In a knowledge economy, a fundamental tension exists between the incentivization of proprietorship, and the freedom of access to intellectual products that fuels further creativity. Institutional and disciplinary protectionism encounters its greatest challenges in the convergences of research targets and the increasingly athletic capabilities of communication media. Ultimately, the vast expenditure and low yield associated with certain R&D enterprises call for a more consolidated total effort. The Commons is a vehicle for synthesizing these considerations about a changing paradigm of research. It offers a physical framework for bridging discontinuity and intensifying exchange, as a catalyst for foregrounding ideas about collaboration. Adopting speculative laboratory space for bioscience research as a pilot program, the Commons is the product of the combined implementation of formal and leasing strategies to generate a hub of interfaces---between the physical and the virtual, between research and learning, between disciplines and institutions, and between the site and its immediate physical environment and beyond.