During her time at the Kunsthalle Project Space and as part of Vienna Design Week 2012, Julia Lohmann worked publicly with kelp to promote the form of seaweed as a design material. In her explorations of kelp, Lohmann has suggested that its natural qualities of strength, flexibility and luminosity make it an ideal material to use in place of leather, parchment and even plastic. "Seaweed is an amazing material", says Lohmann. "We consume it almost every day - there are extracts of seaweed in toothpaste - but we hardly ever see the material itself, and I think there is a value in it that has not been fulfilled yet".
October 17, 2012