Nordic-DogS » Design & environment

Nordic Travels and Work in Maputo

dogs — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:18:02 +0000

From my lecture in the Reykjavik Art Museum. I see this website is on the screen.

I took a quick trip to home fields this September to confer with my people about our work here in Maputo, how the strategy is going, how to change course and what the next steps should be. I also attended the annual Cirrus Conference that took place in Copenhagen this time. I am the leader of the Cirrus Network, which is a network of the majority of Design and Art schools in the Nordic and Baltic countries. That work has given me great pleasure (and obligations) since I really enjoy working for design internationally, especially promoting it as something of value for society and with the other institutes influence national and Nordic design policy, education and research.

I gave lectures in Oslo and Reykjavik about our work in Africa and the establishment of ISAC to make sure that a wider group of people participate in our effort. Surely a larger group has the ability to find wider and diverse possibilities that just the two of us. We have also always considered ourselves as representatives of the networks of designers that we belong to like KHiO, LHÍ, Cirrus and the Cumulus Association. The objective of meeting up with friends in the North was to look out for possibilities of cooperation in the coming very sensitive years for the new school. It pleased me greatly how many came to my presenatations, especially to the Reykjavik lecture and it was fun to meet many friends and participate in discussions about possibilities. Now I have returned to the busy life of getting things further off the ground, participating in the World Wide Views workshop and exhibition that Sóley has been running here and get on with the many tasks of creating strategies for the coming months and years.

4th Sept. 2008, Cars that go on air

dogs — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:10:56 +0000

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

4th July 2008. The Problem with Big Green

dogs — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:34:16 +0000

Green is getting mainstream… Big Green! Here is an article on worldchanging with an interview with Dr. Tom Crompton, author of the WWF recent report Weathercocks and Signposts: the environment movement at a crossroads The problem with the small green steps is that it doesn´t seem to lead to bigger steps and a deeper care for the environment and nature, there is even the danger that the small green steps are environmentally unfriendly because it can lead to the idea that we don´t need the BIG environmental steps we REALLY need. Here is one interesting bit of the interview: “To get beyond the small steps and change the fabric of the debate, Crompton says, we need to engage the values that underpin public discussion. For example, appeal to people’s sense of connection to the natural world. And he insists that this isn’t the same as heartstrings-tugging approaches we’ve seen before. Asking the public to save the panda out of moral obligation, because we feel guilty, is not the answer. What previous campaigns have missed is that the world we hope to build as we progress towards sustainability is not just a world that offers a better quality of life, it’s a world that’s more in alignment with the sort of fundamental values (from concern for our children to connection to nature to a sense of duty) that most define us as human beings. When we are at our best, we are capable of extraordinary things.”

worldchanging

28th Jan. 2008. Connection of the Bosses

dogs — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:56:58 +0000

An interesting mapping of the power of those that rule. We in Iceland are especially interested in Alcoa and how the people there are connected to many of the most influential and often not the most ethical practices in the world. Alcoa was lucky enough to be trusted to destroy a large segment of the Icelandic highland for aluminium smelting. See:

They Rule

Saving Iceland

6. Dec, 2007. Playing Rethink

dogs — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:44:53 +0000

Play rethink

is a board game where you take on everyday things and rethink them. Then you can join the network of rethinkers and present your idea and look at others. You can even be featured in the “project of the month”, to nourish your ego! or to get you more enthusiastic! The believe of the designers that made the game is that sharing ideas will help us make the everyday life more environmentally and socially friendly and that creativity can change the world! There are so many things in everyday life that we can find much better solutions to, and often its not so complex, we just have to make the effort to think about it in a creative way. I have put it on my wish list!

5. Dec. 2007, Do you really need new things?

dogs — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:14:20 +0000

Do you really need something new? That question asks Fretex for this christmas in a well designed poster series.I hope people will really consider it, I will! Go to the second hand shops there are lots of cool stuff, be creative about gifts – give experiences not just new stuff, spend your time and money in the christmas month going to concerts or whatever gives you pleasure other than buying stuff! I think that living more environmentally friendly, consuming less stuff and polluting less will not limit the quality of our life. Just shift it a bit, maybe towards a real quality. One tiny example is allt the plastic bags we get. All these tons of plastic we use in plastic bags does not make us happier! It is just a few weeks work to make the shift to remember to have a bag with you (In Enklere Liv, you can buy a thin compressible bag to have along always). It has taken me a while, but now I have nearly got to the point of no plastic bags! If you doubt that this is of any importance it could be useful to watch the UN film on Climate Change. Just to realize who is suffering the most because of our extreme need of goods and luxury!

14. Nov 2007, Olof Kolte on sustainability

dogs — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:21:05 +0000

Friend Olof Kolte was invited to Iceland to give lectures on design and sustainability. The best and most critical magazine in the country took an interview asking Olof about his position on design and sustainability. He says: At your lecture, you spoke about the Internet as the “driving force in the explosion of productivity” in the modern world. Is it a good or an evil from the sustainability standpoint? Back in history, a written word was a means of any activity’s organisation. You can well imagine that at that time writing systems were used to regulate the division of a harvest, or to transfer messages to people, or to announce upcoming events. You could have passed the information to people; you could have educated them, or enabled them, to make use of those opportunities they had not been aware of otherwise. But simply writing has never been as much influential as the Internet: it’s an extremely powerful means of communication. When used in an efficient way, it can encompass an incredible mass of information. I recommend you read the whole interview here: Grapewine If you want to see Olof’s homepage his link is in our list of friends