Image Source: S.M.RI

Costas Bissas, industrial designer and design consultant, lives and operates in Athens. He holds the position of Innovation Methodologies Strategist at Found.ation, while he also teaches at the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering of the University of the Aegean. His passion is the merging of design and technology to create innovative objects and services for people. This process is mainly driven by experimentation both with different techniques as well as artisans and organisations.

Costas Bissas shares details about the objects and projects he has taken on, up until today.

Photo: Still from the working process of “West of East”

For your collaboration with It’s All, Oh So Souvenir To Me you created Sea Dry Stack / Lesvos island, through research-based design. Tell us more about it.

Indeed. This object was designed for the "West of East" project that we organized together with Anna Polydorou, from It's all, Oh So Souvenir To Me, with the contribution of Despina Catapoti. Archaeologists and designers came together and took part in daily trips to places of major archaeological significance on Lesvos, in a creative workshop for redefining concepts of antiquity and in a round table discussion. The aim was to retrieve intriguing research findings and subjects that could be transformed into some sort of souvenir by the designers, who were provided with a toolkit to record their personal multi-sensory experience before designing anything. The entire project, the routes curated by the archaeologists, the findings of the task force and the final objects of the designers, have been brought together in a publication that is available in the It's all, Oh So Souvenir To Me shop. My personal design proposal took the form of a set of magnets inspired by the technique of the only Lesbian Masonry I encountered on the island, influenced by the narratives and history of the place as a meeting point. Ultimately, the Sea Dry Stack / Lesvos island magnet set is the parts of the sea that surround the island, giving it shape and functioning as a road that created the cultural diversity of the place over the centuries. By denying any of the elements that have formed this place we remove a piece from the set, and the island looks incomplete. Literally and figuratively.

Photo: Sea Dry Stack / Lesvos island

In the past, you have dealt with elements of the Greek countryside such as marble (ALKIONI) or the saddle (S.M.RI), which you incorporate into new objects with the help of technological means. How would you describe this design process?

Bringing elements from one's own or another's past, placing them in the present, serving contemporary needs and using whatever contemporary art and technique has to offer to make it a reality, is how tradition is revived, how designers serve their fellow human beings and how the world evolves. That was the purpose of the two projects you mentioned. Especially with ALKIONI, designed in 2011, the goal was to succeed in combining the cultural weight of marble with the modern technological need of cooling a computer, through a small-scale sculpture made with a CNC machine. S.M.RI, on the other hand, plays more with the image and memory carried by the form of a saddle that functions as a seat, combining materials such as painted, laser-cut metal and nautical rope to create an outdoor object.

Photo: ALKIONI

One of your first projects in Greece, the Σ.Σ.Ρ.Μ. seal, distinguished by the Greek Graphic Design & Communication Awards (EBGE) in 2013, draws inspiration from the bureaucracy that plagues us all. Are sarcasm and criticism powerful triggers for a kind of design that invites humans to think and adapt?

Undoubtedly, sarcasm and criticism bring forth a different way of thinking to the recipient of a work of design. They function by way of questioning prejudices, capturing the common mind and the common "whys", creating unexpected and perhaps uncomfortable experiences. But beyond looking for answers to "why" by analysing and conclusively answering specific questions, I believe it is important to also ask ourselves "why not?" or "what if…?". These questions force us to think of alternatives. And the truth is that, as designers, if we don't manage today to envision alternatives for the reality we want, for the kind of world we desire, how could we ever implement parts of it and live in it?

Photo: Στρογγυλή Σφραγίδα Ρε Μάγκα (Σ.Σ.Ρ.Μ. seal)

There are trends in design internationally that do not exclusively serve functionality and aesthetics. Branches such as critical design, design fiction and speculative design strive, through the creation of artefacts, to raise questions about the way we live, about how we could live in the immediate future but also about what the material and empirical existence of some future we prefer -or don’t- to live in, would be like. Inevitably, when one presents a possible future through an object today, it gives rise to discussions and interactions. This happened with the Druid de Parnes website, where after its creation, I had discussions with people who were interested in the reconstruction of food and how it is achieved. Of course, the project was not intended as a business idea but as a way to imagine how we could realise a future where traditional flavours and high food technology could coexist in a new product/service for the modern man.

Photo: Druid de Parnes

One of the projects that piqued our interest, beyond the boundaries of object design, is Hebocon Athens. The original "championship" of building robots from everyday materials is aimed at people of all ages without specialised knowledge. How do you think this event can change the way we perceive the utility and complexity of design from an early age?

Some of the workshops that I orchestrate focus on the development of creativity, while others focus on shaping corporate culture and making business decisions. The audience in each of them is different, from 10 - 12 year old children to experienced business executives. Hebocon Athens is the only event where all of the above can coexist. Following the specifications of Hebocon in Japan, this is a robotics competition for non-technically gifted creators where participants build their own 'robot', constrained by simple rules, and engage, in pairs, in sumo-robot matches. The main purpose is to rid "failure" of guilt and to reward the constant effort to improve. Recognising that every "failure" is a step closer to "success", the spirit of Hebocon focuses on the educational and entertainment value of "defeat" as it happens in the context of a fun competition but also in everyday life in general. Excluding the value of divergent and creative thinking, Hebocon almost misappropriates the term "robot" and promotes skills related to critical thinking, practical and visual perception, storytelling and continuous creative experimentation to solve a problem.

Photo: Hebocon Athens creations

Hebocon Athens brings us in an orderly fashion to the position of the creator, possibly showing us that every human artefact is a work in progress and that the next version can be better. It shows us in practice the toil required to achieve perfection and, perhaps unconsciously, how to limit our consumer demands in proportion to what is possible. What is certain is that young people do much better than older people in this chaotic and open process that they view as a game. And this should concern us not only as individuals but also as a society.

Maybe it's time to organise the next adults-only tournament.

Will you come?

Photo: Still from Hebocon Athens

Many thanks to Costas Bissas and we hope to see him in person at his next event.

costasbissas.com