Daan Roosegaarde founded his studio in 2007 in a former glass factory in Rotterdam, a place he still calls the Dream Factory. There, with a multidisciplinary team of designers, engineers, and scientists, he develops what he terms “landscapes of the future”: immersive public installations that sit at the intersection of environmental art, technology, and innovation.
Light is his preferred medium—almost weightless, yet capable of rendering the abstract tangible. A virtual flood can hover above a city square; his patented Smog Free Tower—a giant outdoor vacuum cleaner—can create pockets of clean air and condense smog into jewelry; a bicycle path can glow with the remembered brushstrokes of Van Gogh; space debris can be reimagined as controlled shooting stars. These projects are frequently collaborative, developed in conversation with institutions as varied as NASA, ESA, and local farming communities, and they treat nature less as subject matter than as co-author.
The studio’s guiding conviction appears to be that people are moved less by data than by experience, and that the most effective environmental argument may be the one that arrives, unexpectedly, as wonder. Roosegaarde’s installations function as temporary atmospheres—spaces raising environmental awareness, where questions about pollution, biodiversity, clean energy, and even the night sky can be felt rather than merely discussed. In an age crowded with forecasts and statistics, his work proposes something more elusive: that the future might still be imagined as a place one would actually want to inhabit, and that art, at its most effective, can help us rehearse that possibility in the present.
hube: Looking back, what was the moment you realized beauty could be a form of activism?
Daan Roosegaarde: There are so many moments. People don’t change because of numbers, but because of experiences—we all do, of good and bad ones. The first thing that comes to mind is when we did Waterlicht in Amsterdam at Museumplein: sixty thousand people under those blue waves. It was magical, but also a bit eerie and scary to realize this could actually be the water level around the year 2100 if we don’t act. Using beauty as an activator to make people feel more connected with the future, and just seeing their experiences and intimate interactions—when I’m there I don’t look at the artwork that much; I look at the people and listen to them. I felt that we were onto something. Experiences and beauty. Using beauty as a strategy to help create change, instead of pointing the finger or bombarding people with numbers. I think that’s really interesting in the world of today.
h: Your studio collaborates across disciplines—engineers, scientists, communities—and even with institutions like NASA. How has this interdisciplinary approach redefined what it means to be an artist or designer today?
DR: The moment you go into the public domain and public art, it’s always collaboration. It’s always negotiation, or a symbiotic relationship, because it’s not just you in a white cube. You’re always in co-control. Instead of seeing that as something annoying or restrictive, it’s actually something that can really contribute or add a new dimension to your work. That’s what I’ve been doing. I always like to be surrounded by people who are in a certain way smarter than me, because that’s how you learn. Whether it’s a scientist or a designer or NASA—there’s always an expert. Every time I do something new, there’s always somebody who knows everything about clouds or orchids or air pollution or fireflies. You have to find that person, challenge him or her, create a vision, create a dream, and get to work.
