An Appetite for Innovation

Harvard’s David Edwards talks to Nautilus about how ideas can change the world

By Gayil Nalls

How many Harvard professors have you heard of who have their own restaurant, much less one with a gastronomy manifesto? Once you get to know David Edwards, a biomedical engineer and specialist in sensorial design and delivery, the restaurant comes as no surprise. Called Café ArtScience, it lets users try novel foods like vapor chocolate cake and frozen sweets delivered in edible skins, made with instruments straight from the science lab. Besides being delicious and playful, the menus reflect Edwards’ broader perspective on the world: A writer, inventor, and entrepreneur, he thinks that most of the problems we face today are problems of innovation.

Innovation is something of a mantra for Edwards. His Harvard course, “How to create things & have them matter,” teaches students about “ideas, how we imagine them, and especially how we continually reimagine them.” His students often meet next door to ArtScience, at Le Laboratoire, a center for art, design, and learning, which he founded. Edwards originally opened it in Paris, before moving it to near MIT, in the heart of biotech start-up country.

Together, the spaces form what Edwards sees as public culture lab, bringing different…