How Do You Do Biodesign

Artists, biologists, designers and architects share their knowledge and experience of biodesign

23 Jan 2014

Have you ever wondered what biodesign could mean for your immediate surroundings? Are you curious to find out what biohacking is? Or do you want to learn how to design with living material? In short, do you want to know how to put biodesign into practice? Then come to How Do You Biodesign on January 23. This event is part of the Biodesign exhibition.

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How Do You Do - Sebastiaan ter Burg

How Do You Do Biodesign is an evening for architects, urban designers, product designers, fashion designers, artists and developers of digital technology and media, which will illuminate exactly what biodesign can mean for the field of work and research. How Do You Do Biodesign is co-produced by Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Willem de Kooning Academy.

How Do You Do is a format for exchanging and sharing ideas, expertise and experience. Don’t expect any fancy PowerPoint presentations. Instead, you’ll hear honest stories about the making of, with lots of information about what works and what doesn’t.

Biodesign experts, 18 sessions

The experts at this Biodesign event are architects Liam Young and Michael Hensel, landscape architect Eric-Jan Pleijster, artists and researchers Arne Hendriks, Mike Thompson, Anna Dumitriu, Jessica de Boer and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and biologists Nadine Bongaerts and Ellen ter Gast.

During How Do You Do Biodesign you can choose from a total of 18 sessions devoted to themes such as Biohacking, Design Fictions, Synthetic Biology, Living Material, Hybrid Eco-City and The City as Metabolism.

http://biodesign.thenewinstitute.nl/en/Events/HowDoYouDoBiodesign

How Do You Do Biodesign

At present, little institutionalized knowledge about biodesign is shared with designers and architects. Awareness of the knowledge is confined to synthetic biologists and a few progressive individuals. What’s more, at the urban and neighbourhood levels, people still employ flawed biological metaphors rather than biological material itself or properly understood biological models. Experimentation does take place with biological materials in construction, but these are mainly isolated experiments, the results of which are seldom shared in a way that advances practice in a structural manner. What opportunities and possibilities would present themselves if that were to happen? What do designers need to learn about the subject? And what ethical questions does the subject raise?

Practical Information

How Do You Biodesign will be on the 23th of januari in Het Nieuwe Instituut, Museumpark 25, 3015 CB Rotterdam. The event will start at 20.00 and ends at 23.00. The talks will be in English. Admission costs 7,50 euro, including a visit to Biodesign exhibition, the students fee is 3 euro, and Friends of Het Nieuwe Instituut can enter for free. You can buy your tickets here. How Do You Do Biodesign is a collaborative project with the Willem de Kooning Academy. The Biodesign exhibition is on show until 26 January 2014 at Het Nieuwe Instituut.