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.

www.ecal.ch

www.georgacopoulos.com