The Onassis Culture documentary, "Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens" at the Onassis Channel on YouTube
Digital premiere: 28.03.2025, at 12:00
A documentary about the most distinctive Athenian building type, the polykatoikía, and the reconstruction of the city through the life of the anonymous lay builders and their housewives, who were the most unlikely “co-authors.”
Who were those people from the countryside who came to Athens with their wives after the Civil War and ‘cemented’ the city? Who ‘demolished’ the neoclassical buildings and why did they fill the Attica Basin with apartment buildings?
In the words of the same-titled film directors, Tassos Langis and Yiannis Gaitanidis, “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’ ‘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.”
Embedded media
If you want to enjoy embedded rich media, please customize your cookie settings to allow for Performance and Targeting cookies. Your data may be transferred to third-party services such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Issuu.
This documentary is based on the same-titled book by Ioanna Theocharopoulou, revised and published in 2022 by the Onassis Foundation.
The book and documentary premiered in Brazil, New York, Toronto and Vancouver, Los Angeles, Chile, Washington, Chicago, and Rotterdam.
Watch the documentary with Audio Description, here. The services of Audio Description for individuals with visual impairments and subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals were developed in collaboration with the cultural organization Liminal.
Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens
Book presentation & Discussion
For the presentation of the Greek edition of Ioanna Theocharopoulou's book, "Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens" (Onassis Publications, 2022), Onassis Stegi is hosting a discussion about the relevance of this modern city, its unique architecture, and its 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.
Speakers:
Afroditi Panagiotakou, Director of Culture, Onassis Foundation
Ioanna Theocharopoulou, Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Art, and Planning, Cornell University; author of “Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens”
Tassos Langis, Film Director
Yiannis Gaitanidis, Film Director
Panos Dragonas, Architect, Professor of Architecture & Urban Design at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras
Michael Herzfeld, Emeritus Research Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and Emeritus Professor of Critical Heritage Studies at Leiden University
Embedded media
If you want to enjoy embedded rich media, please customize your cookie settings to allow for Performance and Targeting cookies. Your data may be transferred to third-party services such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Issuu.
37 Stories from the Athenian Apartment Blocks
Book presentation & Discussion
A special publication with contributions by twenty-six writers dedicated to the most distinctive Athenian building type, the ‘polykatoikia.’ Narrations, recollections, personal experiences, photographs, and building regulations unfold through the pages of the book "37 Stories from the Athenian Apartment Blocks", revealing the portrait of a contemporary city.
How did the polykatoikia come into being? Who were the people residing there? What are the new cohabitation experiences in Athens? What is the profile of present-day tenants? A free ‘wanderabout’ in the city of Athens unfolds through the pages of the Onassis Foundation publication “37 Stories from the Athenian Apartment Blocks.” The book was born of a need to meet and understand the Athenian polykatoikia paradigm during the antiparochi (‘flats-for-land’) period. Through the experiences and stories of old and new residents, we unearth what lies inside these buildings—the symbols of an entire era.
Speakers:
Dimitris Balampanidis: PhD in Urban Social Geography, Department of Geography, Harokopio University; Co-editor of the publication
Panos Dragonas: Architect, Professor of Architecture & Urban Design, University of Patras
Thomas Maloutas: Researcher Emeritus, National Centre for Social Research; Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, Harokopio University; Co-editor of the publication
Dimitra Siatitsa: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Crete; Co-author of the publication
Stavros-Nikiforos Spyrellis: Principal Researcher, National Centre for Social Research; Co-author of the publication
Ioanna Theocharopoulou: Lecturer in Discipline, Art Humanities, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University; Author of the book "Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens"
Dina Vaiou: Professor Emeritus of NTUA, Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Nikos Souliotis (Senior Researcher, National Centre for Social Research) will moderate the discussion
Embedded media
If you want to enjoy embedded rich media, please customize your cookie settings to allow for Performance and Targeting cookies. Your data may be transferred to third-party services such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Issuu.
