52. Number 5, May 1975 / 345
the floor. On all floors the hoods are arcs of circles, made to have the backs fit the circular service shaft. Setback Designs. Few architects have adopted the setback design common in many tall office buildings. Such a plan makes it possible to have deep (from the corridor) laboratories in the wide, lower areas of the building and shallow laboratories in the narrower, upper areas. Two examples, illustrating this general idea are the new buildings at the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin. Figure 2 shows a partial plan of two floors a t Virginia. The upper portion represents teaching laboratories and the lower portion research labTHIRD FLOOR PLAN oratories and offices. The b lower two floors of the ChemFigure 1. a, First floor: b, third floor. The general floor plan of Calvin College science Building. Knollcrest istry Building are larger than Campus represents a trend towards interdisciplinary facilities. An economical arrangement of utility lines is the top two floors simply to accomplished through the hexagonal design. All utilities rise up the central core of the building which also accommodate the faculty ofhouses the elevator shaft. (interior walls are nonsupporting). The beams spanning the space from the central fices on the perimeter of the core to the outside corridors provide a large Plenum for utilities and ventilating ducts. Locating the chemistry department an the top floor also reduces the length of exhaust vents. All major classrooms are on one side of first and second floors. In the building reducing overall corridor size. The first level is occupied by physics, engineering and mathematics this sense, it is not a true setand the second level by biology. Receiving and shapsare located in the basement. back since all the laboratories on all the floors are essentially the same dimensions. The service core runs lengthwise in the center of the building, with laboratories 40-ft deep about this core on all floors. The teaching laboratories, 38-68 ft wide, are on the two upper floors, with the surrounding corridor on these floors heing along the exterior windows. The research lahoratories, on the two lower floors, are each 20 ft wide. Across the corridor are the staff offices. Then, for the total width of the building, the research floors are wider than the teaching floors by twice the length of these offices. In nearlv all cases the hoods are located with their hacks to the service core.
Figure 2. Partial floor plan at the University of Virginia. Teaching and research laboratories surround service core.
Each long segment has a 7-ft center corridor. The small rooms on each side are 11 ft x 20-ft units, subdivided and combined in many ways on the different floors. The nodes contain, in addition to entrances to the segments, various service features, such as stairs, elevators, toilets, vending and lounge areas, and rooms for storage and mechanical and electrical installations. The third example reminds one of the round barns built early in this century. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous 14-story research tower of the Johnson Wax Company is 40-ft square, with a round central utility shaft. Alternate floors conform to this dimension, with the laboratory desks and tables arranged around the perimeter. The other alternate floors are circular, heing tangent to the outside walls. Then the desks and tables on these floors are all arcs of circles made to fit the outside rim of 346 1 Journal of Chemical Education
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Figure 3. University of Utah. Top: Offices and Research Laboratories. Bottom: Undergraduate Laboratories.
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Figure 4. Plan of third floor of research tower. University,of Wisconsin. Brokenline projections show the location, in the basement, first, and second floors of (1) large teaching laboratories, and (2) lobby, library, and lecture rooms.
The same general result is accomplished at the University of Utah by changing the location of the corridor. On the upper teaching floors it is on the outside next to the windows. On the three lower research floors it is moved in by the depth of the offices. This makes the research rooms shallower than teaching rooms by the depth of the offices as seen in Figure 3. The exterior wall is a vertical design, of course. The Wisconsin design does not seem quite as clear cut, although the deep teaching laboratories are a t the bottom and the shallower research laboratories in the upper stories or research tower. Figure 4 gives an idea of the general arrangement. First to note is the solid line portion of the plan. It is for the third floor of the huilding, which is the first floor of the research tower. Each of the succeeding five research floors is somewhat differently suhdivided. Next to note is the inside corridor surrounding a central area which contains exhaust ducts and various service features on different floors. These research floors resemble the upper floors of Latimer Hall a t the University of California (Berkeley) (see Fig. 5). The wider portion of the building comprises a basement and two floors. The exterior columns of the tower extend down through these floors. Included in the wide portion are the teaching lahoratories, lecture and classrooms, general storage and dispensing rooms, cubicles for teaching assistants, and other areas related to undergraduate activities. It will be interesting to see whether other architects try setback designs. The general possihilitites in this direction seem to merit further consideration. Court Designs. Two-well known examples of open court design are a t the State University of Iowa and a t the Technological Institute of Northwestern University (Fig.
Figure 5. The sixth floor of Latimer Hall, University of California, Berkelev. Sixteen shafts on the north and south sides of the buildina - carrv. all tne uerl cil runs of ul t es nclddlng exha-st an0 SJOPY d ~ c l sThe narrow areas oelween tne snaftr are oalcones unch on tne 71" and 8tn floors serve as emergency exits from one laboratory to the adjoining one.
6). The overall plan consists essentially of two block E's arranged back to back, with certain general areas between. These include lecture and classrooms, library, store rooms, and related areas. As originally planned, usually each arm of the E was intended for some area of science or engineering, or some division of chemistry. The chemistry huilding at the Argonne National Lahoratory is a striking variation of the open court idea. The hack portion of the Frick Lahoratory at Princeton University is a kind of open court design. Three large teaching laboratories on each floor constitute three arms of a Greek cross. A store room occupies the crossing area of the ~ arms. The fourth arm~of the~cross includes a lecture ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ J preparation room (at the hack of the store room) and the large lecture room. Designs incorporating closed courts have never been popular. The W. A. Noyes Lahoratory at the University of Illinois, still in use, is an early example. Another (1937) example is the elegant Mellon Institute huilding. The Baker Lahoratory at Cornell University (1924) and the Wetherill Lahoratory a t Purdue University (1955) represent variations of this arrangement. The location of the lecture rooms, particularly at Purdue (Fig. 7) has considerable merit, hecause of their accessibility. A recent interesting example is the laboratory of the North American Aviation Company. In this one-story building each court resembles a Roman atrium on which the inner offices face. Saw-tooth Roof Design. A half-century ago a few buildings were erected with the main teaching lahoratories in a one-story section having a saw-tooth roof. The nearly perpendicular part of the saw-tooth contained the windows. This factory-type area was likely to he sur-
Figure 6. Alternate Laboratories and Open Courts at the Technological institute of Northwestern University. Evanston, 1 1 1 . 60201
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