Pieter van Boheemen

A ‘THIRD SPACE’ FOR EXTREME DIYBIO
A place, away from your home or your work, in public, where you can go, whenever you want to. You meet your friends there, and have inspiring conversations and open discussions. That’s a ‘third space’.


Known ‘third spaces’ are coffee bars, libraries, parks and markets. Pieter van Boheemen always feels comfortable and inspired by the endless opportunities and lack of expectations in these places. Given the opportunity to participate in a ‘third space’ at Waag Society in Amsterdam, he immediately seized it. Not to design yet another space for relaxed conversations and discussions, but one where he can do what he loves most: hacking biology.


Van Boheemen is a hacker, an artist, an engineer, a researcher and a teacher. He promotes free and open source technology that enables people to take matters into their own hands, and make their own choices. He is in charge of the Open Wetlab, the Open Design Lab and FabLab Amsterdam at Waag Society. On top of that, he’s an expert in bio-technology, an award-winning entrepreneur, and known all over the world as a speaker on the subject of biohacking and DIYBio (Do-It-Yourself Biology). Also, he organized numerous practical ‘art science’ workshops, and led more than one hundred and fifty Dutch DIYBio community events. 


On the TEDxFryslân stage he showed us in which ‘third spaces’ engineers, designers and artists meet to create prototypes of… Yes, of what exactly? They enrich their lives there, and even create mutating living organisms. To what purpose? To show that everyone has the opportunity to build a lab of their own and be extreme amateur scientists themselves.


Read more about Pieter here.

What is TedX?

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At TEDxZwolle, live speakers will spark deep discussion and connection. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organised.