Tuur Van Balen

Tuur Van Balen (Belgium, 1981) is a designer and researcher eager to push the boundaries and methodologies of design in order to explore the rich interaction between people and technology. He has a special interest in invisible cities, synthetic biology and the ‘Metro weird-feed’.

He holds an MA degree in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art and works as a freelance designer and researcher in service design, interaction design and design strategy. Tuur also initiates his own design research projects, often collaborating with scientists, from synthetic biologists to sociologists.

Keen to experiment with different places for design, Tuur has worked with London based thinktank Demos, participated in a workshop at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Lancaster and collaborates with the department for bio-engineering at Imperial College.

Before moving to London, Tuur graduated a MSc degree in Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology and worked at several design agencies in the Netherlands.


 Festival Buzz

"Participating in the Battle was a little like entering a Bombay train at rush hour - it's a plunge into a swirl of wildly differing notions of how people should arrange themselves in a really tight situation. When you eventually emerge, you find that you're in a different place from where you started - and that you've been thoroughly energised from the journey. I can't wait to take the trip again next year."
Naresh Fernandes, editor-in-chief, Time Out India