As part of the Nordic fashion Biennale, there is a conference on : Fashion Concious: A conference on fashion, design and sustainability, today from 9.30 to 12.30 in the Nordic House (Alvar Alto-house). Speakers are four very clever women: Ann Thorpe, professor and author, Kristin Vala Ragnarsdottir, professor, Karin Stenmar (DemCollective) and Malin Eriksson (Clean Clothes). See more info below and on the nfb web

Turning Conscience into Activism by Ann Thorpe

Ann Thorpe has spent the last several years living in the United Kingdom, where she taught product design and sustainable design at the University College of the Creative Arts and currently teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture (University College London). Prior to this, she worked in the United States with architects and designers in the Pacific Northwest to increase activities in sustainable building and product stewardship. During this time she served as co-chair of the US Green Building Council’s Cascadia Chapter and participated in collaborative eco-redesign projects with Northwest companies such as Microsoft and REI. She has lectured and published widely on the topic of sustainable design.

Transparency as a keyfactor for growth- by Karin Stenmar

It is possible to combine good design with ecology, ethics, quality and profit making! (more…)

Today, at the Nordic House in Reykjavik, there is a lecture on fashon and sustainability, by Karl Aspelund. The lecture is in english. Free Admission. See detailed program on: http://nordicfashionbiennale.com

The Nordic House in Reykjavik, Iceland, is proud to announce that it will be hosting the first NORDIC FASHION BIENNALE from 19.3 to 05.4.2009.

Launching the event in Reykjavik is no coincidence, as this year’s focus will be on outstanding fashion and jewelry from the West-Nordic nations: the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland.

This year’s main event is “In Front of Creativity”, a design exhibition featuring the cream of West-Nordic fashion selected by curator Matthias Wagner K from Berlin. His selection demonstrates the influence of nature, art and society on West-Nordic designers. This includes the choice of materials, colors and form.
Highlights

Highlights at the NORDIC FASHION BIENNALE include the Icelandic Design Days, during which the Nordic House will be filled with Icelandic fashion design, showrooms and parties.

Other events will include a conference on sustainability in the fashion industry, a seminar on future cooperation between West-Nordic fashion designers, and inspiring talks from successful Nordic designers such as Gudrun & Gudrun from the Faroe Islands. In addition, a photo exhibition will take place on Nordic Street Style at the Biennale-pop up-Bar where other events such as talks, Fashion-Cinema and Marketplace will also be held.

In Front of Creativity, NORDIC FASHION BIENNALE, is a forum for professionals as well as a cultural festival for city-dwellers and visitors. This is the place for inspiration and critical thinking.

The Nordic Fashion Biennale website is now open and will be updated regularly with media material as well as information about the event and speakers.

For further information please contact Ilmur at info@nordicfashionbiennale.com

Viðar Hreinsson, chair-man of the Reykjavík Academy writes on the necessary of building the future of the Icelandic society on living integration of culture, nature, eco-friendly technology, around the country.

One of the main characteristic of the changes with the expansion of the creative class, is the tendency to open up all boundaries of what has been preconceived. Main value of the class being individualism, ambition or productive targeting, diversity and open mind, it can not be denied that these changes increase wage differential.

Richard Florida is an american professor of urban studies, and a Ph.D. from the University of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburg, where he taught for awhile but teaches now at the George Mason University in Fairfax. He has new ideas of the role of the creative class in economical uprising. His main work on this being The Rise of the Creative Class, published in 2002 – a bestseller. (more…)

Series of work-shops on alternative ways to utilize natural and human resources in a self-sustainable ways

For some years, various attempts have been made all around the country to find ways to utilize natural and human resources other than those employed by large scale industry. These innovatory attempts have increased our capacity for a greater variety of options and helped to increase Icelanders’ personal accountability for their own landscape. Yet, for various reasons little heed has been paid to these attempts and there has rarely been sufficient follow-up to many of the ideas that have been forwarded. There has been a sharp division between promising plans and their entrepreneurial implementation on the one hand and between investments and the networks that serve to generate them on the other. In
these difficult times, when people are desperately trying to find alternatives to the excesses of large-scale industry, then we must a way erect bridges between unlike areas of interest.

(more…)

Sustainability, in a general sense, is the capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely. Similarly, the absence of certainty in terms of climate change, global warming has raised the profile of sustainability.^[1] In recent years the concept has been applied more specifically to living organisms and systems. As applied to the human community, sustainability has been expressed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.^[2]

The term has its roots in ecology as the ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes, functions, biodiversity and productivity into the future.^[3] To be sustainable, nature’s resources must only be used at a rate at which they can be replenished naturally. There is now clear scientific evidence, (environmental science), that humanity is living in an unsustainable way, by consuming the Earth’s limited natural resources more rapidly than they are being replaced by nature.^[4][5] Consequently, a collective human effort to keep human use of natural resources within the sustainable development aspect of the Earth’s finite resource limits is now an issue of utmost importance to the present and future of humanity.

Sustainability has become a controversial and complex term that is applied in many different ways: to different levels of biological organization (e.g. wetlands, prairies, forests), human organization (e.g. ecovillages, eco-municipalities, sustainable cities) and human activities and disciplines (e.g. sustainable agriculture, sustainable architecture).

Sustainability is many things to many people. It can simultaneously be an idea, a property of living systems, a manufacturing method, or a way of life. For some people it is little more than a hollow buzz word. Although the definition of sustainable development given by the Brundtland Commission (used above), is the most frequently quoted, it is not universally accepted and has undergone various interpretations. Difficulty in defining sustainability stems in part from the fact that it may be seen to encompass all human activity. It is a very general concept like “liberty” or “justice”, which is accepted as important, but a “dialogue of values”^[6] that defies consensual definition.^[7] It is also a call to action and therefore open to political interpretation concerning the nature of the current situation and the most appropriate way forward. A further practical difficulty with a universal definition is that the strategies needed to address “sustainability” will vary according to the particular circumstances under consideration

Sjá nánar á:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability