“THIS IS NOT A SCIENCE MUSEUM,” SAYS DAVID EDWARDS, PATROLLING THE FLOOR OF Le Laboratoire, which is, well, a science museum, albeit one reinvented for the 21st century. In a former print shop at 4 Rue du Bouloi, just two blocks from the Louvre, “Le Lab,” as Edwards calls it, will showcase freewheeling collaborations between scientists and artists, with cutting-edge science informing an array of paintings, videos, and interactive games. Opening in October, Le Lab is the brainchild of Edwards, a professor at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The museum is the logical extension of Edwards’ beliefs about interdisciplinary creativity; he’s also the co-creator of the popular undergraduate course Idea Translation, which encourages students to combine art and science— what Edwards calls, simply, “art science.” The Laboratoire aspires to celebrate innovation and the creative process. Montreal-born architect Peter Rose designed the space, restoring the building’s original iron pillars and blocking out three galleries in steel, wood, and glass. “Our aim is not to communicate science,” Edwards explains. “We are not interested in carrying out scientific experiments. We are interested in inventing things which are artistic and design-oriented.”

Some of the concepts are so radical, they may not be realizable—like the plan for visitors to experience the functions of a stem cell. That idea arose when Edwards introduced French conceptual artist Fabrice Hyber to MIT professor Robert Langer, a leader in stem cell research. From their trans-Atlantic conversations, Hyber began to imagine what it would be like to be an embryonic stem cell. One of the paintings he subsequently produced depicts an apple tree whose falling fruits transform into cherries, a metaphor for the transformation of stem cells into a variety of other cells. A more technically challenging idea is the construction of a sand- filled egg timer through which visitors could walk. “It will signify the transformation of one stem cell to another cell,” Hyber says, “but it’s taking awhile to come up with dimensions big enough for a human to fit inside.”

Edwards, who with his slicked-back hair and funky glasses looks more like a SoHo artist than a labora- tory scientist, wants such whimsical ideas to thrive. A Boston native who married a French- woman and splits his time between Paris and Boston, he bought the building with the profits from a pharmaceutical business sale in 1999; purchase and renovations totalled some $6 million. About half the $2 million annual budget will come from tickets, sales revenue, and rental income from other Paris properties. Partner institutions— museums, businesses, and universities—will cover the balance. Though not a financial partner, Harvard will support students who come to Le Laboratoire to study and create.

At the nearby Café de L’Epoque, Edwards and his collaborators often meet for lunch, and the proceedings have the feel of a college bull session. On the day I visited in June, there was a pronounced Harvard presence: Jonathan Jacques Kamler, a recent physics grad, talked about his “smart glass” project, involving glass with changing properties of light transmission. Also present was novelist Jay Cantor, who recently collaborated with Edwards on La Niche, a novel exploring the experimental process behind the museum’s first year. Edwards and Cantor are working on an online role-playing game called Ocean, which will eventually be exhibited at Le Lab. “An Internet game shows new facets of what it means to be alive, though not necessarily as a human,” Cantor says. “I’m also interested in what it means to be part machine, a node within a network.”

So is Edwards. He wants Le Lab to be a network of its own, a spur to integrating academic disciplines. “I began to ask myself of Harvard: Why, when there are all these amazing professors working in different departments, is there never any kind of interface?” he says. “Why can’t a professor of music dialogue with a professor of medicine? I found that bizarre. We need more than ever to innovate, but our institutions are designed almost to stifle innovation.” At Le Lab, a lack of innovation seems an unlikely possibility.