David Edwards is a professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard University and a specialist in infectious diseases. He is active in humanitarian causes and in the arts. In 2007, he founded the Paris-based Le Laboratoire, an innovation space at the frontier of art and science, showcasing international exhibitions by contemporary artists, scientists and such figures as the chef Thierry Marx.

“Laboratories are places of research, experimentation and discovery. Innovation and creation are the foundation of their existence and they shape their future. Laboratories are socially useful. They are a précis of human experience. Hope reigns in labs — as do chance, rigour, invention, the need to convince and the challenge to create,” writes David Edwards.

The present work is about a very special kind of laboratory, which he founded and where creators and society can use the language of culture to communicate and to discover a new springboard for innovation.

By bringing together the artist’s and the scientist’s approach, under the banner of what he has named “artsciences”, David Edwards reveals the principles and methods that inspire him and traces the trajectory of several projects.