Indoors and Outdoors. Dichotomies in Norwegian Design

February 16, (Thursday), 6:00 p.m.Indoors and Outdoors. Dichotomies in Norwegian Design

A lecture by Solveig Lonmo (Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum w Trondheim)

Man’s experience of his or her surroundings is to a large degree defined by the dichotomy indoors versus outdoors – culture and nature, two seemingly opposites. Whether if life indoors is experienced claustrophobic or safe, and the outside world represents freedom or punishment, largely depends on how designers solve problems related to this dichotomy. Is a cozy indoors loving people (like many Norwegians actually feel like most of the year – sorry to crush some big myth) open to sense a connection to the nature outside from our place in the candle-lit couch nook, and thereby able to feel a deeper sense of responsibility for and awareness of how we can make use of nature without consuming it to the point of no return? Five Norwegian design projects shed different light on a conceptual approach to valuing the nature we as of now have access to, but might lose if we are careless. Can designers’ conscious interventions or manipulations of the dichotomy inside / outside also make us uncover some kind of inverted core, an inside-out? It is all about designing so that the consumer's relationship with the object, including its possible narratives, becomes strong enough to make us recognize our place in the bigger picture. 

Design for everyone. A cycle of lectures and talks on design

The aim of this cycle of meetings accompanying the exhibition ‘The logic of the local. Contemporary Norwegian and Polish design’ is to familiarise the general public with issues connected with contemporary design. During these discussions and lectures we will be looking at ideas such as slow design, eco-design, design activism, the design market in Poland, design education, and various ways of drawing on local tradition. Our invited guests will include both design theoreticians and active designers from a range of centres including Kraków, Kielce and Katowice.