Here is a clip by Abitare that explains the project:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hundreds of herring barrels being packed in Siglufjordur harbour. The photograph was taken in the heyday of the herring adventure, long before people started to give thought to the idea that the stocks might not last forever.

The museum consists of three buildings, showcasing different aspects of life and times in the herring capital. We particularly liked the boathouse with its rebuilt pier and fishing boats. The display was developed together with theatre set designers and includes everything from projections to sounds and smells of the harbour.

Here a view of Siglufjordur in the early 1900s…

— and here for comparison the town at maximum capacity. The population had risen from 380 to just under 4000 people. Today, the harbour structures and most of the factories have been dismantled the town has shrunk to 1200 inhabitants.

Another glimpse of the museum, a rebuilt fishing storehouse.

And a final view of Siglufjordur at the start of the herring boom.

A survey of contemporary German design, curated by Max Borka at MARTa Herford in Germany, 14. February – 19. April 2009

Together with Pieke Bergmans, Studio Libertiny, Raw Edges and Liliana Ovalle I was invited to spend a long weekend in Turin to discuss notions of nature and artifice. We gave presentations about our work and facilitated a design workshop for University students from Turin. The residency was organised by Barbara Brondi and Marco Raino of BRH+ Studio.

The results and documentation of the residency will be published in Interni magazine soon.

A big thank you to the team of the Residence du Parc and to Barbara and Marco!

Luci d’Artista Projects in the city of Torino

Daniel Buren’s “Tappeto volante� (1999) and Studio Libertiny

Two of the students presenting their work

Julia Lohmann & Gero Grundmann

Best known for her elegant lamps made from sheep’s stomachs, designer Julia Lohmann will be resident in the Embankment Galleries’ Studio with Gero Grundmann, for ‘The Conformitory: Nature Contained’, as part of ‘Wouldn’t it be nice… Wishful thinking in art and design’.

Working busily from inside a forensic tent, Lohmann and Grundmann will be manufacturing sanitised, ‘health and safety approved’ versions of the natural world – laminated leaves, perfected branches, nut-free nuts and more…

The Conformitory at ‘Wouldn’t it be nice… Wishful thinking in art and design’, Somerset House, Strand London WC2R 1LA, 27 November – 7 December 2008

For press enquiries please contact: Tom.Coupe@SomersetHouse.org.uk

The ‘Resilience’ concrete and wool tables on display

My response to the concrete and wool brief set by Design Miami/Basel is based on research into manmade structures that are exposed to the elements, re-conquered by nature and demolished by humans as well as the effects of natural disasters on the built environment.

The concrete and wool objects on show play with a role reversal of qualities we associate with manmade and natural materials. Concrete, which is normally considered a structural and long-lasting material, is cast in two-dimensional forms onto a woven wool backing. Then, in a design process that harnesses destructive force and the ‘undesirable’ effects of decay as a creative tool, the concrete shapes are broken up. Held together by wool, normally deemed the weaker material of the two, the fragmented forms are then reconfigured into three-dimensional shapes and fixed. This process allows the creation of a wide range of unique objects based on shapes cast in a single mould.

A view of my section of the ‘Designers of the Future Award’ display

The high ‘Resilience’ table

The low ‘Resilience’ table

For further information please visit: www.designmiami.com
© Julia Lohmann 2008

Press Release:

For Design Miami/ Basel 2008, Design Miami/ has named 4 Designers of the Future. For this award, each designer/collective will create a new object, installation, or series using concrete and wool, supplementing their work with a short video of his/her creative process. The new work and video will be exhibited at Design Miami/ Basel, which will take place at the Markthalle Basel, Viaduktstrasse 10, Basel, Switzerland from June 3 – 5, 2008. The decision to showcase more than one young creative person or collective within a single year was made after taking into consideration the tremendous energy in contemporary design, a field which encompasses a vast variety of compelling approaches and styles. With this award, Design Miami/ Basel demonstrates its commitment to experimental, limited edition and non-industrial design and seeks to reward creativity expressed through new forms, new processes, and new design philosophies. By honoring more than one person or collective at a time, it seeks to provide a more complete picture of where design practice is heading.

More info: http://www.designmiami.com/basel/spotlight/

Martino Gamper

Max Lamb

Clemens Weisshaar & Reed Kram

For the Saloni di Mobile in Milano we built a workshop in Galleria Nilufar.
Instead of finished products we brought 8 kg of kelp from Japan and Ireland and our tools with us and produced the finished pieces in the gallery. There was a real buzz about the new material and our visitors were very excited to mbe able to see the whole working process and touch the material in its different stages of prodcution: dried, re-hydrated, stretched, varnished, unvarnished.

The Irish kelp turned out to be beautifully translucent and green whereas the Japanese Kombu was much browner and hard, almost like a 70′s plastic.

You can find a video of the opening on Core 77 and more images on Dezeen

Julia Lohmann’s 90 m² installation ‘The Catch’ confronts viewers with a vast empty ocean, depleted by over-fishing and our unthinking consumption of marine life. Visitors are swept up in towering waves made of used empty fish boxes taken from Sapporo’s fish market. Unwittingly, they find themselves drifting into its womb-like core. ‘The Catch’ is modeled on an Almadraba, a Mediterranean tuna trap now obsolete due to lack of tuna. It is inspired by Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. The installation probes our fatal beliefs in endless supplies of marine life, in inflated fishing quotas and our reluctance to act on scientific research.

Photography: Yoshisato Komaki

08.12.07-16.12.07, 12.00-19.00 h

Private View: Saturday 08.12. from 17.00
Artist Talk: Sunday 09.12. from 14.00
Where?

Japanese speakers please see the flyer below. When you stand in front of Tokyo Hands in Sapporo the exhibition is two houses down to your right, on the sixth floor. There is a wooden carved elephant in front of the building.