Laboratory Lifestyles

The Construction of Scientific Fictions

Sandra Kaji-O'Grady, Chris L. Smith, Russell Hughes, Sean Cubitt

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9780262349758
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The past decade has seen an extraordinary laboratory-building boom. This new crop of laboratories features spectacular architecture and resort-like amenities. The buildings sprawl luxuriously on verdant campuses or sit sleekly in expensive urban neighborhoods. Designed to attract venture capital, generous philanthropy, and star scientists, these laboratories are meant to create the ideal conditions for scientific discovery. Yet there is little empirical evidence that shows if they do. Laboratory Lifestyles examines this new species of scientific laboratory from architectural, economic, social, and scientific perspectives. Generously illustrated with photographs of laboratories and scientists at work in them, the book investigates how "lifestyle science" affects actual science. Are scientists working when they stretch in a yoga class, play volleyball in the company tournament, chat in an on-site café, or show off their facilities to visiting pharmaceutical executives?

The book describes, among other things, the role of beanbag chairs in the construction of science at Xerox PARC; the Southern California vibe of the RAND Corporation (Malibu), General Atomic (La Jolla), and Hughes Research Laboratories (Malibu); and Biosphere 2's "bionauts" as both scientists and scientific subjects; and interstellar laboratories. Laboratory Lifestyles (the title is an allusion to Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's influential Laboratory Life) documents a shift in what constitutes scientific practice; these laboratories and their lifestyles are as experimental as the science they cultivate.

Contributors
Kathleen Brandt, Russell Hughes, Tim Ivison, Sandra Kaji-O'Grady, Stuart W. Leslie, Brian Lonsway, Sean O'Halloran, Simon Sadler, Chris L. Smith, Nicole Sully, Ksenia Tatarchenko, William Taylor, Julia Tcharfas, Albena Yaneva, Stelios Zavos

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Figures
• Preface
• 1 Lifestyle Science: Its Origins, Precepts, and Consequences
• 2 Beanbags and Microscopes at Xerox PARC
• 3 The Good Experiment: How Architecture Matters for Graphene Research
• 4 The Beach Boys: Classified Research with a Southern California Vibe
• 5 The Siberian Carnivalesque: Novosibirsk Science City
• 6 Scientific Dining
• 7 Naked in the Laboratory
• 8 Biosphere 2’s Experimental Life
• 9 Science Facts and Space Fictions: Making Room for the Frontiersman, Soldier, and Scientist in the Space Laboratory
• 10 The Urbane Laboratory: Applied Sciences New York
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index