I have been trying to find out for a long time. I am not sure what design is, even though we have already written one book about it and I have given loads of lectures! I still am unsure, have many ideas. Here is a simple movie explaining what it includes.
Look at it:

Dancer Philippe Priasso performing a duet with a mechanical digger. Man and machine, the elegance and force. Beautiful dance.

16.09.2008

I spent September in Canada, mostly in Fogo Island, Newfoundland and a week Quebek City.
Here are pictures from Fogo
I absolutely loved it there and just long to buy one of these little houses. The nature and the houses and stages are beautiful and so many interesting details in this quite simple style and small scale villages.
I was there to help out my friend Elisabet who is moving there for a very exiting job in the Shorefast foundation. Elisabet had to finish of her work in Norway so I was a “babysitter” for her boys Einar and Jon Kolbeinn that are 13 and 17 year old absolutely great boys.
I met extremely nice and open people that let you feel as one of them from day one. I miss everyone and the island and will most definitely go there again and take Dori and Andri with me.

soley i kanada

Soley has spent the last week visiting interesting local production outfits that are collected together into what is called ECONOMUSUEM
Here is a short newsflash from the visit Newsflash

I made a quick sketch of the building that is being constructed for our school. The school is to move there in mid-year 2010. I am trying to understand the complexity of this project. I am really worried that we will not manage to use the building to its potential. There has been lots of turf battles, territorializations and at the same time factions not even prepared to move into the complex. I, being an outsider and unaware of the history have not taken part in this war and just wonder if design can exist and develop in the complex. So far there have been problems in synergy between these factions and access to the various workshops.
Look at my very very crude sketch.

When the fonts start battling it out like every day in our minds!

Gekko’s speech about greed and bankers!

Last summer we visited the Myvatn Nature Baths Project that I have been designing for almost ten years. The beginnings were very low key, but now with increasing number of visitors more buildings have been built, the last one opening last summer. This was a new restaurant wing.

Until recently, almost all business in Iceland was in fishing and industries related to it. It is not a good strategy to base an economy on one resource. Thus, the governmental policy has been in recent decades to support other businesses, especially by building large geo-thermal or hydroelectric power stations that sell the resulting power for the processing of raw materials like aluminium and alloys. The nation has been divided about this policy because it results in great environmental changes to the countryside that is world known for exceptional un-polluted nature. There is a strong opinion in the country that the resulting energy is not environmentally friendlier than energy that creates carbon dioxide. Furthermore, those that oppose this energy policy maintain that the processing of raw materials does not induce education; sophistication in technology except on a very limited scale and thus the nation will remain a community of workers with little education. This policy does not support to the need to create work for women. A large faction of the community wants to induce more environmentally friendly projects in conjunction with raising the level of education and increase the services for tourism that has been increasing during the recent decades. The Myvatn Nature Baths is a project that bases its promotion to the community on the assumption that it is such a project.

Here is a badly taken video of the project from last summer with explanatory commentary.

Small cars that run on air, giving off zero ‘sootprint’ (carbon slip) while driving.

Dear friends. have you been asked to do something for free, on shows, provide material? Many a time have I been asked, as a designer, as an architect, as a lecturer, as a teacher, . . . . and usually because of my position in the romantic field of design. Have a look at Harlan Ellieson’s opinions of payments to writers.

rallarvegendoga

Last weekend we went on our first biking trip in the mountains. Pictures!
Family cycling has not been possible until now because the super cool one in the family has totally refused to travel on a vehicle that does not have a motor (other than his feet). But after all kind of methods of persuasion we finally succeeded! And he loved it and is now planning many more trips!
Andri loves to cycle but hates to hike so this is a superb way to get him up to the mountains.
We had a fantastic trip, took the train to Hallingskeid and cycled up to Finse and then down to Haugastol. Even if the route is quite busy (the most popular cycling route in Norway) we can recommend it, extremely beautiful and… well feels like home for us the Icelanders that are usually drowning in trees in Norway.

kenrobinson

Among the ‘must see’ lectures in our great new world of endless available lectures is Ken Robinson’s talks! Both brilliant and fun.
His subject is education and the need to transform education. ‘We are still educating our kids according to the ideology of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution – killing their creativity. There is a new age now, creative one, and we need the creative people to face the vast challenges of today – the industrial ideology will not get us anywhere in that matter!’

Sir Ken Robinson is the recipient of the RSA Benjamin Franklin Medal 2008. Here is an hour long lecture at that occasion worth every minute of watching.

And here is his fantastic lecture at TED which we have watched and used often.
When we were watching this lecture, our son, then 10 year old, heard bits of it including some of our discussions about it (kids always hear and understand more than you think) The day after he went to school rebellious and told all his friends that the school was destroying their creativity! One of his schoolmates is a very creative and artistic boy. We heard later from his parents that in the evening he got nightmares and couldn´t sleep because he was so scared about his creativity being destroyed.