3rd year students in product design take part in an international research project, Algae for Design-led Transition Towards Blue Bio-economy.

Last fall, the students finished a 13 week long workshop, under guidance from Tinna Gunnarsdóttir, where algae was the main theme. Along with studends from IUA, students studying inhouse design and graphic design at EKA university in Tallin and Aalto university in Finland, are taking part in the project, but they have finished similar courses.

The results of their work was shown in an old gallery, in an industrial area in Tallin. The exhibition opened on Friday the 3rd of June. The students parttaking in the exhbition, all work with the subject in different ways and so the exhibition showed a wide variation of works by the artists, all focusing on respect for algae. Students in inhouse design at EKA did design the exhibition space under guidance from Kärt Ojavee.

Information about the project, the results, a book and a short film, can be found here on the project's website:
https://rainforestsofthenorth.cargo.site/ 

Here you can read a part of the text from the exhibition from the IUA students:

It’s common knowledge that Iceland lacks woodlands. Considering Icelandic forests in a broader context, it becomes clear that Iceland is surrounded by “forests” of kelp. At the beginning of this project, we didn’t view algae as majestic, but rather as slimy, smelly, and uninteresting. After three months of traversing the world of algae, we’ve come to realize their innate beauty, opportunities and profound fragility. As a collective, we realized that the Icelandic kelp forests are of cultural and ecological importance but how can we prevent human’s ignorance from overstepping nature’s limits? Our goal with the project is to encourage respect for algae, just as Icelanders have fought to preserve the mosslands. By exploring the realm of algae: getting to know their differences and embracing them, our hope is that with more knowledge and discourse, our coexistence can be strengthened. In the words of Guðmundur Páll Ólafsson, "You protect only what you love, you love only what you know. You know only what you are taught.”