Design works: Daan Roosegaarde: Studio Roosegaarde, The Netherlands

Daan Roosegaarde and his Studio Roosegaarde in Rotterdam, known as a techno artistic laboratory, are known for interactive art installations that react to sound and motion.  He created the internationally acclaimed interactive works 4D-Pixel, Dune 4.2 and Flow 5.0.  Roosegaarde’s work explores the dynamic relationship between architecture, people and e-culture.

His designs, he says, are created by “answering the questions of how technology can be used to create social interactions, what would happen if technology gets out of the computer screen is embedded in our walls, bodies and urban landscapes, and how designs can be used to create situations of mediation and interaction”.

“My interactive works are about the dynamic relationship between space, people and technology. The works create a situation of ‘tactile high-tech’ by interacting with the sounds and motion of the people, becoming an extension of their skin,” he says.

He considers Dune 4.2, a 60-metre long interactive landscape project in Rotterdam, one of the projects that gave him the most satisfaction. It was “one of the largest interactive artworks that changed the way people experienced their daily reality”.

After completing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts (AKI) in Enschede and receiving his Master’s degree at the Berlage Institute, a postgraduate laboratory of architecture in Rotterdam, the founder and creative director of Studio Roosegaarde has gone on to win several awards, including the Dutch Design Award 2009 and the W3 Webby Silver Award, 2008, USA.

The 31-year-old artist gets most excited by designs that allow for and create social interactions. He says he is tired of cities “filled with architecture functioning as icons” and believes that designs should create an environment that engages people and creates relational networks.

“A city and its architecture should not be a sum of walls, doors and windows but about social interactions,” he stresses.

This article appeared in City & Country, the property pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 812, June 28-July 4, 2010