For some time now, collaborative working has been the radical new ethos around which the design of research laboratories has been based. Popular perception has scientists bent over a microscope in solitary study, probably in a lab buried deep within an architecturally anonymous building. 

But the reality is very different: a new generation of state-of-the-art laboratories embrace physical transparency and social interactivity to actively foster a spirit of professional collaboration. Examples range from the Stirling prize-winning Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge to the gargantuan Francis Crick Institute in central London. 

Until now the principle of scientific collaboration has been championed by the research rather than education side of science. The Collaborative Teaching Laboratory (CTL), a new £45m facility on the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston campus, has changed that. Designed by laboratory veterans Sheppard Robson, it is located only yards from Aston Webb’s stellar university complex from the early 1900s but is a building that looks very much to the future. 

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