ATHENS AS A PROJECT

200 pages

24x17 cm

200 images

flush-cut hardcover 

 

English

Athens as a Project is an interdisciplinary publication at the intersection between architecture and photography with a wider reference to contemporary art and urban history. With a particular focus on current metropolitan phenomena and the transformation of cities, it presents the findings of decade-long research project conducted by Platon Issaias on Athens and the specifics of Greece’s urban environments that contribute to broader a discussion of the complex politics of urban development in the Mediterranean and the Global South. Partnering with photographer Yiorgis Yerolymbos, Issaias offers original and unique perspectives on the city of Athens, its architecture, recent history, and contemporary life. Texts, architectural drawings and photographs form an Atlas of Athens encompassing exemplary projects, atmospheres and everyday practices―that go beyond the effects of the economic crisis of the 2010s and the ongoing pandemic.

ATHENS SPREAD

What is a Project? (Pier Vittorio Aureli)

Introduction

 

1. Athens as Paradigm: 1834-1929

I Elements of a Greek Historiography

Il City-Colony (1834-1909)

III Bourgeois City (1909-29)

IV Mechanisms of Small-scale Architecture

 

ATHENS PLAN

 

2. Planning through the Unit-Taxonomies of the Polykatoikia Type: 1929-2019

I The Birth of the Polykatoikia

II Definitions of the Polykatoikia as a Residential Model

IlI Fifteen Polykatoikia Case Studies

a. Modern Adaptations, the Fragmented Plan and the Foundations of Construction Knowledge (1929-41)

b. The Façade and the Generic Architecture of the Polykatoikia (1949-73)

c. Breaking the Floor Plan and Dwelling Individualization (1973-2001)

d. Mono-, Poly-, Multi-: Re-visiting and Mutating the Type (2001-9)

e. The End of the Polykatoikia and New Possibilities (2009-19)

IV. New Challenges: The Collapse of the Building Industry and the End of the Polykatoikia as a System of Production (2009-19)

 

3. From the Flat to the City: Athens from Reconstruction to Crisis

I Armed Conflict and the Birth of the Project
Il The Varvaressos Report
III Doxiadis and Ecumenopolis for Attica
IV Urban Sprawl and Gentrification: Unspoken Strategies in Attica since the Nineteen-Eighties

 

Epilogue: Beyond the Informal: Property, Domesticity, and the Premise of an Urban Common

I Lump City and the Common
II Private Property and the Issue of Scale
IlI The Dom-ino

 

ATHENS NOWHERE

Endnotes

Bibliography