Emil makes a bike!
Family member Emil makes bikes of all types for all types of people. They run the bike shop Krian and here he is making one more bike.
January 3, 2012
Posted in: DESIGN, FASHION, ICELAND 
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CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN OSLO
Here is the program for the conference. Rather unclear so here is also the link to it.
December 13, 2011
Posted in: ARCHITECTURE, ART, DESIGN, FASHION, ICELAND, ISAC - KHiO, PONDERINGS Comments Closed
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT IN MOZAMBIQUE
I am returning from one more stint in Africa, or in this case Mozambique, where I came first time almost 5 years ago. I have been involved in developing and establishing the first design and art school in the country on university level, where we just finished the 5th semester of teaching aiming for the first graduates with a BA degree in design around this time next year. The experience has been inspiring for someone like me who has been working in design schools in 3 countries in Europe and establishing the first design school in Iceland over 10 years ago. But that is not really the issue of my blog this time.
What is inspiring to read this week is the journal The Economist where the image shows the subject: AFRICA RISING. I must admit that there are raised issues that I have been experiencing a lot. There they say that after decades of slow growth, Africa has a real chance to follow in the footsteps of Asia. When I decided some years ago to go somwhere where it would matter what I teach I did evaluate Asia and other global locations and came to the conclusion that there is no need for my support or educational knowledge in those regions. There are loads of designers in other global locations while in Maputo when we started the school we found only 3 people with university education in design and of course not all of them were available for teaching or able to. Anyway we started the design teaching and have brought in Nordic teachers and from other countries and at least now the atmosphere in Maputo is stimulating with the design students. (A comment from my student Tabea in Laos is that the situation is the same as Mozambique there in Asia, so I should not generalize whole of Asia and she is right).
The Economist states knowledge that over the past decade six of the world’s ten fastest growing countries in the world were African and in eight of the past ten years Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. African communities have started to grow very fast in manufacturing and service economies. This is something I have experienced in Mozambique. When I arrived to Maputo to live there only one student in the pre university art school had an email and none of them had a computer. Today in my school in Matola every student in second year has a computer, we use them just like in Europe, testing ideas and promotion in images and structure, using all kinds of old software. The students are learning very fast as is so common when they have available computers in their hands. Our school also has available access to the Internet, a fundamental issue in learning design and understaning it as part of use and internationalization. I link my students in Maputo to Facebook friends in other locations and we all help each other globally on the internet. The teaching itself is like in all design environments, not so formal but explorational where everyone learns together through testing and distributing the latest tricks etc.
The Economist states that Africa now has a fast growing middle-class. According to the World Bank, around 60 million Africans have an income of $3000 a year and soon will be 100 million in 2015. The rate of foreign investment has soared in the past decade and for example China’s arrival has improved Africa’s infrastructure and boosted the manufacturing sectors. Other non-Western countires like Brazil (very active in Mozambique since they have the same language culture), Turkey, Malayzia and India are moving into business in Africa.
The Economist also states that Africa’s ethusiasm for technology is boosting growth and my experience in Mozambique is that they are jumping over development steps, for example going directly into 3G mobile use skipping land telephone systems. Today, Africa has more than 600 million mobile users which is more than America or Europe. Mobile banking and digital economic advances have moved incredibly fast.
All of this is what I have been feeling in my time in Mozambique, the young are moving incredibly fast to our world of living in internet world supporting all services and development. It has been great to follow this development and feel how the coming generations are coming into being as modern activists. I am proud of my students and see nothing but positive future.
December 8, 2011
Posted in: AFRICA, DESIGN, ISAC - KHiO, MOZAMBIQUE, PONDERINGS Comments Closed
DESIGN WORKSHOP IN MOZAMBIQUE BECOMES TRADITION
The digital class where the students experimented with layers and compositions in photoshop and illustrator.
We have had regular workshop with the design students in ISArC in Maputo. This time the workshop was directed as very technical and practical, especially in fashion and graphic design. The guests from my school in Oslo this time were DAGFINN SIGRIDSON SKOGLUND, coming for the second time with fashion knowledge and HAAVARD STEENSEN with his great graphic and web design knowledge.
Now the school has been run for 5 semesters although the students still have two more semesters to go and will graduate with a BA degree in design around this time next year. We did run an experimental semester before the school started which was an excellent tool for developing the program after months of writing and planning and also to exercise the teaching with new personal. Here is really a link to the history of my work in Mozambique. This will soon be 5 years since I came first there and had the first meetings about study programs etc. Time passes and it is great to enjoy the fast development in Mozambique. Now is finishing the 5th semester since we started!
The side image is by Sandra Pizura for fun
Here is a photo album from the course showing the methods and athmo in ISArC.
Tayloring going on where they use Mozambican capulana as material for shorts. Tailoring class driven by Dagfinn from Norway
December 3, 2011
Posted in: AFRICA, DESIGN, FASHION, ISAC - KHiO, MOZAMBIQUE Comments Closed
FIRST EXHIBITION OF ARTISTS FROM ISARC
November 27, 2011
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DR HANS ROSLING WAS A DOCTOR IN MOZAMBIQUE AND EXPLAINS
One of my favourite social workers came to Maputo and spoke about results and development changers from the time when he worked here. I recommend.
November 24, 2011
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SAMUEL DJIVE IN MAPUTO EXHIBITION
One of my students in Maputo, Samuel Djive has opened an exhibition of his work in Franco in Maputo. There is lots of entertaining work there with formal experimentation and love for mixture of objects and form. In my opinion this is one of the better exhibitions I have seen in Franco for a while. Here are a number of images of his work. Promising designer/artist in Maputo, Mozambique!
November 22, 2011
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DIG-EQUALITY PROJECT GETS FUNDING
We have spent almost 5 years on a project named DIG-Equality, meaning DESIGN INNOVATION FOR GENDER EQUALITY. Me and Sóley Stefánsdóttir have made a project document that has been used to stimulate some gender driven research and action projects in design and architecture. Will post more about this later.
This project is about gender issues and this week the project received research fund to continue the work that has been done mostly unfunded until now. This funding comes from Aurora Foundation. There is a desperate need for an internet location, website where everything in this field is collected and people can communicate and organize meetings. Below is an image from the Icelandic paper sending out news about the project. I have posted links to some of my projects here and the DIG-EQULITY project publication is here.
From the newspaper posting the news of the fund.
November 21, 2011
Posted in: DESIGN, ICELAND, PONDERINGS, SUSTAINABILITY Comments Closed
ECO/BIO-PRODUCTION IN ICELAND – SÓLHEIMAR
The new and developing larger greenhouse in Sólheimar. They can not supply the demand that is coming these days from the consumer market. Icelander’s are becoming much more focused in this direction after the crash in 2008.
We are a few people looking at the bio-eco game in Iceland. We are linked to the Iceland Academy of Art and various Eco actors. Food and the future of consumption is the biggest issue of the coming decades. In our mapping exercise we were invited to Sólheimar eco village. This is a very old institute now and their presentation says:
“Solheimar is a world renowned sustainable community known for its artistic and ecological atmosphere where about 100 people live and work together. It was founded in 1930 by Sesselja Hreindís Sigmundsdóttir (1902-1974). It is a small village set out in the countryside, characterized by vegetation, open common spaces and buildings that nicely co-exist with the landscape.”
Standard production in Iceland almost all the year around. Geo thermal heating provides heat for the greenhouses. Eco tomatoes with all the materials and nature that should be provided to us.
For better information about them look at their website and map. Here is also a large collection of images from Sólheimar for those that are interested that way. And here is one of my own photo albums from the visit.
As designers we went specifically to get to know better about the production of bio-grown products, but of course went through all the workshops and met many of the workers.
This activity is what can save Iceland (and hopefully many other locations) from the sad direction that we are aiming towards: now 7.000000 people, many of which do not have enough to eat and we use 1,4 earths every year while we only have one to live off. This we will be able to do for not so many years in the coming future.
Designers are always becoming more interested in this method of creating solutions that are human and do not overkill the natural conditions that we have on earth. To me the Triple Bottom Line has been a simple method in evaluating if something is worth pursuing or should be skipped.
Anyway yesterday we were taken around in Sólheimar and I have here many photos from the place and now our next steps will be to connect designers and interested parties to facilitate information and education to the public.
It was great to be taken around the place by Master of Ceremonies Erlendur Pálsson and meeting staff and bio members of all kinds. People making fashion, candles, food etc. The images tell the story better than my bad typing.
Production by residents in Sólheimar. There are many more images in this album.
November 11, 2011
Posted in: ART, DESIGN, ICELAND, SUSTAINABILITY Comments Closed
THACKARA AND THOUGHTS
From left: Jóhannes Þórðarsson, dean of the Faculty of Design in Iceland, John Thackara, design and world developer and Sóley Stefánsdóttir, graphic designer and environmental and gender developer. All walking next to a boiling hot spring in Geysir area in Iceland.
My friend John Thackara came to visit Iceland to participate in the grand national meeting about design policy for my country. You can see their presentations here in an earlier blog. After the meeting we spent two days travelling for John getting to know the conditions in Iceland and the potentials and dangers that the nation is facing these days. Iceland is torn between basically two blocks of people:
One wanting to develop business however and whatever the costs and
The other wanting to look after the country to create a potential future for everyone in harmony with nature and location.
My hunch is that these blocks are similar in size, which is actually a rather recent condition since until quite recently the later protective group of people were much fewer. They were considered reactionary conservatives fighting for nature in opposition to the profit driven capitalistic drive. This is a similar condition that actually drives most developing economies like Iceland and many of the countries that I am involved with in Africa. The local people do not care about the future or nature if they can have a fast buck. This has been very much the attitude in Iceland for the last 3 to 4 decades and large parts of the exceptional nature in Iceland has been destroyed by power stations and aluminium smelting factories.
Today there seem to be happening some changes in the attitudes of more Icelanders. People have started talking about agriculture anew, nature being the generator of health and prosperity rather than fast bucks from large international factories. I have the feeling that the same is happening now in Greenland where Alcoa, an aluminium company that has destroyed parts of Icelandic nature, is planning an aluminium factory that will have 100 times the national turnover of the country itself. Many more examples of this is happening but I do not bother to write about that here.
Parts of Icelanders seem to be changing mentally after the financial crash. Of course not everybody but the public has started having ideas about the future of Iceland rather than the financial gain by a small group of entrepreneurs. Of course the younger people are opposed to the rip off economy that existed here before 2008, when everything crashed and the banks collapsed.
A coffee break next to Brúarhlöð in Iceland. We had such mellow time that we almost did not want to go further. But later we had a hot spring bath in Landmannalaugar.
It was fun to take John around and have long term conversations about potential changes and completely necessary changes that are needed since today we are using 1,4 earth while there is only 1 earth available for us to use. We can only survive in this form for ca 20-30 years through slow collapse. Or the other potential future can be that we will join forces to change internally and start living on earth in the form that is possible for the human race.
Here is a photo album from Landmannalaugar and the trip.
November 7, 2011
Posted in: DESIGN, ICELAND, PONDERINGS, SUSTAINABILITY Comments Closed
ICELAND GLACIOLOGICAL SOCIETY CABIN REPAIRED
I have been a member of this very important society in Iceland for decades. The work done is very important in knowing the behaviour of nature and volcanoes and glaciers. But it is also a society of very close friends that travel together and get things done in Icelandic nature. Here is a simple video from the 2011 autumn trip to Jökulheimar, one of the 9 cabins that the society runs.
November 6, 2011
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CONFERENCE ABOUT DESIGN POLICY FOR ICELAND
On my birthday in the end of August there was held a conference in Reykjavik about the first proper Design Policy Possibility for Iceland. The event was actually a fundamental step after years of hopes and attempts by architects and designers to create some kind of a comprehensive direction for their fields. It is not surprising that design and architecture (actually all creative fields in Iceland) had been rather uncomprehensive since all of us that have taken further education in these fields are educated abroad. For example in my old architects firma that I ran in the 80’s we were three architects with education from 6 different countries in Europe and America. No wonder Icelandic design orientation has been rather unconservative since all of us are educated abroad and from such different cultural influences. Today after 10 years of design and architectural education that we established some dialogue has started that will operate with the development of local Icelandic culture and current practical issues.
The conference was supposed to be a culmination of touches and smaller events between fields that operate with design. From industry, government, specialized organizations and artists. Wery many presentation were made that we can see HERE. I have picked out some of the presentations, especially the FINAL DIALOGUE, and the one by my friends from abroad:
DORI TURNSTALL:
06 Dori Tunstall from Innovation Center Iceland on Vimeo.
1) The other Dori in design: DORI TURNSTALL, professor of strategic design in Melbourne, Australia
JAN STAVIK:
2) Design Strategist from Oslo JAN STAVIK, director of the Norwegian Design Council
JOHN THACKARA:
3) A very good friend JOHN THACKARA, director of Doors of Perception, author of the excellent book IN THE BUBBLE
I am not going to say any more in this blog but make available the presentations to those that might be interested in the same directions.
SUMMARY VIDEO:
04 Panel Discussion from Innovation Center Iceland on Vimeo.
October 28, 2011
Posted in: ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, FASHION, ICELAND, SUSTAINABILITY Comments Closed
SOUTH EAST ICELAND AND TOURIST DEVELOPMENT
Attendants to the conference were over 30 participants from many of the activities that are running similar issues in Iceland.
A photo album from the meeting
On the 26th of October was a meeting in South-East Iceland about changes and the future of tourism and development of experiences in the region. I have kind of a difficulty in turning the exact terminology over to English, but at the same time the meeting was quite open. Many gave presentations and opinions about how to deal with the future, both rather pessimistic and optimisic. The theme was named ‘What is sustainability?” and the issues touched upon were many. Some were: What are we talking about? How have things developed in Iceland? How can we learn from foreign experiences and what is the strategy of government? And what is the strategy of small entrepreneurs?
There were presentations of measurement methods by members of the University of Iceland and we did a presentation of the first phase of our project in Höfn last month (See here). There were presentations by grass root activitists and some very bad presentations by members of the academia. Of course I am not meaning all of them, but there are differences in measurements and disseminations that some people do in no way manage to make while their work might be important. Absolutely great to learn more about local activity: Erlendur Pálsson from Sólheimar about organic development, Laufey Helgadóttir from Smyrlabjörg telling about tourist development in their farm and Fanney Björg from the Home Market Shop in Höfn.
A map of Iceland showing the farms that are active in opening up their production locally or into food consumption directly from production.
We learned about the Slow Food activism in Iceland, Sustainability in tourism in Iceland and about the food development that takes place in the fish industry in the local town Höfn. The main company is Skinney Þinganes. Here is a film from that event that we are cutting further for more dissemination and futher development. Furthermore I was impressed by the research done by Kristín Vala Ragnarsdóttir from the Iceland University who introduced the Converge Project.
The main products from the food producers in the Höfn region
This meeting of people working in the same direction was very informative and supportive for the next steps in the development of sustainability and tourism. Both for the region and also for us that are looking at these issues nationally and even internationally. Lots of information that one gained from meeting people that think in the same directions and also quite informative to meet in a place of Icelandic tourism that represents unfortunately the typical services that have been made for tourists that visit Iceland. One has to live in the hope that this will improve when knowledge and design will be allowed to participate in the development.
October 27, 2011
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MEETING IN GREENLAND
Spent part of September in Greenland where some of my students were doing a research project about one block of flats, but I also spent good time in mapping the activity that might be relevant to design education and practice.
October 26, 2011
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A MEETING IN ICELAND ABOUT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
October 25, 2011
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