The promise of convergence design: How to simultaneously support scientific and social goals in campus research and learning facilities
Science and research facility design once focused primarily on matters of functionality and logistics, such as accommodating lab equipment, ensuring safety and maintaining building systems. As the academic community has broadened its understanding of what constitutes a healthy, prolific learning environment, it now expects these buildings to also deliver comfortable, flexible and attractive spaces that foster collaboration and innovation.
These benefits should be universal. Today’s campus planners, architects and other decision-makers strive to create spaces that are inclusive for people of diverse backgrounds, scientific disciplines and ways of thinking. The stately, rigid and utilitarian structures of the past no longer do.
“Science is about learning, understanding, and addressing important questions of our time,” says Jill Sible, Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech. “I see no dichotomy in the way that science engages with the social goals of diversity and inclusion. We’ve adopted a stance of inclusive excellence, where one doesn’t come at the expense of the other; instead, they build upon one another. The design field is moving in parallel and may even be a few steps ahead.”
Inclusive Visioning
To satisfy both scientific and social needs, college leaders and their design teams must develop a strong, comprehensive vision backed by a deep understanding of who the users are and why they’re using the space. The visioning process itself should be inclusive, collaborative and welcoming. “Who is missing from this table?” is the first question to ask and resolve.
Sible adds, “It’s particularly important in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) buildings for the visioning committee to include a healthy combination of faculty, administrative leadership and facility management. There should be a lot of listening and thoughtful prompting of ideas. The students are the ultimate stakeholders, so we need their input early in the process before most decisions are made.”
Two major factors drive this need for more upfront deliberation in STEM building design – the distinctive requirements of various scientific disciplines and the growing populations of historically underrepresented groups.
Distinctive Disciplines
Each scientific discipline defines a successful sense of place differently. Some require an active, ongoing exchange of ideas among many people, while others need quiet spaces for intense research and contemplation by individuals or small groups. Many prefer a mix of the two.
The authentic desire to modernize and socialize the experience for STEM facility users cannot ignore the unique needs of each discipline, says Amy Coburn, AIA, formerly University Architect and Director of Planning for the University of New Mexico, and currently Associate Principal and Academic Director at full-service design and A/E firm Page. “We can create the most open, modified workspace for students to get together, but if they get more value from holding information independently or within pods rather than by collaborating, those spaces will not be highly functional. Uniformity in spacemaking doesn’t serve the students or the purposes of a science building.”
The urge to encourage personal interaction in a science setting needs to be tempered and informed by a thorough exploration of the processes and preferences of the user. University of Cambridge (UK) Professor Raymond E. Goldstein, FRS, says, “In some interdisciplinary labs, a big premium is being placed on getting people working together. The top-down thinking is to create an environment that facilitates hypercreativity, but this can lose sight of the end goal. It becomes ‘We should collaborate,’ rather than, ‘We should solve problems.’ I’ve seen two open-office plans for science labs, and the users dislike them because of the noise and constant interruptions. If there’s too much noise, a pure mathematician is going to run away.”
This does not suggest abandoning efforts to increase social interaction and cooperation, but rather being more purposeful in how these intentions are applied. “Fundamentally, research institutions, whether on the math side or in life sciences, benefit from social interaction,” says Goldstein, who is the Alan Turing Professor of Complex Physical Systems in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. “The buildings that work best provide an entire hierarchy of physical spaces for people to meet.”
Goldstein points to the Centre for Applied Mathematics on Cambridge’s campus as an example of design that satisfies a range of needs. “There’s a really interesting hierarchy of quiet places and bigger spaces shared by everyone,” he says. “We have eight pavilions that abut a huge common area, and the acoustics are so well done that 200 people in groups of 2 or 4 can talk among themselves without disturbing others.”
This contrasts with “noisy, vacuous environments” that try and fail to prescribe where people meet and work together, adds Goldstein.
In addition to upfront user research, designers can help meet the current and future needs of distinct disciplines by offering the maximum amount of flexibility. “You can design a space with a certain type of user in mind, but the nature of a scientific enterprise often changes. It’s hard to predict the future, so flexibility is important,” Goldstein says.
Diverse Backgrounds
A more daunting challenge for campus planners and designers is providing inclusive, welcoming spaces for STEM’s historically underrepresented populations. This includes women, minorities and first-generation students.
Shifting demographics and each school’s unique composition of underrepresented populations add to the complexity. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that two-thirds of STEM degrees conferred by U.S. postsecondary institutions in 2021-22 went to women or non-white minority students.
Virginia Tech’s efforts to accommodate diverse populations are burdened somewhat by its history. Several campus structures honor Confederate leaders and slaveholders, though a renaming campaign for many of these buildings is ongoing and partially complete.
“We think about representation a lot at Virginia Tech, whether it’s racial, ethnic, gender or someone who is first in their family to attend college,” says Sible. “They look around and ask, ‘Are there people who look like me in this field, and are they being celebrated?’ Design has a significant ability to help. Something as simple as wayfinding can make a big difference. Design features such as welcoming spaces with natural light and a sense of quiet, and areas where healthy food is available and off-campus residents can charge their devices matter as well.”
Cambridge’s challenge is also weighted by history. Founded in 1208, the university’s centuries-old buildings set a potentially unsettling scene for students from poorer regions and countries. “When an applicant from an industrial city in the North who has never seen Victorian-era architecture comes for an interview, they go to these ornate, grand buildings that can be very intimidating,” says Goldstein. “They may feel like they don’t belong. That they can’t see themselves here.”
This is one reason that designers should stress a warm, welcoming environment in new buildings and renovations, he says. “To the extent that physical environment can control one’s comfort level, human scale matters. Having a hierarchy of ceiling heights, for example. Creating a cozy area that can look out to a larger area offers a sense of protection.”
The University of New Mexico is located in a “majority-minority” state, and less than one-third of the student population is white. Nearly 45% of its undergraduates are Hispanic or Latino, and it has one of the highest percentages (approximately 5%) of Indigenous people (American Indian, Native Alaskan, Native Hawaiian) among U.S. universities.
“The Indigenous student population travels long distances, on a daily basis, to the university from Pueblos or other native land seeking the deep resources of an R-1 campus environment,” says Coburn. R-1 institutions have at least $50 million in research expenditures and grant at least 70 research doctorates annually.
“Indigenous students articulate a preference for university spaces that allow them to incorporate the fuller aspects of their culture and their life,” says Coburn. “While it is subtly articulated, our students and faculty emphasize the continuity between the academic experience and life’s mission. Indigenous students, as well as Chicana and Chicano students, seek out or even informally create spaces you wouldn’t typically find in a higher education facility, such as for cooking, storytelling and dancing. We have been asked to support traditional academic programs with significant multiuse spaces to respond to the preference for experiences to be shared with extended family and community members.”
Convergence Design
How can planners, architects and other design team members address these varying, sometimes contradictory challenges?
The 2011 White Paper “The Third Revolution: The Convergence of the Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Engineering” offers an inspirational framework for a new kind of practice approach—one that is intentionally formulated to achieve greater inclusion and diversity in processes and outcomes. By extending this theory to the ideation and creation of physical spaces, the primary goal of “Convergence Design” is to bring constituencies together in a way that drives learning and discovery.
The paper’s authors – an interdisciplinary group of research scientists from MIT – call their proposal a “blueprint for innovation,” Convergence Design builds upon their model of merging technologies, disciplines and devices “into a unified whole that creates a host of new pathways and opportunities.”
This process does not exactly parallel how scientists work, but it recognizes and appreciates different perspectives, disparate ways of thinking, and the layering of complex and sometimes conflicting demands. For example, Convergence Design recognizes how neurodiversity leads to situations in which some individuals consider a physical setting perfectly suited to their needs, while others find it lacking. It seeks to create supportive and inclusive environments by exploring more modern and progressive design methods rather than relying on traditional patterns or approaches historically associated with meritocracy.
Convergence Design encourages input from the full range of voices and perspectives in open, frank discussions, and it emphasizes listening and learning about the clients’ goals and the potential obstacles they may expect to encounter. Creative ideas, often radically different from one another, fuel these discussions.
Initial concepts are formed into “prototypes” that can be combined with ongoing investigations, such as infrastructure reinvestment, campus-wide planning, sustainability, social justice, institutional branding and research ambitions. This is an essential part of the Convergence Design process: embracing complexity with creativity.
The next step is to explore the potential to drive discovery by enhancing visibility, breaking down boundaries, providing different types of communal meeting places and organizing spaces to offer varying experiences. The result is a vibrant physical setting that welcomes people of diverse backgrounds and ways of thinking, and where research and learning experiences are productive and meaningful.
In this way, Convergence Design departs from the traditional approach to designing science and research facilities. Rather than focusing exclusively on designing spaces for data collection and machines, it more comprehensively considers the humans in the equation – who they are, where they go and what they do with the data after it is collected.
“The Third Revolution” has profoundly impacted campus scientific communities. It highlights the societal benefits of different fields of study converging to collectively and creatively pursue scientific discovery. Convergence Design complements this important transformation with design processes and outcomes that help to make scientific endeavors more equitable, inclusive and effective.