The Creative Industries: Rethinking the Urban

With the Creative Industries as one of the focus area for Sino-Dutch cultural collaboration in the current multi-year plan, urban development and cleaner cities in China proves a much discussed topic with many spin-off projects. In recent weeks progress was made for various running projects.

Maverick Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde and his business partner Lidi Brouwer travelled to Beijing from 17 – 23 February for further negotiations on Roosegaarde’s by now renowned “SMOG project”. SMOG was born of a visit last year by Roosegaarde to the city of Beijing where he stayed in a hotel nearby the new CCTV building. On day one he could see the building clearly against a clear blue sky but by day two of his visit the outline of the building was hardly visible amidst the blur of rising smog. And so he decided to do something about it, or at least think of an idea that would be able clear the air one square kilometer at a time.

The project is not only about cleaning the sky but just as much about creating an awareness among the inhabitants of Beijing that solutions are possible. In light of this Roosegaarde came up with a unique way to finance his project – by first collecting smog and compressing it into jewellery rings – by purchasing a ring one can contribute 100m3 of clean air to the city – making waste into something both beautiful and clean. Hereby a small individual incentive can lead to cleaner air for all.

Roosegaarde and Brouwer met with Beijing city officials, and municipal engineers & researchers to discuss collaborating on the further development of the project both in terms of the technical development as well as jointly selecting the best place for a pilot. Options for venues that were discussed were public parks, sports and recreation areas as well as schools and playgrounds for young children. Roosegaarde indicated that the latter would seem the most in need of clean air – “children really need to be able to experience the outdoors…” Beside government representatives the duo also met with real estate companies and possible investors as well as representatives of the Beijing Design Week – looking to broaden the scope of the project and get as many stakeholders involved as possible.

Other projects also connected to the Beijing Design Week 2014 are a redevelopment research plan for the 798 art district of Beijing, for which Neville Mars and Daan Roggeveen recently travelled to Beijing from Shanghai to further develop their initial ideas and connect with and involve more local stakeholders – which lead to the conclusion that the project should not solely focus on architectural development but that content is the crucial key for development. Thereby including various cultural stakeholders into the discussion. They aim to develop the project further in the coming months, working towards a possible seminar and/or visual presentation at the Design week later in the year. Stay tuned for this one!

Another connected project that works broadly on urban issues is the “Towards 2050: Developing a Sino-Dutch Approach to Sustainable Urbanisation” project, initiated last year at the Beijing Design Week. The week of February 22 – March 2nd sees another visit to Beijing by project leader Ton Venhoeven to discuss the details of a new research ‘work week’ set up in conjunction with the Beijing Urban Planning Commission for the summer this year.

In all, these are all promising projects for a year packed with cultural cooperation!

(source: Dutch Embassy in Beijing)