Travelogue: Greek everyday solutions to common problems

“Travelogue: Greek everyday solutions to common problems” is a book years in the making. Stemming from the project “DIY: who’s the designer?” by the same editors, this publication serves as a visual journey into the spontaneous DIY culture throughout Greece and explores the connection between design as a practice and the artefacts made by anonymous individual creators. Papairlines are a team of designers with an applied interest in how ideas are born. They began photographing objects by unknown creators before 2012, mainly to satisfy their own curiosity as to how non-designers act creatively, composing solutions to problems and needs while filling in design omissions uncatered for by the existing infrastructure and equipment. As the team’s thoughts on “DIY: Who’s the designer?” matured and their personal photographic collection grew, conversations around every newfound photo provoked the desire to involve more contributors in the project. To the question “What ingenious objects might exist in Greece that have been created by DIY designers?”, the team responded with an open call to professional and amateur photographers asking for images from all over the country. The responses brought invaluable fresh information and interesting objects from distant and remote locations. The photographs found in the book are contributions from different parts of Greece, by photographers who are not necessarily the object creators, but successfully capture the essence of these artefacts. Papairlines are the first no-budget airlines founded in 2011 by Vasso Asfi, Costas Bissas and Loukas Angelou between Athens and London. Operating “design flights”, papairlines use travel as a metaphor to draw connections between aesthetics and usability, process and result, stereotype and evolution, behaviour and emotion.

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