Through the lens of science and technology studies, this collective volume focuses on the scientific laboratory as the quintessential space for knowledge production in the physical and life sciences. Emphasis is placed on the transformations that the physical space of the scientific laboratory has undergone over five centuries. These changes simultaneously lead to the transformation of collaboration policies among scientists of different disciplines, the hierarchical structure of research groups based on gender, and, more importantly, the scientific practice itself and the concept of experimentation. The volume examines the culture and architecture of various forms of scientific laboratories, and through them traces assumptions related to who ultimately has access to science and under what conditions - both scientific and sociological - it is conducted.

The texts included are:
- Paula Findlen: "Male Privilege: Gender, Space, and Knowledge in the Museum of Early Modernity"
- Steven Shapin: "The House of Experiment in 17th Century England"
- Owen Hannaway: "Laboratory Design and the Goal of Science: Andreas Libavious versus Tycho Brahe"
- Londa Schiebinger: "Maria Winkelmann at the Berlin Academy: A Turning Point for Women in Science"
- Sophie Forgan: "Framework, Image, and Function: A Preliminary Exploration of the Architecture of Scientific Societies"
- Marsha Richmond: "A Laboratory of Their Own: The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women at the University of Cambridge, 1884-1914"
- Maria Rentetzi: "Designing (for) a New Scientific Discipline: The Location and Architecture of the Institute for Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna"
- Robert Seidel: "The Origins of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory"
- Peter Galison and Caroline A. Jones: "Trajectories of Production in Laboratories, Factories, and Art Studios"
- Sharon Traweek: "Visualizing Inventions: Towards an Ethnography of Images in Physics"