ABSTRACT
The word ‘laboratory‘ derives from the Medieval Latin laboratorium, a place for labour. What constitutes scientific labour today and where it takes place has become increasingly polarised. Mythologies of serendipitous discovery enabled by increased socialisation have seen the scientist lured from the bench and into conversation on the stair, in the foyer and café. The ensuing division between the laboratory proper and the spaces of chatter is mirrored in the bifurcations of architectural labour between laboratory planners and design architects. These divisions of scientific and architectural labour are spatially configured and coincident with the glass envelopes that secure biological contaminants. This chapter investigates this spatial bifurcation and attends to its aesthetic and theoretical ramifications. The glazed envelope, belonging to both territories, and to neither, is investigated through the discourse of the membrane that extends from Gilbert Simondon‘s sense that ‘interiority and exteriority are everywhere‘. 1
