Provoking sustainability innovator and artist Daan Roosegaarde on creativity as the engine to sustai

Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde creates sustainable innovations with his team of designers and engineers in social design lab ‘Studio Roosegaarde’. The studio creates interactive designs exploring the dynamic relation between people, technology and space. It develops its own innovations and is internationally known for interactive projects. He shares his thoughts on sustainability and speaks about his work on the 'MAKE IT WORK! CREATIVITY: ENGINE TO SUSTAINABILITY'-event at the Antwerp management school.

Our relation with innovation

After his introduction and some nice words for the city and organization, Daan Roosegaarde's first subject of the evening is innovation. He starts off by showing us a (quite funny) video of a place where the escalator stairs were introduced for the first time. People had no idea how to handle them, and as simple as they seem for us here, it was a catastrophic event there. People fell off, got stuck or just didnt use them in the first place. The point that was made is that people need time to process every new innovation. Innovation is a combination of people and knowledge, Technology driven innovations are only useful if people can and want to apply them, it's important that you never disconnect from the people. When you look at the work of Daan Roosegaarde you see innovation mostly in a human centered way. Provoking people to think and open up to innovation and the changes that come with it is the essence of a lot of his work. I'm going to discuss two great examples here, for all of Daan Roosegaarde's projects you can visit his website, studioroosegaarde.net.

Waterlicht (link)

Waterlicht is a virtual flood, it shows how high the water could reach without human intervention. Innovation is a natural part of the DNA of the Dutch landscape through its dikes and creative thinking, yet we almost seem to have forgotten this. Waterlicht consists of wavy lines of light made with the latest LED technology, software and lenses. When launched, a huge amount of people came together on the concerning square to admire the artwork. They thought and talked about the problem and just like that more water awareness was created.

Smog Free Tower (link)

Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and his team of experts have created the world's largest smog vacuum cleaner. The Smog Free Tower uses patented ion technology to produce smog-free bubbles of public space, allowing people to breathe and experience clean air for free. Creating a tangible souvenir, Roosegaarde designed Smog Free Rings, Smog Free Cubes and Smog Free Cufflinks of compressed smog particles. By sharing Smog Free Jewelry, you donate 1000m3 of clean air to the city. The Smog Free Project is not only intended to be a final local solution, but also a sensory experience of a clean future.

Creativity killers

Ideas like these come from very everyday, banal inspiration but you have to fight for it if you want to realize them. There will always be people telling you the following three things: 'It's not possible' and 'It's not allowed'. The last and most frustrating one comes afterwards, when you've proved them wrong, they'll ask you 'Why haven’t you done it before?'. Another and even more common creativity killer are the two words so many people start off with when they hear a new idea: 'Yes but'. Because Daan Roosegaarde was so frustrated with these two horrible words he created a chair that has voice recognition and will give you a little shock when you say the words ‘yes but’. I’m sure that a lot of innovations could finally be realized when every meeting room has these in it. Daan Roosegaarde points out that it's very important to be critical, but very unwise to let 'yes but' limit you. He suggest to rather use the two words 'what if' more often.

Heroes of tomorrow

Daan Roosegaarde had an important message to finish with for all the young people present on his speech: Create a job for yourself where you add value, we lose from India, China, etc. in all price conservative sectors. Be a creator instead of a consumer. The heroes of tomorrow will no longer be luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, but the company's coming with sustainable answers to the problems that our world is facing. Sooner or later, even Louis Vuitton will have to reinvent itself.

Art vs. Technology

From my perspective as a product developer it’s fascinating to see designers and engineers create innovations as a form of art. Instead of innovating in a ‘problem -> solution’-way Studio Roosegaarde tries to see the bigger picture and innovate in a symbolic way to influence the public awareness and mindset about the problem. Public support is often the most important driver for innovation. This awareness creation is the first and maybe even biggest step in realizing big scale solutions for world problems. I like the fact that they go beyond this artistic dimension and create actual patented new technologies. Creating this new tangible experience is what makes the difference in inspiring people.