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Lecture details
Landscapes of the Future
7 September 2017
4.00pm – 5.30pm. Registration from 3.30pm, seated by 4.00pm
MND Auditorium
Synopsis
In a lecture filled with pictures and movies, Roosegaarde talks about his innovative vision and interactive projects such as Dune, a public interactive landscape that enhances the social interactions of pedestrians, and Windlicht, a light display connecting windmill blades with lines of light to showcase the beauty of green energy. Through discussing these projects, he will be exploring the social role of design in our urban world.
Lecture report
The problems afflicting cities today are products of poorly-thought-out or heedless design, but design is also the solution to a better world, says urban thought leader Daan Roosegaarde.
“The mess we’re in on planet Earth, we’ve created it (through) bad design, not conscious design. Now we can either die or complain, or we can say we have to design or engineer our way out of it,” said the founder of Studio Roosegaarde at his CLC lecture on 7 September.
To call attention to how air pollution is shortening our lives, Roosegaarde’s studio created a sevenmetre high air-cleaning tower that sucks in dirty air like a giant vacuum cleaner. Another project, Waterlicht, is a LED display that simulates rising water levels. Such projects show how “we live in a world which is changing, and we shouldn’t be afraid, but we should be curious and communicate how to become future-proof,” says Roosegaarde.
Citing the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s quote that Earth as a spacecraft has no passengers but only crew, Roosegaarde called on everyone to get involved in designing solutions instead of waiting for others to do so.
“Activate, propose. Don’t think in opinions, think in proposals. That mentality is important if you want to be future-proof. And it’s also more fun,” he explained. The world today is not lacking in money or technology, but imagination and vision. “What we have to do is create new links between all these elements, between the pragmatism and the poetry, the dream and the business plan. I think if we start merging all these even more, carried by knowledge and intelligence, there’s a whole new world to be explored.”
With the rise of urban innovations and disruptions in business models, the World Cities Summit Young Leader said that cities of tomorrow have to embrace creativity as it is no longer just a “nice to have” but a new economy. According to the World Economic Forum, the top 10 skills for success in the coming future involve creativity, critical thinking and problem solving. While many jobs we know today will be taken over by robots, Roosegaarde says this will also bring to the forefront the importance of “human skills” such as our desire to create and interact with beauty.
Image Credit: Studio Roosegaarde
“I think we will live in a world where creativity and creative thinking is our true capital because it is something that computers are really bad at,” he says. “You will not go to a museum or a public space or Marina Bay just for tourism or enjoyment. You will go there to trigger qualities in your brain which will make you more happy, more different, more successful than the rest of the world.”
This vision cannot be realised by investing in infrastructure and technology alone. Society has to get involved from the ground-up too, says Roosegaarde. “How can you create a city where people feel like citizens, not just taxpayers? It’s more social-driven than technology-driven, and that should be the focus—you want people to feel connected.”
The role of government is crucial in achieving this, and he has confidence in Singapore, which is open to new ideas and experimenting step-by-step. “The government is usually more topdown, and we are more bottom-up, but you meet in the middle to create impact.”
Written by Alvin Chua. This report first appeared in the Sep 2017 Better Cities newsletter.
About the Speakers
PANELLIST
Mr Daan Roosegaarde
Founder of Studio Roosegaarde,
Landscapes of the Future
Mr Daan Roosegarde graduated from The Berlage Institute with a master in architecture. He founded Studio Roosegaarde in 2007, where he works with his team of designers and engineers towards a better future. Together they develop ‘Landscapes of the Future’ building smart sustainable prototypes for the cities of tomorrow. Roosegaarde has been named Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, Artist of the Year 2016 in The Netherlands, and a visiting professor at Tongji University Shanghai for Environmental Design.
PANELLIST
Adib Jalal
Co-founder and Director of placemaking studio,
Shophouse & Co
Mr Adib Jalal served as the Festival Director of Archifest from 2012 and 2013 where he restructured the festival and introduced the Archifest Pavilion competition and other content pillars alongside a new visual identity to reach new audiences. Prior to that, he had stints as a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic School of Design, as a multi-disciplinary designer at award-winning design studio FARM, and as the Editor-InChief of FIVEFOOTWAY, one of the pioneer blogs about Asian cities which he co-founded in 2007.