“Let’s meet in the Chill Center” is a frequent request we hear from one of our Cambridge-based R&D clients. The “Chill Center” is a 1,500sf somewhat nondescript, cafeteria area set in the middle of an open office environment near a lab zone. Furnished only with school cafeteria style tables, a kitchenette and a bank of vending machines (all items sold for 25 cents), the Chill Center is constantly buzzing with activity as scientists and engineers work out issues of R&D, often with unsolicited commentary from adjacent work cubicles. In our experience, it is one of the mostly highly collaborative and productive work environments out there.
The idea of the Chill Center is quite different than the recreational areas often associated with start-ups and dot-com companies. Gone are the basketball courts and foosball tables, replaced with simple, flexible furnishings, free coffee and inexpensive food. Because the majority of the conversation in this area is work related, there is no stigma to being seen away from one’s workstation. In fact, participation in this zone is a sign of productivity. With the constant conversations, the Chill Center acts as a white noise machine allowing the adjacent office spaces to have a more relaxed and informal ambiance.
More and more of our clients are requesting space for all-hands meetings and all-office lunch rooms. Usually sized for 50 to 100 people, at 20 to 25sf/person, these spaces represent approximately 8 to 10 % of the overall space requirement and can cost more than a million dollars in rent over a lease term. Our clients must be seeing a significant benefit to having these kinds of spaces in their space plan.
“With cafés in a laboratory building, It is important to be clear that the café is not an amenity, but rather a critical part of scientific infrastructure,” says Professor Charles Marcus, the leader of the client committee for Harvard University’s Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering (LISE) building. This view is shared by many of the world’s leading research institutions, including the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics located in Waterloo Canada. In this remarkable new building, clusters of offices surround small living rooms outfitted with wood-burning fireplaces, supplemented by larger gathering areas, cafés and restaurants. From the perspective of the scientist, there is no difference between the private office and the social area in terms of thinking space.
Biotech incubator spaces such as the Cambridge Innovation Center and 215 First Street have also embraced the idea of socializing science. While the individual offices in these facilities are quite small, the informal gathering areas, coffee bars and beer taps are proportionally large in comparison.
It may be that the best precedent for designing social research space lies not inside the university and the workplace, but in the public world of restaurants, coffee bars and the first class lounges at international airports. Such places are generally filled with people hard at work or deep in conversation. These are places that encourage creative thinking and collaboration. If you really need to be productive, relax, chill out. It’s okay. It’s what the leading thinkers in the world are doing.
Mark Reed, AIA LEED AP is a principal at Lab / Life. Science. Architecture, Inc., a Boston based laboratory design firm.