Call for project proposals—production platform
February 4–26, 2026
The 29th Biennial of Design, BIO 29—organised by the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) and the Centre for Creativity (CzK)—invites designers, collectives and multidisciplinary practitioners to engage in a shared exploration of the pressing challenges of the contemporary world, through interaction with knowledge that exists but remains largely inaccessible to the public.
Soft Fields, curated by Martina Muzi, examines how knowledge embedded within research, industrial and infrastructural environments can be opened, redirected and redistributed through design practice. The curatorial concept asks how design operates not only inside structured systems, but also along their edges, where access is partial, information is uneven, and responsibilities are shared. How does industrial or scientific knowledge circulate beyond laboratories, factories and technical documents? How can it enter public, social and spatial experience? And how might design function as a collective agency rather than an individual solution?
Soft field is not a site, object or category. It is a condition where intentions meet constraints, where knowledge is applied differently, and where values and relations are reorganised. As such, soft fields are spaces of negotiation rather than control. They emerge from the tension between globally exported design strategies and the urgency of local social, ecological and economic realities. Within this framework, design is understood as a situated, multidisciplinary practice that takes a position within friction, asymmetry and structural opacity. Rather than resolving complexity, it operates within it, revealing hidden processes, translating specialised knowledge, and reshaping relations between institutions, environments, objects and everyday life.
BIO 29: Soft Fields is conceived as a soft, adaptive system that supports collaboration across design, research, education, industry and local communities. The biennial functions as an evolving infrastructure, enabling different forms of collectivity, self-organisation and context-responsive practice to emerge.
Activation through the Production Platform of BIO 29
The Production Platform is one of BIO 29’s core frameworks. It supports new design-research projects developed between local expertise, institutional partners, industry actors, and communities. The platform offers a flexible structure for collaboration, site visits and knowledge sharing, emphasising situated experimentation and collective learning.
We invite local and regional designers and interdisciplinary practitioners, working individually or collectively, to apply. Selected projects may involve online collaboration as well as on-site participation at the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), Ljubljana, and other locations in Slovenia, between March and November 2026. The platform offers a flexible structure for collaboration, site visits and knowledge exchange, emphasising situated experimentation and collective learning. The intensive project development phase will begin in March and continue through the opening of BIO 29–Soft Fields on November 19. During this period, selected applicants will collaborate with research institutes, independent researchers, and technology companies to co-create and refine projects that will be presented as part of the BIO 29–Soft Fields biennial exhibition. Applications are open until February 26, 2026.
Projects are expected to engage with Slovenian contexts, infrastructures or forms of knowledge while addressing questions that resonate beyond national borders, treating Slovenia as a territory or field of departure. BIO 29 approaches it as a constellation of forces, an infrastructurally connected, ecologically complex and socially layered site of production and passage. Within this framework, each project becomes a locally situated case, developed through its own methodology and in response to specific conditions, needs and working realities, while contributing to the shared thematic orientation of the Soft Fields.
More information about the curatorial concept, and application terms and conditions: bio.si. General inquiries: bio@mao.si / Press inquiries: press.bio@mao.si.
