Kostas S. Tsipiras

Kostas Stef. Tsipiras has been mountaineering for 26 years, having trekked across all the mountains of Greece and Europe, the Himalayas, mountains in America, and the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. For 18 years, he has been advocating for the preservation of Greek wildlife and mountain nature. He founded the ecological organizations "Nature Lovers' Anti-Hunting Initiative" and "Friends of the Greek Bear," co-founded the Greek branch of the international mountain protection organization "MOUNTAIN WILDERNESS" with G. Michailidis, served as editor-in-chief of the magazine Nature and ECOLOGY, and has been a member of the Club Alpin Francais since 1979. He is also a member of the international interdisciplinary network (under the auspices of UNESCO) for the sustainable development and protection of mountain areas, MOUNTAIN FORUM. One of the priorities of these organizations was the salvation of Mount Olympus, which was saved in extremis after mass demonstrations organized by these groups, with the participation of dozens of notable foreigners, the collection of 30,000 signatures from Greek citizens and hundreds of Europeans, and pressure on European institutions when, in 1986 and 1989, specific plans by the then Greek governments proposed the construction of ski resorts and cable cars. He is a surveyor and civil engineer (D.E.A. in Spatial Planning - Urban Planning), specializing in bioclimatic architecture and ecological construction, having built dozens of ecological buildings in Greece and abroad, and conducted specialized studies on the geography of mountain areas and ecotourism. Kostas Stefanou Tsipiras was a student of the great Karagiozis puppeteer Konstantinos Damadakis and later of Orestis, Takis Mellidis, Nionios Alexopoulos, and, for the past ten years, of Manthos Athinaios. As a founding member of the Karagiozis Group of the Student Theater and Cinema Club at the University of Thessaloniki in the 1970s, he has given dozens of free Karagiozis performances in Greece, at charitable institutions and cultural associations. In the 1970s, he attended UNIMA puppet seminars in France, and in 1985, as part of the Athens - Cultural Capital of Europe events, his theatrical work for Shadow Theater and Puppets, The Story of Bla Bla, was staged. He has also studied classical percussion and harmony at the National Conservatory, as well as Greek and African percussion and drums, and has participated in several traditional music concerts. He maintains his own workshop for making figures and sets, painting in his own, purely personal style. He has organized two photography exhibitions of old Karagiozis puppeteers, as part of the 14th Dimitria (Thessaloniki, 1978) and at the Goethe Institute (1979). He has been writing for many years in a regular column in the Sunday Vima, has written scripts and texts for several Greek television programs (ET1 and ET3), and, through dozens of articles in the daily press and television programs, he strives to highlight the role of Shadow Theater in shaping contemporary Greek culture. He has translated from French the book by René Dumont, Rage ("New Frontiers" - A. A. Livani), and from Turkish many Shadow Theater performances. His literary works include: - In Memory of Alekos Panagoulis (of whom he was a friend and comrade), Kastaniotis Publications, 1977. - The Anti-Hunting, "New Frontiers" - A. A. Livani, 1987. -In the Greek Mountains, 3 volumes (1989, 1992, 1997), "New Borders" - A. A. Livani (8th edition). -For Animal Rights, "New Borders" - A. A. Livani, 1995. -The Ecological House, "New Borders" - A. A. Livani, 1996, (6th edition). -Dans les Montagnes de Grece (published by Olizane, Geneva 1997, 4th edition). -In the Greek Mountains: Olympus - Monograph of the Mountain of the Gods, "New Borders" - A. A. Livani, 1999. -Bioclimatic Building Design (published by P-Systems, 2000), among others.