DesignMarch welcomed visitors from across the world to Reykjavik for four days of design talks, exhibitions, and shows.
— We’re focusing on creativity, traditions, and craftsmanship, and showing young design in Iceland, says Anna Clausen, stylist and creative director, who curated six young fashion designers in a spectacular show at Landsbankinn’s head office in the heart of Reykjavik.
What are the most important aspects when describing the uniqueness of Icelandic design?
— We have a lot of brave designers here! says Helga Ólafsdóttir, Director of DesignMarch.
— Yes, it’s both a bold and, somehow, slightly naive and unfiltered approach, which can be used in a very positive way, Clausen continues. There are no rules, so the talents have just thought bigger and more about creative concepts rather than what will sell. That is refreshing, in these days where people are so concerned with sales and producing silhouettes that are more marketing for the stores. Here, it’s more about the ideas, the craftsmanship, and the materials, which stand out.
— And we don’t have any hierarchy at all, Ólafsdóttir adds. At the opening party, our President and Minister of Culture came, were very friendly, and spoke to everyone.
— This comes down to the size of the country, Clausen explains. The inhabitants, also our ministers and our doctors, are part of family and friends, creating this very tight community. It’s not any social hierarchy that fashion has been built up around in many ways, which is pretty unique.
If you want something, it’s always only two calls away, I heard.
— Yes! Clausen agrees.
Iceland also aims to establish new value chains and reopen factories that were previously shut down, where the machinery was sold to other countries.
— The main challenge is to reestablish production that is good enough to make a supply, that is of a quality that we can be proud of, and sold and marketed internationally. We just have to look at the tradition and heritage and build it up, says Clausen.
— We should concentrate on doing one thing well first. Is it the wool? Then, let’s join forces and concentrate on building it from that point, Ólafsdóttir argues.
What are the main keys to seeing Icelandic fashion and design grow further?
— Support from the Ministry of Industry and, of course, education, says Clausen.
— Just connecting the dots we have, says Ólafsdóttir. And also look abroad and learn how the countries around us have been doing it. You have the recipes. Why not implement them here?
Given the size, Iceland can also function as the perfect test bed for local players, before expanding to your neighbours, Europe, and the US.
— Yes, and because we are so small, it’s easy to get quick feedback. And, it’s easy to be small; it’s when you want to start to grow that it becomes complicated, Ólafsdóttir argues.
— We have the green energy, so I think we should also look into becoming a production hub for new and innovative technology within research of fabrics, tech, biodegradable fabrics, and other things that can be produced in Iceland, Clausen concludes.
A leading name in the field of innovative design is architect Arnhildur Pálmadottir. For this Architecture Biennale in Venice, she’s responsible for the pavilion when Iceland returns to the event after many years. The speculative concept, Lavaforming, envisions the future possibilities in harnessing lava in a molten state.
— Today, we use it in a cooled-down state, crush it, and add cement to it, which is very polluting. We have found that basalt can be a mono material — it has all the materialities that we have in traditional building materials today. We have the structural columns. We have the insulation lights and materials. And, if it cools quickly, we have glass; it gets black and glass-like. This is why we’re saying that we could shift how it can be used, eliminating all the polluting materials and using lava instead, Pálmadottir explains. She continues:
— We’re also working on material testing. As mentioned, the lava can be used as a building material. If it cools down slowly, it gets crystallised and harder, more like a structural element. If it cools quickly, it becomes glass. So we’ve been doing off-site test experiments — doing it on site would be quite dangerous! — together with Lava Show, who are experts at melting lava. So far, we have some columns and bricks, and we will continue with the experiments.
– We’re also in discussion about moulding it and casting it into formwork by trying to remelt the lava. There is also the 3D printing option. In the future, it’s not going to be this ’XYZ’ 3D printer that we see everywhere now, but could be more like a robot. We are working with the technological institute here that has 3D printers, to propose and visualise stuff connected to this.
98% of building materials in Iceland are imported. You’ve mentioned it, but what’s the current state of lava in building materials?
— The tradition in Iceland and in the world has been that lava has been cut out when it’s cooled down in some form — either like a hard brick or a more porous lava rock — and used in buildings, fences, and turf houses. Today, we use Icelandic stone materials in our concrete mix by crushing them down to small stones and then to sand before we grind them together with cement. The process of making cement is so huge, and you’re taking a material that could be moulded into the same wall without the cement, so our proposal is to skip the process of industrialised cement production.
Can you share a road map of what’s required to happen in order for your future vision to become a reality?
– A part of the project is that we want to propose a change in how our housing system is. In Iceland, we had a constitution proposed but not accepted. If it had been accepted, all materials that come from the ground would be in the ownership of the nation. So we thought that, connected to our project, the lava that comes from the ground would be owned by the people. This means that the housing would be free because people would make cities out of the lava that comes from the ground for the people.
— We’re gonna look at different scenarios and possibilities, and that’s what I like about such a speculative project; you can simulate the world, and different types of worlds, as well as using AI. The vision for the curation of this year’s Venice biennale is to mix natural intelligence with artificial intelligence and human intelligence — I would say that our project is very well connected to all of that.
– There are people working on a lot of interesting research projects connected to, for example, using lava materials in concrete to lower the cement. This is, of course, nice, but it all comes down to ’connection.’ We need to connect the universities, we need to have a research centre, and we need to innovate and use the design. There needs to be some kind of melting point for ideas and possibilities to test them and research them better.
That might be your next step after Venice, to start that.
— Yes, I’ll make a think tank! Pálmadottir states.
Another example of reuse is ceramic and textile studio Studio Miklo, aiming to work with the waste as a resource principle for defective high-fired ceramics.
— These objects were just building up at the studio, so we asked ourselves, what can we do with them? Hjördís Gestsdóttir, co-founder, explains. The high-fired process makes it hard and glass-like, and it’s hard to do anything with it. However, it’s very beautiful, so we break it down and receive differently sized grains and are exploring ways to reuse it and make something new out of broken pieces.
You’ve so far presented ceramic objects as prototypes. What are the next steps?
— These prototypes are more about looking at the texture and how to work with the material. It’s not that much of a design in it. Now, we want to make objects that are more complex in form and shape, as well as bigger pieces.
Steve Christer is the co-founder of leading Icelandic architecture firm Studio Granda. The company won Place of the Year at the Icelandic Design Awards 2024 for Smiðja, an office building for Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament, and also the longest-running ongoing representative assembly in the world.
— We’re trying to establish a place which is essential to the history and future of Iceland, he explains. It’s based on things that have existed here since man has been on this island, and we hope it will create a framework for the future of the island to develop.
You’re using a lot of local materials.
— Yes, we try as much as we can. When we don’t use local ones, such as the stone that’s been collected on the island, we source materials that have a relationship to it. Unfortunately, we don’t have a cement works in Iceland anymore. That’s something that we can’t deal with. We have to import the cement.
The local creative fields seem very eager to work with local materials while, in some cases, it’s a challenge given the lack of factories and infrastructure.
— Yes, we’re very, very challenged, Christer agrees. Essentially, we only have rock. People say you can make things out of driftwood, but the driftwood is a diminishing resource and highly flawed — most of it is rotten, damaged, or the wrong kind of wood, so it’s a romantic idea. You can maybe make some jewellery out of it, but certainly not any serious buildings. We have turf, which is a pretty material, but you can’t really make anything more than half a story house with it, or put it on your roof.
— We also make aluminium here. Or, they smelt aluminium, but the aluminium bauxite comes from the other side of the world. They just use our electricity. And the final product goes out of the country for post-manufacture, making aluminium sheets in Germany, the UK, or the US, and comes back again as a value-added product. So it’s been imported into the country twice. That costs some money.
– I’d say that when we’re talking about building materials in Iceland, the most prevalent ones we have are light and darkness. We have the summer and we have the winter. If you work with that quality, how you illuminate the building and how it’s seen from the outside in the wintertime and from the inside with light coming into it, that’s your building. Much more than the building material itself.
What’s the future like for local materials here?
— Bleak. Just using the stone that we have here. The reason we won the competition (Icelandic Design Awards) is that we have Icelandic stone for the Icelandic parliament. That’s the line that wins us the competition. Everybody gives us a kiss on the cheek and a bunch of flowers for that idea. The first question we get from the state building authority is why don’t we import the stone from China. The first question we get from the engineers that we get to work with on the building is why we don’t import the stone from India. The first question we get from the people who actually work with stone in Iceland is why don’t we import the stone from South America.
Why are they saying that?
— Because it’s easier, and it has CE markings, Christer explains. And, since we’re in an area where the tectonic plates of the Earth are separating, our Icelandic stone is fractured. So when you cut the stone, you actually are only getting maybe 30% usage of it, because much of it actually disintegrates. It’s fractured. When you buy a sheet from wherever, it’s already gone through that process. That waste is always left in the country where it’s sourced.
— When we calculate the eco footprint of Smiðja, the fact that we have stone taken locally doesn’t figure in the equation because there is no factor for shipping Icelandic stone in the computer equation used. The only fact they have is Norwegian stone. So already there, it’s the wrong factor in the equation — even though you’re doing right, you can’t prove you’re doing right.
It says a lot about the current state.
— This is where we are, and you have to face the hardcore reality of the environment that you’re working in. If you don’t deal with that, you’re completely lost.
Sirrý Ágústsdóttir is the co-founder of Dýpi, an Icelandic innovation company developing paint made from algae.
— The original paint contains 30% algae, and all the binders and ingredients are organic and made from plants, stones, and bugs, and there’s an opportunity to put more algae into it, she says.
The algae are harvested from a fjord in the west of Iceland, called Arnarfjörður, which has had around 120 million tons lying on the bottom of the ocean for the last 160 million years.
— Around the world, algae are not allowed to be picked, so it’s not a source that people can use. But here, there’s a permission to harvest 2.5 million tons for the next 40 years. The reason we need to pick it is that they are suffocating the live ones, which does a big job to clean the ocean and not make it sour. So, it needs to be picked up gently, so that the new ones can thrive, because they need to have light from the sun to shine through. This makes it a really important job for the blue ecosystem. It’s also important that we both can use something from such a short amount of distance, and for the local community, to make a product that will create jobs in the small village for the next 40 years, Ágústsdóttir shares. She continues:
— We have created the formulas for four prototypes, and our dream product would be a dry product that you would mix your own water in, so that I wouldn’t have to send so much water between countries. I also think there’s something beautiful about the idea of you mixing your own paint and being able to decide whether to have it a bit thinner or a bit thicker, and that something organic happens on the way when you’re painting. You can take charge of it. It’s not the same when you have plastic paint, when you know the outcome.
Yes, what are the unique properties of algae in painting?
— It’s kind of a ’sea goat’ (the greatest thing in the sea), I have to say. It’s really high in pH, so no bacteria or mould live in it. It’s full of minerals, such as calcium. You can eat it. You can drink it — obviously not in paint, but it’s a product that can be used as a supplement for food.
And you mentioned that it’s an ultimate choice for wet spaces as well.
— Yes, in one of our products, which is like a really thick paste, you get the perfect effect for where it’s really damp and wet, which are usually the places that have the bacteria growing and the mould problems. We’re really, really happy about that. In Iceland, there have been a lot of mould problems in houses, and a lot of schools have had to close due to health issues for children and teachers. This is costing the government hundreds of millions, and this product would definitely help there, both the environment and the humans.
Have you seen any competitors?
— No, and that is probably because mining isn’t allowed in most of Europe, giving us a unique opportunity to do this. We have made a contract with a company that has a mining permit that no one can buy this product. This exclusivity helps to protect our products in that way.
Dýpi aims to test two or three products on the local market, ”as an experiment,” before a full launch in 2026.
– A lot of my energy has been on doing the prototypes and finalising the products, Augusdottir explains. We also have a couple of interested architects who want to join us, and use it on concrete walls that have not yet been painted with plastic paint. We will have a bunch of good ideas for the product in 2026, before we launch it on the market and go to Europe.
