Introducing: Bjørn Penk

Hello! / Hei! / Hæ!

My name is Bjørn, and I’m a new face both at East of Moon and in Reykjavík. I joined EoM in September as an intern after graduating from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, where I specialized in Service Design and Systems Oriented Design. I first discovered EoM through the North Atlantic grapevine while searching for communities working with experimental approaches to community engagement. I reached out to Arnar — and here I am.

This internship marks one of my first steps in exploring my practice in new contexts — partly stepping out of design academia and into design praxeology. By joining this expanding network of people, projects, and spaces, I’m confident that our collaborations will offer opportunities for cool things to happen — coming in as both a designer and as a new member of the community, bringing with me lived experiences and curiosities from other contexts.

As the internship unfolds, my involvement at EoM will take shape in three main ways:

• Contributing to ongoing and upcoming projects led by my colleagues — bringing in methods and approaches I’ve developed during my studies. This might include applying research methodologies (such as collaborative gigamapping or design research programmes), contributing to content production (graphic design, prototyping, or artifact realization), and using my background and networks to help connect people and practices.
• Initiating ‘my own’ projects within EoM — introducing ideas I’ve been developing and seeking to establish supportive systems together with my colleagues and fellow travellers. My current curiosity around self-organizing networks of localized care continues from my graduation project and will likely remain a guiding thread in this new setting.
• Engaging with the wider community — getting involved in other initiatives within Hafnar.haus and beyond, using what I would like to describe as the “EoM trampoline effect” to bounce into new contexts and collaborations.

I hope that my background in design thinking and practice will contribute to EoM’s experimental praxeology, helping shape both our internal organization and our external footprint. Alongside my work here, I’m also currently exploring the fringes of my practice in other fields — from experimenting with artistic formats (such as a soundwalk made for Hamraborg Festival, in collaboration with Gosia Trajkowska) to teaching (recently hosting a two-day workshop on How to: Systems Oriented Design in the MA Design & New Environments course at LHÍ).

And, lastly, I would like to mention that I am very into vagrant birds, so it is not uncommon for me to drop whatever I have in my hands in order to get to a bird as fast as possible, with the hopes of seeing it before it flies away.

If you’re curious about what I’m working on or want to collaborate, feel free to reach out — either through East of Moon, in the hallways of Hafnar.haus, or my soon-to-be blog: www.p3nk.com

Ciao!