ip design: Inspirationist exclusive Q&A with artist and innovator Daan Roosegaarde

Artist and innovator Daan Roosegaarde (1979) is internationally known for creating social designs that explore the relation between people, technology and space. His Studio Roosegaarde is the social design lab with his team of designers and engineers based in the Netherlands and Shanghai.

With projects ranging from fashion to architecture his interactive designs such as Dune, Intimacy and Smart Highway are tactile high-tech environments in which viewer and space become one. This connection, established between ideology and technology, results in what Roosegaarde calls ‘techno-poetry’.

Roosegaarde has won the Accenture Innovation Award, INDEX Award, World Technology Award, Charlotte Köhler Award, two Dutch Design Awards, and China’s Most Successful Design Award. He has been the focus of exhibitions at Tate Modern, National Museum in Tokyo, Victoria and Albert Museum, and various public spaces in Rotterdam and Hong Kong.

Daan Roosegaarde is also a frequent invited international lecturer at conferences such as TED and Design Indaba, and TV media guest at De Wereld Draait Door and CNN.

Thanks to our friends at Business of Design Week in Hong Kong, we were able to ask Mr. Roosegaarde a few short questions:

Smart Highway are interactive and sustainable roads of today

INSPIRATIONIST: Your projects extend to various fields so we couldn’t call you just an architect or designer, or inventor, but all of the above and more. Regardless of the word used to describe your profession, what is your aim as a creative person?

Daan Roosegaarde: I’m not so much interested in design as in reforming things. I customize the world. I want to make our world more understandable, interactive and open; I want to update it.

Smart Highway are interactive and sustainable roads of today

INSPIRATIONIST: How has your design work evolved over the years, and in which direction do you plan to go in the future? Are there any other domains you’d like to explore?

Daan Roosegaarde: I hop from obsession to obsession. I have gone from fashion to highways to the problem of smog, who knows what my next obsession will be.

INTIMACY is high-tech fashion made out of smart e-foils which become transparent based on personal interactions

INSPIRATIONIST: Many of your projects are tactile high-tech creations in which the participant and the object intertwine. You have described this as ‘techno poetry’- can you explain what that entails?

Daan Roosegaarde: I miss the poetic notion of life a lot. There is a growing sentiment of fear with regard to technology dominating us, however, I am more scared about the little robot in ourselves that we cultivate. I try to create environments which trigger a different side to people and offer a different perspective which they are not normally accustomed to. My work is more about stimulating imagination, developing innovation and exploring new worlds, rather than facilitating things, that’s why we called it ‘techno poetry’.

INTIMACY is high-tech fashion made out of smart e-foils which become transparent based on personal interactions

INSPIRATIONIST: What challenges you to develop a certain project? Are they rooted in bad personal experiences that drive you to find better solutions or simply ideas that form instantaneously?

Daan Roosegaarde: My aim is to create sustainable environment and connect people. A lot of my “inspiration” comes imagination, but also from frustration.

DUNE is the interactive landscape of light which brightens according to the sounds and motion of people

INSPIRATIONIST: You named yourself a hippie with an ambitious business plan to customize the world. Are there any further projects which are part of this plan that you can tell us about?

Daan Roosegaarde: I cannot say yet!

LOTUS DOME is a living dome made out of hundreds of smart flowers