Crafting identities: Designers find beauty in local materials

The resulting works are now on display at the Austurland: Designs from Nowhere exhibition at Spark Design Space during DesignMarch, Iceland’s annual design festival.

Designers  Max Lamb, Julia Lohmann, Thorunn Árnadóttir and Gero Grundmann all attended workshops in the autumn of 2013, paring with local companies and practitioners to learn about the local material, craftsmanship and potential of Austurland, a large remote region in east Iceland with only 12,500 inhabitants. Lamb worked with a geology expert to discover different uses of the stone in the region, while Árnadóttir learned the ancient art of net-weaving and Lohmann and Grundmann scoured the coastline for seaweed to use in their designs.

The exhibition and designs are a celebration of a local culture and craft, intertwining modern design aesthetic with materials and skills that are particular to the region. This is not the first time Iceland has invited designers to its shores to explore local culture. For more, see our Seed on The Iceland Whale Bone Project.