Plastplan won the Icelandic Design Award 2022

Plastplan, founded by Björn Steinar Blumenstein and Brynjólfur Stefánsson, won the Icelandic Design Awards 2022 for their great creativity, experimental processes, contrivance, and a strong vision. Lilja D. Alfreðsdóttir, minister of culture and business affairs gave Plastplan the award at a ceremony that took place on November 17th in Gróska.

From the jury:
Plastplan is a design studio and plastic recycling company that, since its establishment in 2019, has been characterized by great creativity, experimental processes, contrivance, and a strong vision. During these three years, Plastplan has been dedicated to actualizing the life cycle of plastic by fetching plastic waste from local businesses and developing and producing not only beautiful new items in their own product line, but also practical items for businesses they are in partnership with. One example of their projects is interior and furniture design for Höfuðstöðin, art gallery and cultural center built around Chromo Sapiens, an installation by Shoplifter Art / Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir. The design is successful in its effort to create a multi-functional setting which both reflects on the art by Shoplifter and moves in parallel to it in a remarkable manner.

The impact of Plastplan is not only measured by the productivity of their machines, rather it is the vision that guides the work and is an inspiration to businesses and designers far and wide. Plastplan has focused on knowledge transfer in their community, which has yielded more and more partnerships with businesses that want to establish locally recycled plastic materials. Many want to do the right thing but have often been challenged by the lack of localized resources for recycling and production, which have instead often been outsourced to businesses in other countries. This removes the process from the hands of the consumer and therefore makes it largely invisible. The jury rewards Plastplan with the Icelandic Design Awards for their vision, their design, and their circulation of materials. Not only for doing things well, but also for doing the right thing.

About the project:
Plastplan is a plastic recycling project / facility / design studio located in Reykjavík. Day to day operations include plastic recycling, design and product development. The production makes way for circulation of post consumer plastic for the first time in Iceland.

Plastplans goal is to create valuable and functional objects from recycled plastic. With prooving tha plastic can be a valuable raw material Plastplan hope to turn around societies unhealthy relationship with the material. Currently Plastplan are focusing on "mundane innovation" with their collaborators, to be able to address the problem with an audience wider than only the design community.

About the founders:
Björn is from a generation of product designers; designing into a world over flooded with products and useless temptations. The world is in dire need of solutions to an array of problems, which is why Björn tends towards what he calls an anti-capitalistic design method; honest design practice with a real purpose, where no one is screwed over - neither people nor planets.

Brynjólfur has been working on research and development related to plastic recycling since 2018. Before that, he has acquired knowledge from various sources and has, among other things, studied computer science and mechanical engineering alongside the operation of Plastplan.

The award ceremony took place for the 9th time on November 17th in Gróska, in the presence of a large crowd who celebrated outstanding design. Recognition for best investment in design 2022 went to Folk Reykjavík and the year's Honorary Award winner is Reynir Vilhjálmsson, landscape architect.

The jury of the Icelandic Design Awards are Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir, designer and director of the Museum of Design and Applied arts, chairman, María Kristín Jónsdóttir, designer, vice chairman, Ragna Fróðadóttir, designer, Þorleifur Gunnar Gíslason, designer, Arna Sigríður Mathiesen, architect, Margrét Kristín Sigurðardóttir for the Federation of Icelandic Industries and Daniel Byström, designer and Design Nation. 

The Icelandic Design Award honours the best Icelandic design and architecture annually. The importance of design in our society, culture and business has been growing steadily, and it is therefore vital to increase the understanding of good design and highlight the value of quality. 

Celebrating achievement and excellence, the Icelandic Design Award is given to a designer, a team, a studio or an architect in recognition of an outstanding new work, object, project or collection. The award is given to a recent project that demonstrates creative thinking, resourceful solutions, thorough presentation and professional methodology throughout the design process. Best investment in design recognises successful investment in design or architecture in the past year. It is awarded over to a company that has incorporated design in the core of its operations to create value and increase competitiveness. 

The Icelandic Design Award is established by Iceland Design and Architecture in collaboration with the Iceland University of the Arts, the Museum of Design and Applied Art, Promote Iceland, and SI - the Federation of Icelandic Industries.