Founded by Katerina Papanikolopoulos in 2021, the non-profit Athens Design Forum (ADF) advocates for overlooked and generative design histories interwoven with global labor and migration patterns. Papanikolopoulos’ curatorial programming prioritizes photography and film as integral, critical methodologies to decipher design’s social role.

ADF’s 2021 inaugural programming shaped 12 events in 7 Athenian neighborhoods – broadening the international recognition of contemporary Athens through a cultural narrative axis. In 2022, ADF launched international collaborations with ROUTE-IN by Tbilisi-based Rooms Studio and CHTHONIC by Peter Speliopoulos during Milan Design Week 2022. As a cultural partner of Collectible Fair 2022, ADF introduced a retrospective of Palestinian designer Dima Srouji in Brussels, Belgium. ADF’s ‘IN-PRAXIS’ Interview Series (2022) brought forth features with photographers François Halard and Hassan Kurbanbaev, followed by an interview with Trabzon-born designer Sera Oltan.

Establishing the theme of ‘ANTHROPOS-TOPOS’ from 2023-24, Athens Design Forum was guided by deciphering how humans coexist with places at the proxy of design, informed by the laboring body. The medium of film acts as a space for re-inscription – design principles are reunited with the sphere of personhood, identity, and collectivity.

For Milan Design Week 2023, ADF partnered with Cinema Parentesi, presenting the films Chircales (Colombia, Marta Rodriguez & Jorge Silva) and El Batikha (Egypt, Mohamed Khan) at BASE Milano. In Fall 2023, ADF presented The Potent Image of Yugantar Collective, a double-screening and accompanying interview with director Deepa Dhanraj, shared for the first time in Greece, and published The Vithoulkas Archive, a prominent photographic archive of Greek furniture restoration from 1945-1970 encapsulating three generations of craftsmen. In April 2024, Athens Design Forum co-curated with Isabella Barkett ‘THE ECHO OF THE FEAST THAT CALLS ME’, a double-screening of Izza Genini’s Aïta (1988, 26’) and Hicham Gardaf’s In Praise of Slowness (2023, 17’) for DOPO? in Milan, investigating sonic landscapes’ relation to space and the inhabitants therein. A feature interview in conversation with Gardaf, The Labyrinth of Sound, followed the screening.

Launching an online editorial in 2024, ADF has since programmed special features and interviews with Dima Srouji (The Land of Glass), Gassia Armenian (The Architecture of Armenian Lace) Yannis Drakoulidis (Portrait of a Space, Kozani), Georges Salameh (Lament of the Absent Waters), Avrilios Karakostas (The Dialectic of Mountains), Museo Casa Mollino (The Skin of River Po, Carlo Mollino), and Luna Paiva, (The Choreography of Play).

The 2025 season is inaugurated with a double-screening of Mexican director Juan Pablo Gonzalez’s The Solitude of Memory and Caballerango hosted by the Cervantes Institute (Athens), accompanied by a feature interview, OF WOUND AND RESISTANCE. For Milan Design Week 2025, Athens Design Forum presents a screening of Tomka dhe shokët e tij (Tomka and His Friends) by director Xhanfise Keko (Albania, 1929–2007), hosted by Dropcity Center for Architecture and Design.

ADF is featured in over 24 leading international and regional publications, among them Architectural Digest, DOMUS, Wallpaper* and Office Magazine.

Founded by researcher Katerína Papanikolopoulos, MÁTI GREY is an independent creative studio prioritizing literary projections in the design, film, architecture, and photographic cosmos. Humanizing the methods in which design is experienced, ‘grey eye’ has been a symbol of her personal photographic work, transcending into the evocative nature of the projects represented where peripheral narratives are made central.

A core element of the studio is founding the non-profit Athens Design Forum in 2021, where all the intrigues and fascinations collide, advocating for overlooked and generative design histories interwoven with global labor and migration patterns.

With a former training in dance and performance, Papanikolopoulos studied the intersection of Art History & Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2025, she prepares to be an MA candidate at the Architectural Association (History and Critical Thinking in Architecture). Prior to this, Papanikolopoulos builds on engagements with Blum Gallery, Autre Magazine, Assortment Agency, and The Hammer Museum.

Portrait courtesy Darren Ankenman

 

Courtesy Andrés Altamirano for Athens Design Forum

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