We are proud to be part of this year's professional program at the Oslo Design Fair, where we are helping to organize a debate series with Norwegian Craftsmen and the Club on Friday 29 January at 17.00.
COZY IS CRIMINAL
Ever since Adolf Loos wrote about Ornament and crime in 1908, architects and designers have frowned upon anything that can be perceived as unnecessary decoration. Terms such as "cozy" did not fit in well with the functionalists' ideals of good spaces and objects. Although the trends have fluctuated over the past hundred years, probably designers have still always had a more or less strained relationship with coziness - even here in the homeland of cottage coziness.
Oslo Design Fair now announces that the cozy is back and we wonder if we really get the professional community on board with this claim. Will coziness be embraced by Norwegian designers or is coziness still a bit criminal?
Chair: Trude Gomnæs Ugelstad, Norwegian Artisans
The panel:
Charlotte Bik Bandlien , anthropologist
Thomas Jenkins , designer
Kristine Bjaadal , designer
Grete Sivertsen, head of Oslo Design Fair
The debate series Norway Designs NÅ Debatt is part of Norway Designs NÅ; a project to highlight contemporary Norwegian designers and products. With this, we are taking up again the original ideas behind PLUS and the exhibitions "Norway Designs for living" by directing the focus back to the dissemination of Norwegian design.
Charlotte Bik Bandlien is an anthropologist with visual and material culture as a field. She has researched taste in a number of contexts nationally and internationally for almost fifteen years - previously as a brand planner in the advertising agency Bates and as a researcher at the Institute for Consumer Research, for the last five years associated with the Oslo Academy of Arts, Department of Design.
Thomas Jenkins has worked in leading design offices before starting his own studio in 2010. His interest in production and materials combined with craft traditions has led him to design furniture and objects with a focus on interaction. Jenkins also works in the branding agency WORK and is chairman of the organization Klubben, which has over 30 members consisting of young Norwegian designers.
Kristine Bjaadal has a master's degree in design from the Oslo Academy of the Arts, and runs her own studio in Oslo. She wants to use objects to tell stories, and focuses on how, through her design of everyday objects, she can turn everyday routines into valued rituals. Her approach to design has a poetic touch, where the use of materials and design together give associations to sculpture as well as to the area of use for which the objects are intended. The result is often functional objects intended for use, but which at the same time have a sculptural function. Bjaadal has exhibited at a number of major international design fairs, and her work has received a lot of attention in the national and international design press. Kristine Bjaadal is a member of both the Club and Norwegian Craftsmen, and is the Club's representative in the collaboration Norway Designs NÅ.
Grete Siversten is the new manager of Oslo Design Fair. She is a well-known figure in the Norwegian design industry, and for many years was the editor of the leading interior design magazine Bo Bedre before she now took over the management position for ODF.
