Dream Weaving

Knitting in Iceland is serious stuff. The country’s famed wool — sourced from sheep originally brought to Iceland by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago — is known for its combination of inner and outer fibers and distinctive natural colors.

Minarc has taken that passion for the traditional craftsmanship and reimagined it through a contemporary design at Ion City Hotel. There, knitting stitches are magnified to create a graphic pattern used on blankets throughout the hotel.

Minarc has taken the concept even further by fixing the pattern onto the ceiling, which, in turn, casts an even larger pattern of the stitching onto the floor.

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This Just In...

Plús Hús in the press! We’re happy to share our recent articles in Attitude Magazine, Design-Milk and Rue.

Ion City Hotel was recently featured in The Australian, which notes, “Scandi-chic guestrooms offer moody views and ready access to the city’s cafes, bars and restaurants.”

Architectural Digest recently described Ion Adventure as an “architecturally striking, rural retreat [where] gray-and-green-tone interiors reflect the Nordic landscape.”

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In This Issue

Tíu Dropar?  

The Icelandic idiom means Ten Drops, referring mostly to coffee but sometimes wine.  

And it’s an essential philosophy of Minarc, the award-winning design firm best known for blurring boundaries between inside and out. In this issue, you will also find an intersection of cultures, Iceland and Southern California, where principals Erla and Tryggvi first arrived nearly two decades ago.

In Iceland, natives share a formidable bond to the natural environment, but also to neighborliness, becoming essential to one’s livelihood during long, harsh winters. Across continents, Minarc creates spaces with this inclusive community vision — to be lived in, shared — from a stargazing hotel lobby on a UNESCO Heritage Site to a sunlit multi-gen home in LA. 

Also in this issue, functional minimalism gives way to new ideas like Plús Hús, a sustainable Accessory Dwelling Unit created as a solution to California’s housing crisis. The structure is not merely a teeny homage to cool Nordic design, but a resourceful blueprint for new California urbanism where dreams begin in the backyard.

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