Bio Art & Design (BAD) Award

The yearly Bio Art & Design (BAD) Award aims to stimulate emerging designers and artists to delve into the world of bio art and design, and produce new multidisciplinary work. This can encompass numerous fields - from sustainability, food and health, to biotechnology, horticulture, and agriculture, from new materials to ethics and from molecules to the universe and every bio entity in-between, natural and synthetic.

As of 2022, the BAD Award is made possible by a collaborative consortium of Noord-Brabant based cultural partners: BioArt Laboratories, Dutch Design Foundation, MU Hybrid Art House, Next Nature, and education partner St Joost School of Art & Design / Master Institute of Visual Cultures.

Aim of the BAD Award

  • Stimulate interest, excitement and debate about the (life)sciences through original artistic practice in combination with cutting edge research;
  • examine the social, cultural and ethical contexts of the (life)sciences through the arts;
  • promote high-quality interdisciplinary practice and collaborations between art/ design and science/technology.

We invite designers and artists who are interested in bio art & design & graduated within the last five years in the field of art or design (at either master’s or bachelor’s level), to propose projects for collaborative work across disciplines. Next open call for the BAD Award 2023 opens at the end of 2022.

BAD Award jury 2022

In 2022, the independent jury consisted of writer/curator William Myers (chair), cultural visionary and Arts at CERN initiator Ariane Koek, professor of materials innovation and design at TU Delft and CARADT Elvin Karana, NTR science editor-in-chief Gerda Bosman, writer/sociologist Ruben Jacobs, Rawad Baaklini, and previous BAD Award winners Emma van der Leest, biodesigner and founder of Blue City Lab and Zackery Denfeld, bioartist and founder of The Center for Genomic Gastronomy.

Bio Art & Design exhibition

Every year in winter, the three winning projects will be on show in the creative city of Eindhoven (The Netherlands) at MU Hybrid Art House on Strijp-S, where they will be presented in a thematic exhibition alongside other bio art & design works.