Starting September 2015, a new Postgraduate Program is planned by the Architecture Department of the University of Thessaly at Volos, under the title "Post-Industrial Design: Design and Artistic Practices for the Production of Everyday Life". The Program is open to students holding degrees in Architecture and Design from universities and colleges in Greece and abroad.
The goal of the Postgraduate Program is the development within Greece of research on the potential design and production of artifacts, programs and actions for everyday life in the contemporary age. Recent technological progress in software development and fabrication techniques allows designers, architects and artists to conceive and to manufacture projects and products, without the need for lengthy and expensive industrial production lines.
The contemporary condition of small workshops dispersed throughout the city at the same time that they are networked through the internet and social media -- conceived as a field of both research and commerce -- allows for the small-scale but pluralist production and comprehensive dissemination of ideas, prototypes and products. Today's design practices may combine cutting edge digital representation technologies with handicraft, small-scale production with artistic practices, traditional material techniques with contemporary expressive vocabularies and ethnographic heritage with multiple anthropological identities.
The design and production methodologies that will be developed in the Postgraduate Program follow the entire developmental process, from the initial conception to research, design and manufacture of the product, whether it is an artifact or an action. Furthermore, they will extend to the research of possible production means as well as promotional strategies that will render the product visible among the plethora of offered goods and universal competition.
In today’s construction-saturated Europe, it seems that there no longer exist the conditions for young architects to develop their creative potential by designing original buildings. For various reasons, a multitude of artists is unable to sustain the production of singular works of art that acquire value through their aesthetic content. However, creativity might still be possible if it relates to the “production of the everyday”, with the introduction of original objects, the conception of new habits and multiple lifestyles, or the invention of an infinite variety of dwelling conditions, as rich, varied, strange, flexible, fluid and controversial as the reality of today’s metropolitan subjects.
The “Post-Industrial Design” Postgraduate Program aims to expand as much as possible the limits of its academic purview: from the design of outdoor space, the garden or the coastline, to the design and production of domestic furnishings and even rituals of nourishment. From the ephemeral protocols and symbiotic relations of informal communities to the communication and diffusion of alternative concepts of everyday culture. From the active understanding of traditional craft to the contemporary performance of the shared cyber-body. As an ultimate goal, students will contribute their collective experience and knowledge to the manifold production of the Everyday.
Alexandros Psychoulis, Director
Evelin Gavrilou, Phoebe Giannisi, Iris Likourioti, George Mitroulias, Yiorgos Tzirtzilakis