Biocultura supports Bio Art and Design education and creation. Biocultura's project space is located in a restored adobe home on the historic Camino Real near the Santa Fe River, and our aim is to support and connect Bio Art and Design projects and practitioners to our daily lives, histories, communities and environments through workshops, presentations and events.

What is Bio Art and Design?

Bio Art and Design is the practice of creating works of art or design with living organisms and life processes. As a fusion of art, science, design and architecture, Bio Art and Design often includes collaboration to share ideas, methods and perspectives between scientists, artists, designers, technologists, scholars and others. Awareness of the social, economic, and environmental consequences of working with life is of particular importance, as are the ethical issues involved in these practices.

Why Santa Fe?

We chose to locate the Biocultura Project Space in Santa Fe because it is a city with a high level of contemporary art and science practice, a center for international art galleries and museums with proximity to two major national laboratories. Santa Fe and the region is also on the front lines of global changing ecosystems due to anthropogenic climate change. Our city faces critical challenges with water, soil and land use, and many people in Santa Fe are highly engaged with local and global environmental and social justice advocacy.

Why an historic adobe home on Agua Fria Street?

Biotechnology, including synthetic biology, has become an inextricable part of our daily lives. The food in our refrigerator may be made of genetically modified organisms, often without our knowledge. We must be aware, educated and conscious of our daily living choices. To clearly illustrate that personal connection, we chose to locate the Biocultura Project Space in a home, connected to a diverse local community with a long history of human occupation. Native Americans are known to have lived in this area as long as 5000 years ago, and the first recorded Spanish settlement was in the 17th century. This history and longstanding connection to land is critical, and as part of the historic Camino Real, Agua Fria street offers a unique perspective.

Images shown from Biocultura projects and Bio Art and Design workshops around the world including Biophilia, a workshop with Symbiotica at Aalto University, SCOBY growing projects at the Vermont Studio Center, Biocultura's T-House in Springfield Missouri, TasteLab created by University of New Mexico (UNM) Bio Art and Design students for the Farm D'Art Tour in rural Wisconsin, A Bio Hack Academy workshop at the Waag Society in Amsterdam, Drosophila research at the UNM Cripps Lab, and a workshop with Bio Artist Marta De Menenez in Mexico City,