PROTO* Lab, BTECH Aarhus University

• Designing a prototyping lab as a pedagogical place
• Spatial design features for flexibility and transformation in places of learning
• Collaborative research infrastructure development in an academic organisation by design practice based research

lab is part of a string of six other labs at the Department of Business Development and Technology (BTECH) campus of Aarhus University in Herning, Denmark. It is one of the newer labs in the lot, which opened in August 2021. In 2020 I was asked of my interest in designing a new lab in the old electronics room which had belonged to another department and school of Aarhus University. I agreed, as this gave me an opportunity to design and shape a space, something close to architectural design, my personal skill set’s first home. I decided to approach the project as a design practice based research, as a project on placemaking, which I could carry out within the campus building.

A special aspect of this project was the opportunity to work within the building of the main campus. Built in 1996 and considered as a Danish design heritage building, the Aarhus University campus structure in Herning was designed by the Danish architect Henning Larsen, known as the ‘master of light’. It is a well designed building and joy to work in, and here was an opportunity to re-design a small room as a lab within that building. And one can imagine the fascination of working with buildings and spaces by well known architects and designers from the previous century. With such projects the existing structure built in the yore facilitates a material and design conversation with the person and people who designed and built the building in the past. It is like an opportunity to talk with the architect from the past, a time travel of sorts as the details of the building unravel the designers and builders thinking. Such an opportunity could not be missed, I readily agreed and took up the project.

Mood boards, examples of lab spaces, articles on designing labs and makerspaces, broad tentative costs and budgets were made in the thick of Covid restrictions. These were followed by co-design workshops, construction drawings and contracts with vendors. The construction took place mostly during the Covid lockdown period and the PROTO* lab opened in August 2021 with the lifting up of lockdown restrictions.

After designing and directing the lab for two years from August 2021-August 2023, here I present the PROTO* lab project as part of my design portfolio. I frame it as a project and as an output of my academic design practice, than as an administrative report or as notes from the programmatic execution of a lab. So this project and its output is framed as design matter, and is presented reflectively in a visual manner. By visual I mean such conventions and ways, that visually present design processes, using sketches, construction drawings, photographs and videos and use them as evidence of change, as empirical instances of new knowledge or understanding of impact that has emerged as a result of a design action of the lab. I use five visual plates similar to the ‘pictorial’ format to present a design led understanding. Each plate has a title followed by visuals in different compositions that try to capture either the logic of designing and the impact from the design decisions.

‘Design features’ are something that describe the characteristics of a design, and they also comprise of decisions made to facilitate particular outcomes, like what can be understood as design intent or seeking a particular course of action. Then design features here also mean outcomes that can be seen as having emerged because of spatial arrangements or design decisions, but something that one realises only in use, something of a partially mediated happenstance. Thus these are presented together for brevity. So the five design features that I reflectively list out from PROTO* lab are: