How Will Laboratory Design Change after COVID-19?

AUSTIN, Texas - Oct. 8, 2020 - PRLog -- Not sure if disease outbreaks can radically change our attitudes about the physical design of buildings and interior environments?

It can. Just ask architecture and interior design historians.

Many of the design innovations we take for granted (from non-porous linoleum flooring to seamless ceramic sinks) found in today's modern laboratories, kitchens, and bathrooms first became standard design features as a result of major disease outbreaks in the early 20th century, including tuberculosis and Spanish Flu.

These rapid changes were based on the best scientific research available at the time.

While the exact nature of viruses had yet to be determined, there was a new appreciation (and fear) of the havoc caused by bacteria, which, in turn, drove a new "clean" revolution in interior design and sanitation, created to rid interior spaces of dangerous disease-spreading germs.

Victorian-era interiors, with their preponderance of dark rooms, laden with curio collections, intricately carved wood furniture, heavy carpets, and drapery were suddenly out. They were replaced with gleaming white hard surfaces that were easy to clean and sterilize — including white subway tile on the walls, ceramic honeycomb tile or hard linoleum on the floors, porcelain plumbing fixtures (molded without exposed seams where germs could lurk), stark white painted walls and ceilings – all of which remain in use to this day.

Bright overhead electric lights made dirty surfaces easy to spot, as did the new bleached white coats and white uniforms worn by doctors, lab workers, and nurses (which replaced the black coats and dresses worn by their predecessors during the Victorian era).

This clean, modern design philosophy, which first took hold in hospitals, laboratories, and sanatoriums, began to influence the design of 1920s offices, bathrooms, and kitchens, e.g. areas that were particularly suspect when it came to disease transmission.

Indeed, many architecture and design historians point to this era of "sanitation design" as the foundation of what would later become the modernist design movement in architecture, led by the Bauhaus school and beyond.

So, if people tell you a disease outbreak won't change how we design our buildings and interiors, they're wrong. It's happened before and can happen again.

So How Will Covid-19 Affect Laboratory As Well As Other Clinical And Pharma Facility Designs?

Read more...https://formaspace.com/articles/wet-lab/lab-design-change...