Design Museum plans shelved
The news from Thessaloniki is both good and bad. Let’s begin with the latter: A significant private sector initiative for the cultural domain, the Design Museum, has been permanently abandoned by the Greek State. The collection of the would-be museum’s founder, Sergios Delialis, believed to rank among Europe’s largest, has subsequently been left to sit idle. According to ministerial decisions, the museum had been designated for one of the docks at Thessaloniki port, alongside two other new museums, focusing on photography and cinema respectively. Close to a year old, their fates were more fortunate. Despite sporadic state promises, plans for the Design Museum have been shelved for good. The facilities originally intended for the ill-fated venture now serve as the new home of the State Museum for Modern Art, even though it already had a base in Thessaloniki’s Lazariston Monastery. One wonders why it does not stick to its existing facilities and keep away from the modestly sized space originally designated for the ousted museum. Misfortune is one side of the story. In any case, industrial design, or what is usually referred to as “design,” has always been a matter of concern mainly for the private sector. This could possibly be a reason for the Culture Ministry’s inexplicable decision to retreat from a set plan. And this is where the first Panhellenic Competition for Industrial Design of Office Furniture enters the picture. The competition, organized by a furniture firm, Dromeas, culminated last Friday with an awards ceremony. Ironically the awards, with prize money attached, were presented to winning contestants by Development Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos and Macedonia and Thrace Minister Yiannis Magriotis. Encouragingly, the majority of the winners were young, born in the 1970s. Andreas Hadzis and Anargyros Mougiakos won the first prize for their «N.U.R.B.S.» design, a multi-use archive; Giorgos Foukas and Anna Matrakidou, the second-prize winners, were rewarded for their seating system dubbed «COPY-PASTE»; and the third-prize winners, Nikolaos Xanthopoulos and Constantinos Hoursoglou took their award for a mobile room-dividing system they called “Half Tone.”
