The Anniversary Archive.
SOIL EPIGRAPH
On the occasion of the non-profit’s fourth anniversary in September 2025, Athens Design Forum announced the creation of Soil Epigraph, a private collection of anonymous photographs (1890-1980) foraged to exist in counterpoint to monolithic visual representations of Greece.
SALON PHILIPPE
Athens Design Forum presents ‘SALON PHILIPPE’, an interview conceptualized by Lebanese designer Youssef Bassil on the fractal identity of a barbershop (est. 1968) in Achrafieh, Lebanon. An anatomy of the interior works in material counterpoint, affixed by years of quiet fortitude – the original Lebanese-made cast iron barberchairs, chrome-dipped and baptised with a signage of ‘Venus’, are reflected in the softness of formica walls and melamine counters. In Bassil’s composition, an anthology of belonging traces the disappearance of citrus trees and grape vines as the city center of Lebanon ever-rises in the portrait of Philippe Aaoun, ‘SALON PHILIPPE’.
The Spherical Axis: Escombros and La Memoria de la Forma by Javier Aravena Costa
Athens Design Forum presents Escombros and La Memoria de la Forma by Chilean researcher and photographer Javier Aravena Costa. When extraction is articulated as a symptom of industrial annunciation, architectural permanence is dismantled. In the absorption of a geography’s lack or abundance, Costa deciphers the conscious alternation of landscape and how ‘new contexts of resistance’ inform the forging of territorial identity.
THE SENSORIAL MASS.
a photographic archive of blegen’s excavations at prosymna
“The pursuit of forms is only a pursuit of time, but if there are no stable forms, there are no forms at all.”¹—Paul Virilio, The Aesthetics of Disappearance
In the wake of archaeological photographic images, we may begin to decipher Paul Virilio’s conception of the sensorial mass: how the stabilized form of an excavated artifact becomes eternalized within the cage of a photograph. If photography functions as a penetrative method to assert an influence of cementation, then the decisions that remain unspoken—placement, framing, repetition—are prolonged in time. In this stillness, a series of anomalies accumulate.
FRANCISCO CANTON, Offset
Athens Design Forum presents Argentinian photographer and director Francisco Canton’s series, Offset, a penetrative entry into the forensic rhythm between frames. "The choreography of these images arises from a limit I impose on myself," Canton notes, "using timing and sequence to create a rhythm and sense of continuity in the work." Repetition reveals rupture and familiarity becomes estrangement, evolving forward in the innocuous presence of a metronome.