Can Design help regenerate a future for our farms?
Exploring sustainable agriculture in the North of Iceland
The 2nd years' Students in the MA Design Explorations & Translations at the Iceland University of the Arts recently travelled to the North of Iceland to stay and work on the Syðra Holt farm in Dalvík. This four-day trip was part of an ongoing course called Future Farm which focuses on collaborations between Design and Sustainable Farming Practices.
The owner, Vífill Eiríksson, welcomed the group at Syðra Holt, where he is farming and producing food for his popular restaurant Bioborgari, located in Reykjavík. Vifíll and his team are in the process of implementing methods of regenerative farming, a way of farming inspired by permaculture, where every element of the farming process, including waste, can be used to create a circular system and give back to the land.
As part of an intensive workshop and brainstorming session, the students learned how to plant garlic the organic way, prototyped new farming tools, and mapped the possibilities of the Syðra Holt site for regenerative farming. The group is now modelling the possible slow transformations of the landscape and buildings together with Vífill. The goal is to understand how designers can have an impact on a farm as a shared space including animals (farmed and wild), the farming families, the local community, and visitors.
The result of this ongoing course taught by Thomas Pausz, Designer and Assistant Professor at the IUA, and René Boonekamp, Cultural Activist and Researcher at The University of Iceland, will be exhibited at the end of the Autumn term, with some students already planning to go back to the farm to develop further ideas in the summer.
According to Vífill, the collaboration with the Masters' students, Thomas and René in Future Farm and Syðra Holt, is a great foundation for continuous developments.
“I do believe that the projects students are working on is just the beginning of our collaboration and definitely something we want to continue. Syðra Holt is a farm that has infinitive possibilities and our wish is that the place stays vivid and current. We want to offer students facilities to work on projects that are both exciting and informative for them but also contribute to the knowledge and possibilities of the farm. The thing is this: we have to work together on conveying our core message about the importance of living a good life in harmony with nature, to people.”
Syðra Holt
We asked Vífill about Syðra Holt farm and the people running it.
“I own it with my family — my parents, my sister and her family — as well as Alejandra my wife, and our cat. We all have different knowledge and diverse interests, but we see that as a strength for the farm.”
But one must know something about agriculture when running a farm in the North of Iceland and Vífill says that his parents, Eiríkur and Inger, contribute valuable knowledge and experience to Syðra Holt:
“Eiríkur is a trained agronomist and has in later years increased his knowledge in cultivation. Inger is a skilled handcrafter as well as having a vast cuisine experience. For the last 25 years, they‘ve both taught at the Waldorf School at Lækjarbotnar.”
Vífill himself has great experience to contribute to Syðra Holt but he graduated from IUA with a BA in Architecture and has, for the last three years, been running the organic hamburger restaurant BioBorgari along with his wife Alejandra. She is from Puerto Rico, as is their cat Noah, and studied business in Puerto Rico where she acquired diverse knowledge through her work in charity. Finally, Ilmur, Vífill‘s sister, her husband Tómas Eldjárn, and their two children participate in the work at Syðra Holt. Both Ilmur and Tómas have an education in nursing as well as having experience in tourism and mountaineering.
“One of many things we want to do in Syðra Holt is to provide as much of the ingredients possible for BioBorgari.”
Vífill tells us when we ask about the connection between the farm and the burger place.
“It sort of happened because we were all, at the same time, situated at the same place in life: ready to make big changes and start a new chapter with great challenges. The family had for a long time dreamt about coming together, buying a farm in the North, and become a family of farmers — and truthfully, life has never felt as meaningful. We hope to have diverse produce coming from Syðra Holt, but that it all creates a clear concept where the emphasis on organic agriculture in an active interplay with nature is the main focus.”
A new Reality adds to the Urgency of Local Production
Thomas Pausz explains when we ask him about the course Future Farm in the light of Covid-19. He tells us the visit to Syðra Holt was refreshing, especially during a pandemic.
“Our course is happening in a very specific time and context. The current Covid crisis adds to the urgency of reducing the carbon footprint of “food miles” (the import/export of food) globally. These environmental limitations invite us to invent new ways of producing diverse food locally to ensure Food Safety. Icelandic agriculture has been mostly focusing on a few crops and products and seems to be organized around monocultures aided by efficient technologies. But in another part of the farming spectrum in Iceland, we have found small organic farmers, like Syðra Holt, such as Thomas Ponzi and Björk Bjarnadóttir in Mosfellsdalur, who are practicing regenerative agriculture: farming methods inspired by permaculture, which also gives back to the Environment.”
“This trip felt like a breath of fresh air, particularly for the students who have been doing a lot of remote learning. The site of Syðra Holt is very beautiful, surrounded by horses, mountains, a river, and the whole of Eyjafjörður. It made us realize the importance of connection and physical presence. Without revealing the outcome of the project, we were discussing future possibilities for designers to spend more time working directly on the site, alongside the farming team, the animals, and nature around.
We are interested not only in the farming work but also in the idea that the rural could become an alternative magnet for young people and creative industries. These ideas are documented in recent projects such as the book City Quitters by Karen Rosenkranz and The manifesto for the countryside by Rem Koolhaas. But with René, we are most excited about how this group of students has reinterpreted this “new rural” context in their own way. The brief they have designed for themselves and for the rest of the term is this:
How would a future farm — where designers, farmers, animals, and visitors can interact and exchange in new ways — look and feel?
and I for one can’t wait to see what ideas they come up with.”
