GREEK REGIONALISM AND THE MODERN PROJECT: A COLLECTIVE ENDEAVOUR

While the evolution of modern architecture in Greece over the past half century has been subject to the swings and variations experienced in the rest of Europe, Greece has been particularly privileged with regard to the Modern Movement in two important respects. In the first place, the avant-garde architecture of the twenties and thirties was not far removed from the traditional whitewashed vernacular of the Cycladic Islands. In fact, certain modernist manifestations, above all Le Corbusier’s Purism, had been partially inspired by these very same prototypes. Thus, spare, cubic, orthogonal compositions were able to find ready acceptance at an everyday level in Greece. Indeed, one may claim that Athens is one of the few cities in the world where a normative modern “international” architecture accounts for a large part of the inner urban fabric. In the second place, Greece is blessed with a benevolent climate, at least for most of the year, and this, together with the varied topography which is to be found throughout, has had a mediating influence on modern abstraction. Thus, while modern structures could be simply detailed and still withstand the climate, the received ideal norms invariably had to be modified in order to accommodate themselves to the landfall of a given site.

In one sense, the work of Atelier 66 can be described as typically “Greek modernist” inasmuch as it has arisen out of a regionally inflected practice which as extensive with and, at times, subtly connected to both the country and its people. At the same time, the architecture of Dimitris and Suzana Antonakakis and their colleagues has so far managed to avoid being absorbed by those strains of degenerative commercialism and exhaustion to which modern architecture has been so prone in recent years. Moreover, it achieved this while synthesizing, in terms of its own generative approach, two distinct traditions. On the one hand, it has kept its faith with a critical attitude which is exclusively Greek and which stems from the work of the first “regional dissenters” within the Greek modern movement – that is to say, it is closely related to the work of Dimitris Pikionis and Aris Konstantinidis. On the other, it has been informed by three important stands of late modern architecture, all of which date from the fifties: the béton brut manner of Le Corbusier for its detailing, the Structuralism of Aldo van Eyck for the organization, and lastly, the reinterpreted Romantic Classicism of Mies van der Rohe, this last being particularly evident in the spatial order of their early works, such as their house at Chaidari of 1961.

And yet, despite these foreign influences, what is remarkable about Atelier 66 is the way in which they have been able to combine the domestic legacy of Pikionis and Konstantinidis into a fertile synthesis and to re-cast their regionally inflected forms in a more glyptic and configurated way, resulting in domestic works which are invariably “zoned” according to use, privacy, and micro-climate.

As the title of the Lefaivre and Tzonis essay in this volume, “The Grid and the Pathway”, readily suggests, Atelier 66 was to take different things from its regional predecessors – the pathway from Pikionis and the grid from Konstantinidis, although in actuality a certain mutual exchange passed between them. This cross-fertilization has been elaborated on by Dimitris Varangis, who in an unpublished thesis recently wrote “Pikionis’s main concern with the environment of Athens was the reintroduction of the courtyard which had been reduced to a light shaft in all contemporary apartment buildings. Throughout the ages, the courtyard had provided an intermediate space between the life of the interior and that of the public street. In addition; it responded to the peculiar Greek climatic conditions of light and heat, by being cool in summer, but warm in winter. To Pikionis’s doubts about the new style were later to be added (1950) the studies by the architect Konstantinidis on old Athenian houses…as a work it was a manifestation not only against the adherents of Neoclassicism, but also against the adherents of European rationalism in Greece.” For Pikionis and Konstantinidis alike, Greek vernacular houses from the turn of the century were able to unite both the native masonry tradition of the earthwork with the lightweight timber superstructure of the Ottoman Empire.

It is no accident then that the work of Atelier 66 has been structured about this paradigm of the courtyard house, wherein grid and pathway come together, the one in terms of the structural frame, the other in terms of a paved threshold which leads from the street into the body of the house.

Thus, most of the Antonakakis houses are predicated about this complex place-form, irrespective of whether the courtyard is a partially enclosed hilltop belvedere, as is the case in the Oxylithos House II of 1978, or whether it is the impacted, labyrinthine network of thresholds, ramps, and balconies which penetrates at grade into the Em. Benaki Street apartment building in Athens of 1973, and which thereafter weaves itself within the perforated façade of the structure for its full eight floors.

This characteristic labyrinthine approach, all too evident in their highly configurated interiors, has been extended by Atelier 66 into their larger, more topographic works such as the contoured development they designed for the Acronafplia Fortress (1970/1971), or the layered “carpet-housing” which they realized in the foothills of a mountain range in Distomon, dating from 1969. In these works, as in their 1977 conversion of the existing housing stock of the village of Laggadia into a children’s summer hostel, they have brilliantly combined into expressive, organic assemblies the rationalistic modern forms by which they have been inspired.

Thus, while both the Chios Archeological Museum and the Distomon Housing reinterpret, to an equal degree, the rubble stone and reinforced concrete vocabulary which Konstantinidis developed for his housing and hostelries of the 1950s, the Acronafplia complex was to extend Pikionis’s tactile landscape syntax as this was made manifest in his 1958 landscaping of the Philoppapus Hill in Athens.

And yet, at a subliminal level, the work of Atelier 66 remains subtly structured by rationalistic planning principles derived in the main from Mies and the Dutch Structuralists although some of their larger, campus-like hotels and urban institutions are organized about triangulated planning grids initially derived from Frank Lloyd Wright. This last, surprising and decidedly “foreign” influence has perhaps received its most convincing application in their 1980 design for the headquarters of the Technical Chamber of Greece, a work in which Wrightian organicism is bounded along a continuous perimeter of flanking streets by the forms and volumes of European Rationalism. Here, as in their domestic work, a labyrinthine interior is contained by orthogonal prismatic form.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this twenty-year-old practice is the cultivated sense of “collectivity” which has attended its evolution; a phenomenon which is generally uncommon and one which is surely foreign to the traditions of architectural practice in the Anglo-American world. Architects who are also family members, as well as many others have had continuous association with the practice, work together in a variety of ways: as smaller teams, autonomously, or as a larger group. Indeed, since 1978, Atelier 66 has employed virtually the same team, amounting to some fifteen architects. From the standpoint of critical regionalism this undertaking has to be regarded as exemplary, not only because the underlying rationality of the work has been so sensitively and consistently inflected in terms of light, climate, materials, tectonics, and topography, but also because it has always been collectively conceived; it has consciously cultivated its own roots, as it were, in order to arrive at its expressive form.

As the title of the Lefaivre and Tzonis essay in this volume, “The Grid and the Pathway”, readily suggests, Atelier 66 was to take different things from its regional predecessors – the pathway from Pikionis and the grid from Konstantinidis, although in actuality a certain mutual exchange passed between them. This cross-fertilization has been elaborated on by Dimitris Varangis, who in an unpublished thesis recently wrote “Pikionis’s main concern with the environment of Athens was the reintroduction of the courtyard which had been reduced to a light shaft in all contemporary apartment buildings. Throughout the ages, the courtyard had provided an intermediate space between the life of the interior and that of the public street. In addition; it responded to the peculiar Greek climatic conditions of light and heat, by being cool in summer, but warm in winter. To Pikionis’s doubts about the new style were later to be added (1950) the studies by the architect Konstantinidis on old Athenian houses…as a work it was a manifestation not only against the adherents of Neoclassicism, but also against the adherents of European rationalism in Greece.” For Pikionis and Konstantinidis alike, Greek vernacular houses from the turn of the century were able to unite both the native masonry tradition of the earthwork with the lightweight timber superstructure of the Ottoman Empire.

It is no accident then that the work of Atelier 66 has been structured about this paradigm of the courtyard house, wherein grid and pathway come together, the one in terms of the structural frame, the other in terms of a paved threshold which leads from the street into the body of the house.

Thus, most of the Antonakakis houses are predicated about this complex place-form, irrespective of whether the courtyard is a partially enclosed hilltop belvedere, as is the case in the Oxylithos House II of 1978, or whether it is the impacted, labyrinthine network of thresholds, ramps, and balconies which penetrates at grade into the Em. Benaki Street apartment building in Athens of 1973, and which thereafter weaves itself within the perforated façade of the structure for its full eight floors.

This characteristic labyrinthine approach, all too evident in their highly configurated interiors, has been extended by Atelier 66 into their larger, more topographic works such as the contoured development they designed for the Acronafplia Fortress (1970/1971), or the layered “carpet-housing” which they realized in the foothills of a mountain range in Distomon, dating from 1969. In these works, as in their 1977 conversion of the existing housing stock of the village of Laggadia into a children’s summer hostel, they have brilliantly combined into expressive, organic assemblies the rationalistic modern forms by which they have been inspired.

Thus, while both the Chios Archeological Museum and the Distomon Housing reinterpret, to an equal degree, the rubble stone and reinforced concrete vocabulary which Konstantinidis developed for his housing and hostelries of the 1950s, the Acronafplia complex was to extend Pikionis’s tactile landscape syntax as this was made manifest in his 1958 landscaping of the Philoppapus Hill in Athens.

And yet, at a subliminal level, the work of Atelier 66 remains subtly structured by rationalistic planning principles derived in the main from Mies and the Dutch Structuralists although some of their larger, campus-like hotels and urban institutions are organized about triangulated planning grids initially derived from Frank Lloyd Wright. This last, surprising and decidedly “foreign” influence has perhaps received its most convincing application in their 1980 design for the headquarters of the Technical Chamber of Greece, a work in which Wrightian organicism is bounded along a continuous perimeter of flanking streets by the forms and volumes of European Rationalism. Here, as in their domestic work, a labyrinthine interior is contained by orthogonal prismatic form.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this twenty-year-old practice is the cultivated sense of “collectivity” which has attended its evolution; a phenomenon which is generally uncommon and one which is surely foreign to the traditions of architectural practice in the Anglo-American world. Architects who are also family members, as well as many others have had continuous association with the practice, work together in a variety of ways: as smaller teams, autonomously, or as a larger group. Indeed, since 1978, Atelier 66 has employed virtually the same team, amounting to some fifteen architects. From the standpoint of critical regionalism this undertaking has to be regarded as exemplary, not only because the underlying rationality of the work has been so sensitively and consistently inflected in terms of light, climate, materials, tectonics, and topography, but also because it has always been collectively conceived; it has consciously cultivated its own roots, as it were, in order to arrive at its expressive form.