The campus problem hiding inside a laboratory brief
Author: Aaron Poupard
The science laboratory has always presented a conundrum for campus design. Existing to serve rigorous technical functions – containment, air quality, sterilisation, biosafety, services integration. Pulling hard against everything else a university needs its buildings to do – open, inviting, inspirational, interactive. And for the most part demands in–person learning. The result, often, is a sealed box: utilitarian, highly functional opaque and invisible to the life of the campus around it. At the same time, university labs are engines of inventiveness with much of the visible, commercial innovation Australia is known generated within them.
Specialist laboratory planning is just that – a specialisation. We choose expert lab planning partners who think like we do: that our job as designers is to help drive the business of teaching, research and innovation. Our own expertise is in what happens when a lab is regarded as a campus problem rather than a building services problem.
It’s a distinction that matters now more than ever. Universities are operating in a climate where retaining enrolled students has never been more important – nearly one in five Australian undergraduates seriously considered dropping out in 2024, a figure that has barely shifted in years (and a problem no university can afford to ignore). A sense of wellbeing – feeling connected and included on campus – is not just emotionally important; it’s fundamentally tied to student success and institutional resilience.
Australian data from over a million student records links low sense of belonging directly to attrition, satisfaction, and academic failure. And we know that the spaces in between formal learning environments are consistently where that sense of belonging is either made or lost.
The same logic applies to staff. Around 60% of the Australian university workforce is precariously employed; academics on short contracts, with limited pathways and ongoing uncertainty, are increasingly opting for industry or overseas where careers are more predictable. A campus environment that doesn’t encourage social infrastructure, a reason to linger and discuss ideas, or chance collisions between disciplines isn’t helping the staff feel a stronger sense of belonging.
So why are laboratory precincts often designed as if none of this applies to them? When technical compliance consumes the brief there’s not much left for interaction and inspiration. That’s why we’re thinking about this in a completely different way.
We treat the sealed, sterile requirements of a teaching and research laboratory as the very normal project constraint, not the concept. The magic is what you do with the envelope. Glazed lab fronts that make science visible to other students who might never step inside. Thresholds designed as places to linger, not just to pass through. Shared social zones woven into the research armature, so that the HDR student, the undergraduate and the industry partner are given reasons to occupy the same building at the same time. Encouraging industry to live amongst education to cross pollinate learning with practice – something that supports learning by doing, creates real employment opportunities, and helps the university’s bottom line. All of this amounts to a precinct logic that starts to repair the horizontal and vertical movement across campus and gives students and staff a good reason to stick around.
References
2024 QILT Student Experience Survey (via Insider Guides summary https://insiderguides.com.au/key-findings-from-the-2024-qilt-student-experience-survey/)
Akkurt, E. and Akbulut, M. T. (2025) ‘Interaction of In-between spaces in University campuses with informal learning and spatial design: a scoping review’, Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, pp. 1–22. doi: 10.1080/13467581.2025.2570039.
Crawford, J. et al. (2024) ‘Sense of belonging in higher education students: an Australian longitudinal study from 2013 to 2019’, Studies in Higher Education, 49(3), pp. 395–409. doi: 10.1080/03075079.2023.2238006.