Garðar Eyjólfsson and Thomas Pausz assume the roles of Programme Directors for MA Design.
Garðar holds an Honours degree in Product Design from Central Saint Martins, London and a Cum Laude from Design Academy Eindhoven. He approaches his work from material and transformation in local context, connecting material with more abstract notions like energy and culture. Drawing knowledge from economics and research on sustainability he strives to find poetic relationships between material, functions and human rituals.
Thomas is a designer working and thinking across disciplines. After training in Philosophy in Paris, Thomas graduated from the Masters in Design Products at the Royal College of Arts and worked in London, Berlin and Reykjavik. Thomas designs speculative production scenarios, narratives and artefacts based on a critical mapping of current systems. In parallel to this studio practice, Thomas curates design exhibitions and writes on the human and ecological aura of technology.
The MA Design Programme concerns itself with Reality & Realities, the dynamic relationship between the Concrete and the Abstract. The design studies focus on the specificity of Iceland as a means to understand the wider world. In dialogue with a hands-on and experimental studio culture, the MA Design Programme is engaged with the value and the topic of Imagination, and the contemporary need to design alternative realities and futures.
We welcome them both in their new roles at the Department of Design and Architecture.
