The inauguration of our activities goes back to … the long 1981. Although even five years earlier our productive orientation has made us valuable partners and suppliers to a series of avant-garde businesses in Athens and Thessaloniki. Those who got to know “MONO”, “Oikos” (which we were cofounders), “Opus” and “Monodromos” in Athens, “Design Market” and “Domus” in Thessaloniki, got to learn later who were the ones creating the aesthetical and technical surprises from the backstage. The grand success and welcoming of the products which were launched then, set fast and sharply some critical dilemmas: Priorities should be set into commercial revenue or observing the “Industrial Design” as a developing form of art. But into more direct way the questions where posed like this: Into the absolute boredom of the domination of the commodified society, was there any chance some products to breathe through cultural air and content? And one step further: was there any cracks to escape from the culture industry as Theodor Adorno was defining and rejecting it?
Those theoretical wanderings among our continuous, hyperactive actions brought breaches. We moved independently, we created Roma 5 Design. Those who followed and developed with us in parallel since then they know that we didn’t set our values aside. To an audience that trusted us, we indicated a direction. We brought the great designers of the 20th century and their creations. Through our long route numberless products that we brought to the market, had attributes of dignity in the construction and a “fresh sight” into their outline. They had attributes of Industrial Design, in the exact way that the relative theory imposes as its theses: techno-schematic perfection for a world happy, bearable, better. Not a single step back.
In 1988 we went advanced in parallel with our main business into the publication one of the fundamental theoretical works of Design: “Introduction to the industrial design” of Gillo Dorfles. The Specific book is still being taught into the relevant university faculties in Greece. Whoever has dived deep into it he has it in his bookshelf.
In 1999 installed the symbolic and exemplary library of the Architecture school of the National technical university of Athens. An honorary work for us. Many new architects had and will still have numberless hours there and the pleasant emotions which they feel into its space are for us lively force and power. More public libraries followed: among others the library of the pedagogic institute of Athens, the “library of the quality off the women”, the library of the naval academy.
Although this which could look like a paradox into our history is the following: we were in the frontier of adoption of new materials and advanced techniques: e-coating (or electrostatic coating), high voltage machine press, cutting of metals through water jet, laser or plasma. Processing of wooden surfaces with CNC machines. MDF or engineered wood. We moved with comfort into these technologies.
Does somebody know any others that stood in such a course? That they gave everything for their Aesthetics which is their Ethics or the inverse?
A few words about Roma 5 Design