The name and designs
of Alexis Georgacopoulos are closely associated with the ECAL-University
of Art and Design Lausanne, Switzerland, where he has been Head
of industrial design Department from September 2000 until December
2008.
He set up numerous projects and exhibitions
and has been involved in many workshops in conjunction with companies
such as Serralunga, B&B Italia,Coca-Cola, Christofle or Swarovksi
and designers such as Ronan Bouroullec, BarberOsgerby and the Campana
brothers. During this period, the industrial design Department of
the ECAL has become one of the most acclaimed and influential in
design education worldwide.
In his own work, Alexis Georgacopoulos’s
epitomizes design that is both functional and amusing, with humour
as the counterweight to technology. ‘An object must induce
sympathy,’ he asserts, and it has to be said that his objects
succeed in doing just that! Whether handling his “Inflatable
bottle cooler” (2000) for aperitifs on a lake shore or his
“CMYK” (2006) colorful steel trays there is always a
basis of a simultaneous return to fundamentals and the world of
childhood’s playful memories.
His works have been exhibited in major
cities, design fairs or museums such as the Milan Furniture Fair,
the London Design Museum and the Shanghai MOCA and have been published
in various exhibition catalogues and books such as the “&FORK”
book edited by Phaidon Press in 2007.
In 2006, he received the prestigious
Leenaards Foundation Cultural Grant and in early 2008 he set on
a
explorative trip in southeast China whilst based in Hong Kong and
has been developing new projects in
product and interior design for various international clients.
‘Pleasure, play and classicism’:
this could be Alexis Georgacopoulos’s credo that combines
conceptual
lightness with simple functions and straight to the point effectiveness.
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