Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens - Book presentation and film screening
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Admission is free and on a first come, first served basis. Εntrance tickets will be distributed before the event.
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The discussion will be held in Greek, with no English translation, and will be simultaneously interpreted in the Greek sign language.
The film will be screened with English subtitles.
Introduction
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. The talk will be followed by a film screening of the documentary bearing the same title, directed by Tassos Langis and Yiannis Gaitanidis.
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.
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.”
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Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou
19:00-20:00 | Discussion
20:00-20:30 | Book signing session*
20:30-22:00 | Film screening: "Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens"
* During the event, the author will be participating in a book signing session. The book will be available for purchase in the foyers of the Onassis Stegi.Embedded media
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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
