A thoughtful festival can often feel understated. The ones that leave the deepest impressions and gain devoted followings aren't always coruscating with the brightest lights or showboat bills. An immersive, even transformational, experience comes from quiet power in the subtleties: a dance floor interior expertly designed to facilitate communion or an incarnadine light at dusk fading in the background of a live set. How can this brief, momentary reprieve from the real world ignite a sense of possibility?

With this in mind, Ruggero Pietromarchi of Terraforma Festival (in Milan) and Jochem Daelman of Horst Festival (in Brussels) are not so different in their approaches. Both have curated their festivals with this sense of continuing curiosity, often finetuning the details each year with a new set of featured artists and architects. Recently, Terraforma invested in reforestation projects on the Villa grounds with the Genoan architecture film Space Caviar. Horst works regularly with a broad host of firms such as Salabuono in Milan, Traumnovelle in Brussels, plus JAM in London.

Pietromarchi, almost in identical lockstep with Daelman, co-founded his project with a small cadre of like-minded individuals in 2014. They both inaugurated their festivals on castle grounds (before Horst eventually moved to Asiat, a former military site) and grew their respective festival reputations into must-visits on the summer circuit—not to mention both of them are now collaborating with the Italian luxury house Bottega Veneta.

Marking the first day of Terraforma Festival, the two join in conversation, moderated by Resident Advisor, on their kindred considerations towards sculpting bespoke musical environments and upholding sustainability—with remarkably different results.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Let's start the conversation from the origins. Oftentimes, people start projects to fulfill a need in the market, an area of interest that's not being serviced or actualizing an idea that's never been done before. Ruggero and Joachem, you both co-founded your respective festivals in 2014, was there perhaps a gap in what you wanted to see in music experience offerings at the time? Was there a need you were trying to fulfill, either for yourselves or for your community?

Ruggero Pietromarchi: Well, I was about the age of 25, when I started the festival, and it wasn't to fulfill a gap in the market. To be honest, there wasn't much of a business plan behind it. But the idea wasn't of showing as many artists as possible, it was more of an experiment that I was looking for, so the festival was the perfect format to express this. It's a full experience where people get out of their ordinary life and get exposed to new sounds and new people and new environments. There was the idea of having these social and cultural experiments in a society which was pretty much dealing with apathy, in a way.

Then there was Villa Arconati, of course, this incredible villa from the 18th century, which was in a state of abandonment. The organization of an event, such as a festival, was trying to help the reinterpretation of a site, such as Villa Arconati, and historical monuments or public heritage in a way. Even though it's a private property, this was an essential point to me to do something meaningful, not just for the three-day festival, but with a longer perspective. So this, I would say, are the two main issues that pushed us to do the festival.

Joachem Daelman: I think [for Horst] it's quite similar actually, with regard to what he's saying. We started the event with a lot of friends as a sort of countermovement, maybe to the city where we lived, where we grew up, where youth culture in itself wasn't fully respected in a way. We didn't really have the beliefs from [local] politicians that young people were valuable to the city and offered an enriching, very cultural ecosystem. We felt the urge to prove them wrong. We had the power of youth, of young people in a city.

Then we had the idea of, how can we shape a festival that we think is interesting and combines the different interests that we have: the arts, music, architecture, and so on. And how can we create a festival that has a positive impact on the space where you have it? How can we rethink every necessary component? How can we do things in a way that they are contributing more to the space or a context—this often very big event that often has a very negative impact on the space.

Festivals are impermanent ecosystems into which people can escape. Both of your festivals facilitate this. Terraforma, it's in the translation of the name and in the mission statement this year: "Terraforma is the manifesto of our belief that new dimensions can now be Terraformed." For Horst, it's "Horst blends and celebrates the worlds of arts, architecture and music." How do you approach this gargantuan task of building new worlds—whatever it means to you—for attendees year in and year out?

Daelman: Big question. Mainly what we do is a few things. We invite artists to create site-specific work that uses the context or the space itself as a source of inspiration. We're now at a military base, but before we used to be at this cultural heritage site in an old castle nearby [Horst in Holsbeek, Brussels]. After the festival, those installations or pavilion stages made by artists were kept there for a couple of months, so they reframed the space as an exhibition, but they were also valuable for fishermen or local youth organizations. Also, last week, a local couple held their marriage party here at one of the stages. Something we're trying to do when we build is to ask ourselves: How can we build infrastructure that is being used for the festival that then can be used for other interactions, such as bringing people together?

Also, if we build an architectural pavilion, or a stage, the idea is that we have the artists and architect here for a week or 10 days. Then we bring him or her together with 20 builders, all young people—these carpenters, architects, designers from all over Europe. The idea is that it's interesting how you have these contexts to build new relationships, and new ideas as well.

Pietromarchi: We can say it's about doing things with a meaning. Architecture has been a big part of our sustainability projects, as well as making the infrastructure as low key as possible. All our stages are 60 centimeters tall, really, to try and have the least amount of barriers between the audience and the artists and the music. It's sustainable in a way—not just because we use some materials and not others—but because of the network, like what Joachem was also saying. The idea behind the festival is to fill it with a network of people that don't necessarily think the same way, but are aligned in a way, be it architects, designers, carpenters, musicians or philosophers, to practice and to show their ideas. So we try every angle of the festival to imagine it in this way. This is how we do things with a meaning.

More specifically, how do you curate the music to be in cohesion with the listening environment?

Pietromarchi: There's a very precise sonic journey. It's mainly two stages and it depends a little bit on the sound and the time of the day or night, essentially. That's how we curate the program or the festival. So for example, the Labyrinth, which we've been replanting [with trees] through the years, is where Amnesia Scanner are developing a specific performance. It's perfect for the immersive sound experience.

Daelman: We're probably a bit more of a straightforward festival, if you can compare it to Terraforma. We do it three days in a row, but it's a bit different, I guess. We are curious about how to design a club. We build four to five clubs, and they change every year. Throughout the years, we've come to some idea that a club should be enclosed, and should have a sort of proper space that works as a dance floor. That's what we mainly ask our designers to do. This year was actually the first year that we had a sort of listening space, an ambient space, whatever you want to call it.

Joachem, how do you design a club for Horst? What brought you to wanting to design the utopic club experience and inviting high-end architecture firms to facilitate that vision?

Daelman: I think mainly because we loved clubbing. We were very much fed up with the typical festival stages—this just never-ending stage with a very big disconnection with a DJ playing and the people in the crowd. We felt like it wasn't really interesting. Then we noticed, not only for ourselves, but also when inviting artists or architects to rethink a space—which is very much being under intense use—that this is a very appealing question, actually. What's the connection between the DJ and the audience? How does the audience find itself? How do you find specific highlights in the space itself? How does it maybe connect to the context? How does it connect to the lake or the water or the woods? And how does it play with the trees and the darkness and the shadows? Then we discover what's possible here, what we can do. It can get kind of boring, too, if you build the same stage every year, so it's an interesting challenge for us, but also for the audience.

Ruggero, you once told Resident Advisor in a previous interview, Terraforma is a "setting where this music can express itself." I know that you have synesthesia, so I'm curious if you know, on an auditory but also visual level, if there are certain settings where music cannot express itself well?

Pietromarchi: There are some contexts where I wouldn't bring any music to be honest, because there is already sound. Many times I've been asked, 'Why don't you really bring Terraforma into natural environments like the peak of a mountain, or a lake or on a beach, etc.?' It's totally a fascinating idea on one hand, but on the other to me, it doesn't feel necessary. If I'm on a beach, if I'm on the peak of a mountain, I wouldn't need any artificial sound because I'm already fulfilled by the natural sounds.

Jochem, what do you think?

Daelman: I just had a quite simple reflection. Like, if it's a very badly designed space, be it a club or concert hall, where you're just in a crowd and it's way too busy, where there's no focus, or where you're constantly feeling as though that you're irritating people because you're in the way. Space allows you to enjoy yourself in the moment.

What do you most hope attendees to your festivals will take away from the experience?

Pietromarchi: I hope they will get some relief. It's going to be a moment of reunion for most of us, after not seeing and not dancing, not listening, not being together for such a long time. So that's what I'm looking forward to.

Daelman: Maybe seeing something differently. Seeing things—big or small—differently in a way that it ignites something or inspires people to take that with them and do something differently as well.

This article was supported by Bottega Veneta.