Elin Margot Armannsdottir

• Armannsdottir, Elin Margot (2026). Designing Consumption: The Making of Norwegian Aluminium. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, behind silicon and oxygen. Occurring in bauxite, the main ore used for its extraction, it is also present in clay minerals, silicates, and even sapphires and rubies. More common than gemstones, aluminium is the main component of cans and food packaging; it is also integrated in buildings, planes, cars, and, more recently, the electronic devices that follow us around. Despite its omnipresence, aluminium’s widespread use is relatively recent. Its extraction is energy-demanding; thus, commercial production began only in the mid-nineteenth century, and mass consumption developed in the latter part of the twentieth century. This energy-intensive process found a favourable site of production in Norway, where the landscape provided access to abundant and inexpensive hydropower resources, making the country a leading producer in the early twentieth century. Initially lacking a defined market, early companies such as the Norsk Aluminium Company relied heavily on design to introduce aluminium to manufacturers. This lecture presents aluminium as both an element and a material, traces its historical development, and examines the Norwegian case, positioning design as a historical driver of extractivism.

• Armannsdottir, Elin Margot (2026). Aluminium or the recipe for Never-Ending Consumption: Analysis of the Construction of a Material Identity in Interwar Norway. doi: https:/arthistory.phil.muni.cz/dhs2026. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In 1937, the Norwegian producer Norsk Aluminium Company (NACo) and its subsidiaries sold a total of 309 tonnes of aluminium in the form of kitchen utensils. This amount represents a 3,535% increase on 1920, the company's early days, when 8.5 tonnes had been sold. Beyond kitchen utensils, the NACo group produced dairy and brewery articles, various transportation tanks, packaging and many other semi-finished products for automobile, ship and the building industries. Rising to a monopoly status on the Scandinavian market in the 1930’s, NACo attributed their success to their propaganda work using advertisements, exhibitions, films, lectures to trade associations and even technical schools. The various formats highlighted specific properties of the metals depending on the targeted audience; the design of objects often underlined the corresponding material narrative. Production of aluminium expanded globally in the first part of the 20th century, following the adoption of the Hall-Héroult process and its use in explosives and military aviation during the First World War. This latter application helped associate the metal with modernity which persisted through its application in objects such as aeroplanes and automobiles. Norway’s abundant and cheap hydroelectric resources made it an attractive site for energy-demanding aluminium production. However, entering the market at the war's end, NACo missed peak demand and instead focused on manufacturing finished goods, both as an outlet for its metal and as a strategy to introduce Scandinavia to the metal, where the aluminium market remained undeveloped. The proposed paper examines the material narratives disseminated through NACo’s cross-disciplinary marketing formats and design that can be linked to the phenomenal increase in the Scandinavian consumption of the metal. The paper considers how the analysis of such material rhetorics may inform approaches to assess design’s role in the construction of contemporary material identities.

• Armannsdottir, Elin Margot (2026). Design as Geological Force: The Making of Norwegian Aluminium. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The paper Design as Geological Force: The Making of Norwegian Aluminium traces the material flows of aluminium produced by Norsk Aluminium Company (NACO) from its initial commercial-scale production at the beginning of the twentieth century until its exponential growth in the mid-twentieth century. The paper is accompanied by a digital representation, an interactive map depicting the places of extraction, production, manufacture, use, and discard, as well as the material trajectories and their evolution through the period using the software QGIS. In the special Trade & Engineering Supplement of the Times of March 1937, one can find a poster depicting a waterfall at the end of a fjord. The cascade plunges onto a globe; at its point of impact appears the silhouette of a factory from which the water magically transforms into planes, ships, skyscrapers, pots, pans and cars. Designed by Paul Lorck Eidem, one of Norway’s leading advertisement artists at the time, and commissioned by NACO, the artist makes the industrial process seem effortless and local, almost natural. With powerful waterfalls at the end of deep fjords, Norway was indeed and remains an appealing location for aluminium producers seeking to lower costs of production by exploiting cheap hydroelectricity. At the time, NACO held a monopoly on the Scandinavian market and contributed greatly to defining the metal’s place in everyday objects, promoting it as a local material, as the poster proclaimed: Out of Norway falls aluminium. However, the main raw materials from which the metal is produced are absent from the country's geology. Like all aluminium smelted in the country, Norway is merely a stop on the metal’s journey. In the early 20th century, companies driven by the promise of the light metal engaged in international coordination, extracting ore in one place, refining, smelting, manufacturing, and consuming in others. NACO’s smelters were supplied with cryolite from Greenland and aluminium oxide from Høyanger, which itself depended on bauxite imported from the Var region in France. Aluminium travelled and still travels, changing communities, environments and, form at each stop. Where were the raw materials extracted from, where were the refined materials sent to and what impacts did each stop entail? By focusing on material flows, here aluminium, design historians can provide a new understanding of how design shapes consumption, and a detailed assessment of its broader socio-ecological impact. The paper traces the circulation of aluminium to and from Norway during the early decades of its production, revealing the intricate transnational effects that designing with the metal involved. The paper and map are based on primary and secondary sources, using existing writings in the field of business history combined with corporate archives from NACO and its subsidiaries in Sweden, Denmark, and France.

View all works in NVA