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Microbes are essential in design’s search for a productive form of sustainability, where (re)cycling resources achieves an organic resource circularity. This paper takes a more-than-human view of the commons looking to a newly characterised and highly contested realm of transactions called the microbial commons. Originally introduced during the biotechnology revolution this term originally described the generous exchanges of microorganisms among culture collections, laboratories, and researchers worldwide, which facilitated research activities and advanced the scientific understanding of microbes. Commercial pressures from biotechnology firms in the late 20th century, however, restricted access to biological resources through Intellectual Property (IP) protections and gene patenting. These protectionist principles have significant impacts for the field of biodesign, which proposes to harness the machinery of the natural world by using microbes as a platform for design synthesis and are at odds with the character of microbes. Fundamentally open, generous and promiscuous, the microbial realm generates a metabolic economy, a native microbial commons that enables biochemical sharing, swapping, and lending—even between different species. Developing a deanthropocentrised view of this platform, this paper argues for and prototypes the principles for a microbial commons that is open to all agentised actors, providing access to a co-constituted resource circularity in design. Evidenced by three built case studies: Living Architecture, 999 years 13sqm (the future belongs to ghosts) and the Active Living Infrastructure: Controlled Environment prototype series, the deanthropocentrised microbial commons enables biodesign practices to move ever closer towards generating environmental impacts with equivalence to natural systems.