Smog Ring - Pollution Transformed into Art 3 Favorite 

“A Foreigner Makes Beijing’s Smog into Rings” has become a tittle used by a multitude of popular public accounts on Wechat, the most commonly used chatting app in China, which makes more and more Chinese netizens know the story of Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist and “social designer”, who has been making effort to combine the energy saving technology with visually enjoyable art. The previous innovative projects conducted by Roosegaarde’s studio includes “Sustainable Dancing Floor”, “Smart Highway” with rechargeable glowing road markings. Now he’s working up with his team to transform pollution into wearable jewelry.

The decision of building a smog-free project has been made several years ago when Roosegaarde was invited to attend an international activity for designers in Beijing, where he was shocked by the serious air pollution level in this city and concerned with people’s attitude of accepting it as something normal and taking it for granted. The personal experience inspired him to come up with this bold proposal— collecting smog in Beijing and give them a new identity—gems.

In smog project, a 7-meter high “Smog Free Tower” equipped with environment-friendly ozon free ion technology is used to capture and purify PM2.5 smog in a park of Beijing. The collected pollutant will then be put into rings, which are available online.

“Making tangible and wearable material of the smog is a way of creating awareness.” Says Roosegaarde. “By buying or sharing the smog ring you donate 1,000 cubic meters of clean air to the city.”

Roosegaarde doesn’t think this design will be a solution to the air pollution problem in this city or in the whole world. However, he believes that art has a great power to express good desire and can play a big role in motivate everyone to become “part of the solution, not part of the problem”.