How Will Laboratory Design Change after COVID-19?

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.

White nursing uniforms and white coats worn by doctors and lab workers first came into use in tuberculosis sanatoriums and hospitals responding to the 1918–1919 Spanish Flu pandemic.

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.

Formaspace builds laboratory casework cabinetry in addition to the modular lab furniture we are best known for. Shown above is a custom casework installation we built for a healthcare facility that features chemical-resistant epoxy resin countertops.

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?

Although Coronavirus can spread by contacting virus-laden surfaces (e.g. fomite transfer), the primary means of disease acquisition appears to be via the respiratory system: coughing, sneezing, singing, and even loud talking can hasten the spread of the virus from one person to another. Worryingly, new research also shows that flushing an open toilet can also create a cloud of potentially infectious aerosol droplets.

3D Simulation Illustrates How Microscopic Aerosol Droplets (Potentially Carrying The Coronavirus) Float In The Air As People In Close Proximity Sneeze, Cough, Or Converse With One Another.

Given enough time, the droplets containing virus particles will dissipate, either dropping to the floor or getting swept up into the ventilation system. Any virus particles landing on a working surface can be cleaned with sanitizing agents (with quaternary agents being especially effective) or they will simple “die” on their own in a matter of hours or a few days.

Why do we mention these details? The reason is that in the laboratory context, once a risk is understood, it’s a straightforward process to plan and carry out measures to limit the risk due to dangerous conditions (e.g. keep lab workers safe), or to prevent cross-contamination (e.g keep experiments accurate and reproducible), etc. etc.

This kind of risk mitigation happens every day in laboratories around the world. After all, bio-safety labs deal with much more dangerous pathogens; chemists handle noxious materials with potentially fatal fumes, and blood labs implement procedures to protect workers from exposure to hepatitis and HIV viruses.

Working with Coronavirus is no different. Once the “rules of the road” are established, labs can make the necessary changes to reduce the risk of the virus transferring from person to person.

So how will these changes take place?

We take a look at eight different components to consider when preparing your lab to deal with the risk of the Covid-19 virus, from layout changes to behavioral changes, to new safety and work scheduling procedures.

1. Revise Physical Layouts To Control The Spread Of Coronavirus In The Laboratory

New safe operating guidelines from the CDC and OSHA recommend specific changes to the interior design layouts of businesses (including laboratories).

These include new practices for implementing social distancing in the workplace, such as spacing workers 6 feet or further apart, or providing transparent divider shields when that’s not possible.

(Laboratory managers will also want to take note of special CDC recommendations for laboratories handling Covid-19 specimens, such as testing labs.)

For years, Formaspace has been spreading the gospel of modular furniture design for laboratories. Why? When you need change, modular designs are very easy to reconfigure. And, given the reality of the current pandemic, that time has unfortunately come.

Mobile, modular workbench designs give laboratory managers maximum flexibility. It’s not only easy to roll these workbenches into position, but each workbench can also be customized at the time of order, or years later by ordering Formaspace accessories, such as hanging storage units. Formaspace built these benches for a division of Roche that performs DNA testing to identify potential congenital disabilities.

In response to the pandemic, we’ve created new product features for our lines of modular lab workbenches — such as transparent shields — which can also be easily retrofitted to any existing installation in the field. (Speak to your Formaspace Design Consultant for specific recommendations.)

Transparent shields can be added to Formaspace workbenches (either at the time of order or they can be retrofitted to existing units as needed) to provide protection for lab workers. Speak to your Formaspace Design Consultant about our line of Protective Workbench Screens for details.

If you have different types of laboratory furniture installation, such as custom casework furniture or furniture lines from a different manufacturer, we also offer a series of retrofit products that can provide additional protection for your lab workers.

The Formaspace Protective Health Shield is a drop-in product that works with Formaspace and other brands of workbenches. The high walls made of durable HDPE create a physical barrier between workers.

The Formaspace Counter Sneeze Guard is an ideal solution to provide protection between workers in close proximity, or employees who interact with the public, such as bank tellers or cashiers. The document slot at the bottom can be customized when you place your order. Speak with your Formaspace Design Consultant about other ways we can customize this product concept to meet your specific needs.

Facility managers are also making other changes to physical layouts; for example, where there is space, many are installing airport-style doorless restroom entrance and exits as well as electronic faucets, to increase ventilation and eliminate the need to touch door handles or faucets.

Formaspace builds custom furniture for cleanroom applications as well, such as this gowning bench used by lab workers to change from street clothes before entering the sterile cleanroom area.

While certain categories of laboratories, such as cleanrooms or bio-safety labs, already have gowning rooms, facility managers are looking at adding dedicated areas for lab workers to put on or take off their PPE (e.g. donning and doffing areas).

2. Create More Personal Space For Each Individual Worker

Ten years from now, we may look back at this period and say this was the beginning of the end of “open plan” laboratory designs.

Open plan lab designs have become popular for a reason, actually, several reasons. They encourage “Team Science”-based collaboration, make better use of limited resources (by allowing more efficient sharing of increasingly expensive test equipment, for example), and can help labs operating in high-cost bio-tech clusters (such as Boston, for example) constrain their expenditures on expensive real estate by fitting more personnel into the same square footage.

But the Coronavirus pandemic makes many of these arguments seem uncomfortable, or out of date.

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