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Silvija Seres: Hello and welcome to this conversation with LØRN ans school NKI where we talk about styling of our homes and our offices and interior architecture and design in the perspective of the changing society around us. My guests are Solvi Marie Fjeldstad from NKI and Anja Bisgaard from Spott trends. Welcome both of you. 

Anja Gaede Bisgaard: Thank you. 

Silvija: This is our second conversation. The first one was more a motivation for why this is an interesting topic. And my take away from the first conversation is that society is really changing dramatically around us. But the way we live our life always changes slower. Interior design can be a very important influence into doing this change in a good way. Both psychologically and also related to perhaps the environment and sustainability. And we finished the previous conversation with Anja telling us about how the whole ecosystem needs to be harmonized and upgraded, and the way that we do purchasing needs to be done with respect. Solvi you wanted to add something to that. So maybe I could ask you to comment and then I would like you both to help me understand how humans fit into this picture? 

Solvi Marie Fjeldstad: Yes, because Anja was talking about that there will be more demands on companies as far as what they put into their products. I'm thinking first of all, how can my students find out all of the stuff that is put in. I know that some of the suppliers for carpets are really good at giving speeches, inviting people in to talk about the whole process from how a product is made until how it can be recycled when you take it off and becomes into something else. I agree, it should really be loss on what we can produce, right? The thing is, how can people working with this find out in this jungle, before all these laws are applied. Do you have any tips Anja? 

Anja: Yeah. The thing is, both for designers, interior designers, clothes designers, all kind of creative designers that are related to products is a whole new level and a parallel level to their educational competencies. That is creating more complexity. But I think it needs to be part of education, and I think it needs to be part of education way earlier on, not just the final subjects that you choose. It has to start in groundschool in understanding materials much more and understanding the life cycle of materials so it becomes part of general education and general understanding of how people are part of an ecosystem. The ecosystem that we live in. So one thing is that it needs to start way earlier on and then we of course need to re educate people working within the creative industry, designers. In terms of both understanding what are the perspectives of materials and what is the new perspective of creating the design for a life cycle of the products that they make. So it is knowledge and education that we need to build up on top of everything, but it is an extra layer, an extra complexity. So either it's within the designer or it's a collaborative approach to design where you have a sustainability consultant. Maybe working in pairs. 

Silvija: If I may comment. I think we have to be careful because there are so many new needs of education in all subjects, so I think the question here is more how do we upgrade the existing subjects to be better in terms of sustainability, understanding rather than trying to add something more. I would like to make sure that people also learn some programming and that every interior designer knows that, et cetera. It's a new way of upgrading skills and combining skills that is desperately necessary. And perhaps also for techies like me to learn from economists or designers, or something else. That we become better at combining what we do. What do you think, Solvi?

Solvi: Yeah, definitely. And I think that the tech is there. You can take your phone now and go out into nature? You can go into your garden and you can take a picture with an app of a flower and it'll tell you what the name of the flower is and a lot of information. So that could easily be something that you could do with interior design. Take a picture of the surroundings, and the furniture and maybe the information on what it's made of should pop up. That would be a dream for me if I could have my interior design ideas, my collage for a company or for a home and have the client download an app on their iPad and they can walk around in the model that I drew for them. And they can also touch the sofa and it'll show the measurements. But it will not show what the sofa is made of, and that would be fun. 

Silvija: I also think here we need to think about the digital infrastructure just as much as the physical infrastructure or physical things as digital things. I'm just thinking the coming generations will have a completely different set of requirements. The first thing my kids want to see about the place where we go on a vacation or if we travel is where do they plug in to charge and how do they get onto the Wi-Fi? And an architect friend of mine was complaining. He went on a trip to Berlin and he took his daughter with him, and she was bored. And you know if you're walking around Berlin and are bored, you're not paying attention to the architecture. You're probably missing your YouTube. I've heard about these kids in Bergen that have started using the city tram, Bybanen, as a place together. So they don't go to a coffee shop, they don't go to a mall. They sit on Bybanen and you know it's warm, but it also has good Internet and they can charge and they can be together with their digital devices. So I think it's understanding what being together means and what necessary infrastructure for the future generations as much as for the established generations that is going to be a really difficult balance to strike going forward. 

Anja: Yes of course. We are at a point in time where we have several generations at the same time and generations that become shorter and shorter. I mean they started out with being 50 years, now they're 20 and then a generation shift and the need shift and technology shifts and we're beginning to talk about the metaverse. Which of course also is where we're going to see a lot of the youth spending their time. A short explanation to why they are bored walking in Berlin is the pace and the pace of change that they have been used to and brought up with. Their brains are actually changing in terms of how fast they need stimuli to happen and that is because of YouTube and Tiktok and the whole extremely fast-paced stimuli that they get from that line. And that will of course affect what they think is fun in the future. Where do they want to go and what are the possibilities? And of course, the digital world is so much more interesting, you can do anything. You do anything in the digital world. There's no boundaries, there's no gravity, there are no physical obstacles to what you can do. That is why it's so interrogating and so interesting and so entertaining. 

Silvija: Solvi.

Solvi: It's so true. I have a son, he's in his mid 20s and he's all digital. He needs to know that he can get online all the time and his phone is his world. But he's not digital the way that he's on every platform, but he needs to be in contact with his friends or watch videos. So what was interesting for me was to see, if you're in a city and you get bored. I think the pace that you talked about Anja is one thing, but it is also the noise, the smells, all the senses that influence us. So one time that I saw my son totally relaxed was in Indonesia. I was there for a world championship and he came down with his father. He didn't live in the area where all the competitors were, he lived down on the beach with his dad and every evening he would rent a motorcycle which he could, but he couldn't hear because of his age. But he would drive all these little roads and it was so remote. And he would hang out with us, living in small huts by the river, and there was no Internet there, and he didn't get bored. There was still a lot of noise because there was a lot of people. But then after the competitions we went far up into the forest, we lived in a hotel, there was no Internet and we walked into the jungle. And there was a tree hut that he climbed up, and he didn't want to leave. And he was just looking and he was just being and that's still the most relaxed I have seen him in years. And it was a beautiful thing actually, and that's what the nature around him did to him. So your surroundings and the smells influence you.

Silvija: What I would like to ask you about is that it's a similar problem or challenge I'm having with my kids. I'm a digital enthusiast and of course I understand they have to be on. I'm all for YouTube. I actually believe they learn tons from YouTube. And the whole family is using Duolingo to learn Spanish and it works amazingly. But what I need some help with is understanding how we create spaces that can help them balance the needs to live in the here and now physically and their extreme needs to be present digitally. One of the examples I want to share with you is. About five years ago, we moved into a new house, and before that we lived in the townhouse with lots of other friends of our children nearby. And we had kids overnight all the time. Here they don't invite kids to spend the night anymore. They are together with their friends, but they prefer their friends to be at home and they all meet digitally. Fortnite, or something else. Same thing happens around the dinner table and around the dinner table. I'm really strict. No phones. But then they sit alone and eat breakfast at the table and ask, Mom, why do I have to stare through the window while I'm eating breakfast? Why can't I look at my screen? And I don't have a good enough answer other than that I’m really scared that the metaverse is swallowing them up whole. I don't know if you have any thoughts on; how do we balance the old and the new, and the physical and the virtual? 

Anja: Well, as a parent myself. I think we have to reverse what it is that we have to teach our children. We don't have to teach them the technology development, they learn that by themselves. We have to teach them some of the analog things just like the old days. You had to sit at one point and talk on the phone, now you can walk around with it. So I think we would have to teach them some of the analog things. And look at it as also an imperative in a general education on upbringing of our children that they get to do that. Like you did Solvi, like bringing your boy out into the nature, I think that is going to be the parent task. I don't think that we can avoid the metaverse. I'm not that scared of it, even though my boys are 11 years old. I think it's also going to be a marvelous exploration. And you can do it there. But we have to understand the chemical, mechanical and physical elements that are in the brain and that kids cannot shut off and I think we need more regulation on the digital as well in order to bring them back into the physical world or have the digital world stop at some point. I think “Ready Player One” is a very good example of it. Maybe we have to shut down two days a week. 

Solvi: Yeah, I'll go back to an example. Because last summer me and my sister bought a little cabin together. And this is like a totally tiny cabin and there's no electricity. We did solar panels, and it's by a lake. But it's a small little peninsula on its own, and again, we've been working the plots and making it livable, but if we wanted to have guests there, we needed to put up a glamping tent. And of course, as an interior designer, I wanted it to look amazing. So of course we needed to do all the lighting inside, but we had to figure out what nice lighting we have with solar panels and in the glamping tent we can't have the solar, but can we find things on battery. And I've learned so much from buying the cabin and living off grid. And maybe we have to, if Putin shuts off the gas supply and we don't have any electricity. What do we do, you know? And this is something that I think is really important that we also put into the design aspect. What do we do and how do we solve it? And again, my son came down to visit and I do have mobile Internet down there because sometimes I work from the cabin, but he wasn't really on as much because he was like, oh a fishing rod, I'll go fishing. But The thing is, they need something to do. 

Silvija: You mentioned lighting. To me lighting is maybe the most interesting part of interior design, and I didn't realize that until I had to make some lighting choices here, but it really can change the space so much, but also provide you with some flexibility. And that's maybe a relatively new tool, being able to use in so many ways with all the LED's stuff and all the Smart House programming. You know, cheap, really cool projectors that allow you to do light art if you wish. And I think this is also a matter of using new technologies to create completely new effects on the way that we live. 

Solvi: Yeah, I think that lighting is important. I tell the students that yes, we do teach a little bit about lighting and in retail design it's really important, but everywhere it's important. But the lighting industry has changed so much with technology. If you want good lighting, you actually need to listen to a designer that only works with lighting. Because colors, Anja, are nothing without light, right? And they will change. 

Anja: Yeah, you said it. We definitely need the right light in order to see the right products in the right way or the intended way at least. And then also in our homes, lights and everything that affects our senses affects our well-being. And lights are one of them, colors are another. And tactility is a third one and then sound is a fourth one. So it goes on to all of our different senses in affecting our well-being. And sometimes I actually have to say that, in interior design, well-being is prioritized. How are things looking? Does it look good? But, how does it feel good? I've just renovated my whole house, for example, and we've highly prioritized acoustic ceilings. And I really also prioritize textiles. To bring in textiles and natural materials so that we highlight how we are actually feeling while in our home. And in that process we've been following interior design programs on TV's and stuff like that. It's been interesting to see an American program called “Designing Miami” and everything just looks good. It's not necessarily about feeling good and I think that in the future is super important because the home is our base. 

Solvi: Definitely. I've watched the same program and my take away from a lot of these programs is that it's so luxurious. It's so highend and also on the economic side. So our students can look at this and dream, but when it comes down to it, your clients are not multi millionaires, you know. 

Silvija: And actually you can do beautiful stuff with natural materials with some love and creativity. 

Anja: Yeah, but I understand that it's not about the millions of dollars those clients can use and I don't think that's the point, and of course that's not reality. So you can't do the same things for your client here, or they shouldn't expect that. But it's also striking to me that they did an Onyx desk like an office desk, that wasn't really a desk. It cost $40,000, and it's not going to be used as a desk, it's just something you're going to look at. They can't sit and work at that desk. It's not functional as a desk, it's just going to be looked at. And I think that you can do smarter even with technology or even with new digitalization things to create a higher well-being and still have a desk. 

Silvija: Ladies, the last couple of minutes of this conversation, I would like you to comment on something that you wrote to me, which I think is a really interesting idea and you've been touching upon the idea of how nature changes the way that we feel. The way that we develop even maybe. So how do we bring nature inside and how do we bring nature or the surroundings of the places that we live in or work into into the picture? 

Solvi: I think the pandemic, at least in Scandinavia, made people go outdoors more and we have space and we have nature at our immediate doorstep, even in Oslo. So we probably learned to appreciate nature again or more, and then you want to have that good feeling that you have when you're outdoors, to bring it in. And you can do that with colors, with textures and materials, but you also need to think of the function as Anya is talking about in the home where you have different zones. Zones that are for relaxation or zones that are for other reasons. So you can manipulate areas in your house to give you the right feel and also a bit of lighting. Anja, you probably have a lot to say. 

Anja: Well, I'm not the interior designer, but of course I have an opinion and I can see it from the trends. And I see that we have a whole decade ahead of us and we're hardly into it already. That is going into the opposite direction of what I believe the 10s were. The 10s is what I called the white period. Like all walls had to be white, we had white shiny kitchens all over the place. I mean, we created these really white homes, at least, that's really what I saw in a new building in Denmark out and we filtered the walls, they had to be white, white, white. We are definitely moving away from that, we began with colors and then incoming wood as an interior material that I see that we're going to have for a decade, just like the old days. More darker woods and we saw that we actually did firm wood furniture pieces inward. And wood is definitely one of those things that just brings nature so much closer to our interiors and our design. And I think that's going to be a long period of time, so of course as well, we have nature right outside, but we really also are appreciating its materials inside. And it goes very much hand in hand with sustainability. Our appreciation of the more raw natural materials. It also goes into the dying of textiles. We're seeing natural dyes becoming very popular and those two movements are going hand in hand and being further developed over the years. 

Solvi: That again brings you to handcrafted pieces right? So we appreciate the handcraft. Handmade carpets and when it comes to wood, you know. 

Anja: Yes of course, but I do still see that the aesthetics still wins over composition when we are looking at the point of view of the consumer. So it's still more from an aesthetic point of view that it's nice to be surrounded by wood, more than it is a sustainable choice. But of course looking a little bit backwards in the value chain. It goes hand in hand. But from the consumer's point of view I still think it's aesthetics and takes on something of a nice feeling to be surrounded with it. But hopefully the wood is produced in a sustainable way, but it will still be from an aesthetic point of view. 

Silvija: Good. I think we're going to go back to this idea of materiality and how to build in a more circular and sustainable way in the next conversation. In this one, we touched a lot on how society is changing the people and then that's changing our interior design and styling needs. Thank you so much so far. 

Solvi: Thank you.

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