A Dutch Designer Takes Inspiration from the Environment
The Dutch postal service recently released a surreal and elegant stamp seriesdepicting the Netherlands as a spidery web of light, with bright clusters of dense concentration in cities and sparse patches over rural areas. Drawing on satellite imagery and aerial photographs taken by Dutch astronaut Andr Kuipers, the resulting illustration is serenely ambiguous, as if depicted from above and below at the same time. It also brings to mind biology-textbook illustrations ofneurons and fungi.
The stamps are the work of Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist with a slash-filled title: designer/architect/innovator. Coming across this project prompted a why-haven’t-I-heard-of-this-guy-sooner moment. A look at Studio Roosegaarde’sback catalogue reveals a fantastic body of work —equal parts sci-fi and whimsy —much of which is inspired by the concept of “biomimicry,” incorporating concepts and designs from nature into man-made projects.
Below is a sample of some Studio Roosegaarde’s recent work, produced out of their Rotterdam and Shanghai offices. For more updates, you can follow the studio on Twitter.
Van Gogh Cycling Path
Roosegaarde used thousands of glow-in-the-dark stones to pave a cycling path in the Dutch city of Nuenen, where Vincent van Gogh lived in the year 1883. Charged with sunlight during the day, thestonesbathe the path in a glowing luminescence at night, with patterns reminiscent of van Gogh’s Starry Night. This is the second part of Roosegaarde’s Smart Highway project, which uses sustainable technologies to improve infrastructure. Taking this idea further, Roosegaarde is currently collaborating with the State University of New York to grow trees impregnated with luciferin, the compound responsible for the luminesce of jellyfish and fireflies, in the hope of creating an alternative to street lights that’s both poetic and energy-neutral.
Waterlicht
Earlier this year, Roosegaarde created an interactive landscape in the Netherlands that he described as an act of “techno-poetry,” using LED technology to recreate the effect of the Northern Lights. But it wasn’t just pretty: the project was acollaboration with the Dutch water board to raise awareness of potential flooding in the face of rising sea levels. Roosegaarde projected the lights at sea level to remind Dutch residents how much of their lives are spent below it.
Urban Smog Vaccuum
Studio Roosegaarde launched the world’s largest air purifier this past September. Reaching over seven meters tall, the mobile unit draws impurities from the air to create a bubble of fresh air within polluted urban environments. As a by-product, the particulate matter filtered from the air —42 percent of which is carbon — getscompressed into a powder, which the Studio then setsinto jewelry. The proceeds from each piece can payfor 1000 m of clean air. After piloting the filter in Rotterdam, Roosegaarde has set his sights on other highly polluted cities like Los Angeles, Beijing, and Mexico City.