Odd New Spring is a platform for research and learning through design — focusing on projects, reflections, and studies that explore new ways of living and making within our local landscapes. Founded by designer and PhD researcher Siren Elise Wilhelmsen.

This idea and philosophy started with Sirens´ doctoral project Odd New Spring: Towards Evolving Landscapes and a Reorientation in Design Practice (2024). This artistic research project explored how design can contribute to new ways of living, producing, and consuming in balance with our local environments. Seventy-two invasive alien plant species (IAPS) became collaborators, allies, and resources for learning — revealing unexpected stories of migration, adaptation and coexistence. Through mapping, observation, dialogue, and material experimentation, the project examined how these often unwanted plants challenge our ideas of nature, value, and care, and how design might help reorient our relationship with the more-than-human world.

Today, Odd New Spring continues as a platform for further research and exchange — a growing body of projects, reflections, and studies that explore design’s role in shaping sustainable, place-based futures.

Siren Elise Wilhelmsen

Siren Elise Wilhelmsen is a designer and researcher based in Bergen, Norway. She graduated from Universität der Künste Berlin in 2010 and founded her own design studio the same year. In 2024, she completed her PhD in design at the University of Bergen, where she now works as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design – Department of Design.

Through her work, Siren explores how design can foster new ways of seeing, living, and engaging with our material culture and local environments. Her practice spans from product design and installations to long-term, research-based projects developed in dialogue with nature, place, and community. Central to her approach is a curiosity for how design can shape narratives and relationships that connect the human and more-than-human world.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Milan Furniture Fair, London Design Week, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, the National Museum in Beijing, and ICFF in New York. She has received several recognitions, including Newcomer of the Year by the Foundation for Design and Architecture in Norway and the German Design Award, and was nominated for the Formex Nova – Nordic Designer of the Year Award in 2012.

Studio Homepage: www.sirenelisewilhelmsen.com