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In his PhD dissertation at the North Carolina State University School of Design, Umut Toker has shown that the level of innovation in a research center is heavily influenced by physical factors such as sight lines. The easier it is for people to see each other as they move around the building, the more chance encounters they will have. The more often they encounter one another, the more often they will engage in impromptu technical discussions. And the more often they communicate, the faster they will come up with new ideas. This short video clip illustrates an analytical tool that Toker developed to highlight how a researcher's sight lines change as he or she moves around in a proposed research center.
Credit: Umut Toker |
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Credit: Umut Toker |
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Arlington, VA—Anyone who hopes to create a vigorous and productive research environment should pay close attention to its physical layout, says Umut Toker—right down to the placement of the coffee pot, the refrigerator, the microwave, the group printer, the whiteboards, and all the other items that draw people together.
Clustering such attractions in the open common areas helps to increase the number of chance encounters, explains Toker, who studied the interplay of physical space and innovation at six university research centers for his recent Ph.D. dissertation in architecture at the North Carolina State University College of Design. More encounters mean more impromptu conversations about technical issues. And more conversations, in turn, mean a higher rate of innovation, whether measured by quantitative factors such as the number of published papers per unit time, or by subjective assessments such as "How innovative is the research done here?"
Another potent conversation-enhancer is increased visibility, especially in the hallways and lounges says Toker, whose work was one of several social science-based "innovation process" projects supported by the NSF Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes, a multi-university initiative led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Spaces with clear sight lines lead to more eye contact," he says, "which means that questions pop up, and people start discussing things."
Of course, Toker adds, experienced researchers tend to know at least some of this already, if only by instinct. But researchers don't usually design their own buildings. That's why they not uncommonly find themselves working in an environment where their offices are, say, two floors away from their laboratories—a layout that Toker has found to be far less effective for innovation than having the labs and offices intermingled. "There is no single formula for all centers," he says. But even so, if designers can plan new research centers with a good understanding of how its spatial layout affects the person-to-person flow of information, they can do a lot to help that center meet its goals.
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