WRT
Article
BURNING FARM
2024

The Constant Typologist: the Notion of Type in the Work of Aris Konstantinidis

Team
PLATON ISSAIAS
ALEXANDRA VOUGIA
Categories
Architecture, Collective Equipment, Housing, Public, Typology

Although Modern Greek architecture is often only marginal in the canonical narrations of twentieth-century architectural history, the work of Aris Konstantinidis (1913–1993) holds a special place there. He formed a complementary duo together with Dimitris Pikionis (1887–1968), which has defined the dominant perspective through which a foreign gaze understands and categorizes Greek architectural discourse, culture, and production. This perspective touches upon what many consider an unsettling and unresolved relation between modernity and tradition, or what may be called a “third way” and a possible departure from this very dilemma, forming the myth of “critical regionalism.”⁠

[…]

Our interest in Konstantinidis’s work, which has initiated this short essay, comes from a series of studies and observations about him as a designer, writer, and public intellectual. Contrary to widespread readings on his work and personality, we are particularly interested in his ideological and political thought, as well as the profound systematization of his practice by the architect himself, often disguised behind a highly emotional and polemic rhetoric. 

[…]

Although on multiple occasions Konstantinidis complains about his interactions with private clients, who he often profoundly resented,⁠ we argue that there are a number of private houses […] which offered him the opportunity to control not only the construction but, most importantly, the way they function as conceptual devices for the understanding of his overall work. These private residences indicated and summarized his own theses about the use of materials, structural systems and, essentially, the desired relation between landscape and architectural object: the house as a place of dwelling, an object where cultural, material, and structural continuity is traceable, a space defined by Konstantinidis as a “vessel of life.”⁠

[…]

However, in this text we are also interested in the complementary part of his practice: his work for the public sector. […] If anything, it seems that Konstantinidis was a devoted public sector worker.

[…]

[link to the full article]

About

Fatura Collaborative – Research & Design Practice, was founded in 2009 and is developing projects across a wide range of scales, from intimate objects and performance, to architecture, urban design and planning. We are interested in architecture as social infrastructure, in developing collective equipments, in the design of spaces of care, empathy and welfare. We design and research expanding new problematics about ecology, the domestic, everyday life and the city.

Members

ELISAVET HASA
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher and educator based in London. She holds a diploma in architecture from the School of Architecture of the University of Patras, Greece (2015) and was awarded a PhD from the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art (2022). Her thesis dealt with the materiality of grassroots, ad hoc and mutual aid projects by social movements in Europe and the United States, with an emphasis on their relationship with the state. She is teaching in undergraduate architectural design studios and history and theory courses at the London South Bank University and Central Saint Martins. She is also a registered architect in the UK (ARB) and Greece (TCG) and has practiced architecture in London, Madrid and Athens.

PLATON ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher, and educator. He studied architecture in Thessaloniki, Greece, and holds an MSc from Columbia University and a PhD from TU Delft and The City as a Project research collective. He is Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the co-Head of Projective Cities MPhil programme at the Architectural Association, where he is also teaching Diploma Unit 7 with Georgia Hablützel and Hamed Khosravi. His research interests explore urban design and architecture in relation to the politics of labour, economy, law and labour struggles. He has written and lectured extensively about Greek urbanisation and the politics of urban development.

THEODOSSIS ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

(he/him) is an architect and educator. He serves as Curator, Heinz Architectural Center, at Carnegie
Museum of Art and Special Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture. He studied
architecture in Athens, Greece, and holds a Master of Science in Architecture and Urbanism from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on architecture at the intersection of
human rights, conflict, and the provision of shelter. This interest led to his PhD dissertation
“Architectures of the Humanitarian Front” (2021, Yale University), which examined a period
around WWI when conflict, displacement, and territorial insecurity provoked the reconfiguration
of humanitarian operations –their spatial organization and ethical imperatives.

GIANNANTONIS MOUTSATSOS
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Lund, Sweden. He graduated in 2010 from the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens and holds an MSc in Energy Efficient and Environmental Building Design from the School of Architecture of Lund University (2015). He has practiced architecture as a freelance architect in Greece and currently in Sweden (eg. Tengbom architects), where he works on a wide range of projects including small houses, larger residential complexes as well as care, educational and industrial facilities.

ALEXANDRA VOUGIA
ARCHITECT

is an architect and an educator. She graduated in 2007 from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds the MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from GSAPP, Columbia University (2008) and a PhD from the Architectural Association – School of Architecture, London (2016). She is currently an Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has previously taught at the Architectural Association and the University of Westminster and practiced as an architect in New York and Athens.

MYRTO VRAVOSINOU
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Thessaloniki. She graduated from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015 and holds an MSc in Environmental Architectural and Urban Design from the same institution (2023). Since 2017, she has been collaborating with a group of freelance engineers, working on a variety of residential, workspace, and small-scale digital fabrication projects. Her special interests lie in urban and architectural design practices that promote spatial justice.

FATURA

RESEARCH & DESIGN PRACTICE

CONTACT