Roosegaarde calls what he does ‘technology-
driven social design’ or ‘problem solving in
the material world’. And he is adamant that
a design studio is exactly the right tool to
tackle existential crisis, creeping doom or
system failure on a grand scale because
these are fundamentally design problems.
You could also call Studio Roosegaarde
a ‘moonshot’ operation. Since President
Kennedy challenged America’s brightest and
best to shoot a man to the moon (and get
him back again), ‘moonshot’ has become
a catch-all term for any project of vaulting
ambition and – though not always –
honourable intent. Over the last half-decade
it has been more closely associated with X,
Google’s (or, more precisely, Alphabet’s)
highly secretive moonshot factory. X deines
a moonshot project as an efort to address a
huge problem, proposing a radical solution
and using breakthrough but not unfeasible
technologies. In some ways you can see it
as a counter-force to the armies of young
technologists who have dedicated themselves
to devising smarter ways of delivering pizzas
or disrupting the mattress market. And given
the tech sector a bit of bad rep in the process.
A moonshot project is not, at least in the
short term, interested in huge proits. Long-
term economic viability, though, is crucial
and X will shut down any project that has no
chance of some kind of commercial future,
however noble the ideal (plunging oil and gas
prices meant the plug was pulled on a plan
to turn seawater into fuel). Roosegaarde too
understands the importance of commercial
possibilities. He’s already talking to one of the
two tech titans – both Tesla’s Elon Musk and
Amazon’s Jef Bezos operate rocket launch
services – who have a clear interest in keeping
the spaceways clear, and to representatives of
the Luxembourg government who are keen to
stake their claims in the space-mining gold
rush, should it happen.
Founded in 2010, and headed by ‘Captain
of Moonshots’ Astro Teller, X looks at
hundreds of ideas a year, all considered by
what Derek Thompson, writing in The
Atlantic magazine, called a ‘Justice League
of nerds’: scientists and engineers but also
academics, policy wonks and professional
thinkers of all sorts. Teller and his team make
clear that the success of any of X’s projects
is based on asking the right questions, and
a range of diferent right questions, from
the outset. In this way they hope to compact
invention and innovation, often diferent
processes that happen in diferent places, ina single project. It is, as Thompson sugests,
a ‘new model of radical creativity’.
Of course, we at Wallpaper* like to imagine
that radical creativity is our stock-in-trade.
So earlier this year we decided to launch our
own particular kind of moonshot division.
While we might not have access to the huge
cash stockpiles that Alphabet has to back X,
we do have the ear of the world’s best and
brightest designers, architects and artists –
exactly the people we think might ask
the right kind of questions and address our
bigest problems as design problems.
The plan was, and is, to connect them
with tech companies, start-ups and research
scientists, and see if we can come up with
our own prototypes and speculations. What is
clear is that there is no lack of appetite for
taking on the bigest of pickles – waste and
environmental protection and repair, saner
cities and infrastructure, sustainability,
public health and healthcare provision, access
to education, transport and mobility. Or for
engaging with emerging technologies that
might provide some of the answers. Far from
it. What there is, as Benjamin Hubert of
Layer Design says, is ‘huge barriers to entry’.
Diferent ways of working, talking, rhythms
and methods. And Hubert, whose advice
has been invaluable in the early stages of
establishing the Wallpaper* Moonshots
Division, knows what he is talking about.
Layer, his sustainability-centric industrial
design agency, has worked with Samsung
and Braun and created, among other things,
wearables to track carbon use. LayerLab,
the company’s research division, was set up
in 2016 to investigate new technologies and
materials and is behind a made-to-measure
3D-printed wheelchair.
For our part, we are convinced that there
are important conversations to be had and
questions to be asked. Our Moonshots
Division, Roosegaarde and Hubert included,
is very much is in its early stages. But we are
determined to launch and land in Milan
during next year’s Salone (8-14 April 2019) as
part of the tenth edition of our Handmade
exhibition, taged ‘X’ (see what we have done
there). We hope to bring not just product and
prototypes but experiences and immersions.
There will be spectacle and entertainment.
For now, onwards and upwards.^ ∂^
Studio Roosegaarde’s live Space Waste Lab
performance can be visited after sunset,
9-10 November 2018, 7-8 December 2018, and
18-19 January 2019 at KAF in Almere,
The Netherlands, studioroosegaarde.netThe British artist Alexander Groves and
Japanese architect Azusa Murakami,
collectively Studio Swine, provided the
visual for this feature and for this issue’s
limited-edition cover (pictured below).
They are also part of the freshly minted
Wallpaper* Moonshots Division. The pair
established Super Wide Interdisciplinary
New Explorers (Swine for short) in 2011.
Since then they have produced objects,
furniture, sculpture, installations and
ilms, exhibited at the Pompidou and
the V&A, and earned gongs at Cannes
and other ilm festivals. The talented
duo irst grabbed our attention with a
remarkable range of objects made of
compacted human hair, and later with
their furniture collection inspired by
Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s failed urban
experiment in the Amazon rainforest.
Last year, they created New Spring for
COS, a tree of arcing columns that
birthed mist-illed bubbles or ‘blossoms’
and became a social media sensation
at Milan Design Week. As their image for
this feature makes it clear, the pair
continue to explore how the ephemeral –
mist, bubbles, scent and noble gases –
can represent the obscure workings out
of digital technology. Earlier this year
they installed Innity Blue – a 20-tonne
ceramic sculpture that exhales scented
fog rings – at Cornwall’s Eden Project.
The piece was inspired by cyanobacteria,
one of the irst organisms on the planet
to produce oxygen. The pair are
currently in residence at the Brooklyn
cultural space A/D/O, creating more
wonder with fog and Krypton lights.
studioswine.comDream team
Introducing Wallpaper* Moonshots
Division collaborator, Studio SwineTHIS ISSUE’S LIMITED-EDITION
COVER BY STUDIO SWINE,
AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS,
SEE WALLPAPER.COM120 ∑
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