Onassis
News

The book and the film “Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens” on a United States and Canada tour

Shareon Facebook
Shareon Twitter

A documentary and a book that tell the story of the distinctive Athenian apartment building (the ‘polykatoikía’) and the reconstruction of the city through the lives of the anonymous common people of the ‘antiparochi’ system, are touring the world together.

The film “Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens,” directed by Tassos Langis and Yiannis Gaitanidis and produced by the Onassis Foundation, continues its festival journey around the world for another year. Following its premiere in the Competition Section of the Athens International Film Festival – Opening Nights in September 2021, and after its selection for the Iris Awards by the Hellenic Film Academy, the “builders and housewives” of Athens traveled to the other side of the Atlantic, winning the Best Film Award at Cinema Urbana – Architecture Film Festival Brasilia in Brazil, in August 2022. This season the documentary will be presented in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington, Chicago, Chile, Lund and Rotterdam.

Still from the "Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens" film

In the directors’ words, “Athens is our city, the place we were born and live, and we love it as if it were our own ‘village.’ However, at the same time, Athens is full of contradictions and remains practically unknown, mostly because the repetitive texture of the apartment buildings multiplies in clones. The space spreads out like a text: impenetrable in its general tone, incomprehensible, lacking any apparent historical referents – except for the Acropolis landmark and a few scattered, disconnected monuments. Someone might wonder how all this was built – it was certainly not by architects and urban planners. Using Ioanna Theocharopoulou’s book as a starting point and guide, we delved into the cracks of our modern urban history to trace the internal immigrants who were the ‘co-authors’ of our built environment. We started from the same biases: the conviction that those were the people who destroyed Athens, the failure of Konstantinos Karamanlis’s ‘antiparochi’ system, etc.). We can’t tell if these biases and myths around Athens will cease to exist. But we do know that another narrative has been added up, a story about the creation of Europe’s oldest new capital.” A film that won over the Athenian audience is now ready to conquer the world.

Ioanna Theocharopoulou’s book of the same title, “Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens,” where the documentary was based, is launching its third revised edition by Onassis Publications at Archtober, New York City’s annual architecture and design festival, and will be available for purchase in different cities during the ADFF screenings (in the Unites States and Canada); it returns ‘home’ at the Onassis Stegi on November 24, 2022, for the official launch of its publication in Greek and a conversation with the author Ioanna Theocharopoulou, the filmmakers Tassos Langis and Yiannis Gaitanidis, the Director of Culture at the Onassis Foundation Afroditi Panagiotakou, the architect and scientific advisor of the film Panos Dragonas, and anthropologist Michael Herzfeld at the Upper Stage of the Onassis Stegi.

Buy the book

About the book launch and panel discussion at Archtober, New York, on October 13, 2022

To celebrate the third edition of Ioanna Theocharopoulou’s book Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens (Onassis, 2022), the Onassis Foundation and Archtober are hosting a wide-ranging discussion about the relevance of this modern city, its architecture, and ancient history. Architectural historians have tended to disparage the lack of formal planning and the apparent homogeneity of its “box-like” concrete buildings. By casting it as a uniquely local mode of informal urbanism, a phenomenon that in a broader sense, is found around the world and particularly in the “developing” world, Theocharopoulou’s book offers a critical re-evaluation of the city as a successful adaptation to circumstance, that enriches our understanding of urbanism as a truly collective design activity. “Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens” advocates an architectural history that allows access to the conceptual worlds and the imagination of ordinary builders and inhabitants. This approach departs from a focus on structures designed exclusively by architects and planners, to explore processes – financial, cultural, and material – that relied on self-organized, communal endeavors. These improvisations and adaptations succeeded in producing a dense and vibrant city. In turn, they can help us imagine how to create more sustainable and livable urban models.

Info:
Thu, October 13, 6pm–8pm (hybrid event)
Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY 10012

Speakers:
Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
Neni Panourgiá, Adjunct Associate Professor, The Prison Education Program, Psychology Department; Academic Adviser, The Justice in Education Initiative, Columbia University
Nader Vossoughian, Associate professor of architecture at NYIT, Adjunct associate professor at Columbia University.
Ioanna Theocharopoulou, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Architecture, Art and Planning, Cornell University; Author, Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens

Film Screenings

New York

30.09 – 01.10.22

Fri, September 30, 18:45 @ Cinépolis Cinemas – Theatre 8 (in the presence of the filmmakers)

Sat, October 1, 16:15 @ Cinépolis Cinemas – Theatre 9 (in the presence of the filmmakers)

Toronto
02 – 05.11.2022

Vancouver
09 – 12.11.2022

Washington
27.01.2023

Chicago
03.02.2023, at 8:15 pm

04.02.2023, at 8:00 pm

Online
08 – 17.02.2023

During the ADFF screenings in the United States and Canada, the third edition of the book will be made available for purchase in collaboration with Actar Publishers.