Flexibility a key issue in planning for change in laboratory design

Abstract EN

The central idea of the article centers on the inclusion of a potential for change and uncertainty and subsequently to incorporate unpredictability and diversity as intrinsic parameters in the process of laboratory design.

It has been argued that the diagnosis of the main instigators of change was an essential key in ‘predicting, not the changes which will affect the life of a given building, but the like hood, rate and degree of changes’.

Accordingly, four major causes were identified.

These include : i) growth of student numbers, ii) change in technology, iii) change in the curricula and iv) change in the activity size.