WRT
Book
BERLIN: HATJE CANTZ
2026

Athens as a Project

Team
PLATON ISSAIAS AND YIORGIS YEROLYMBOS
Categories
Architecture, Domesticity, Housing, Infrastructure, Planning, Policy, Research, Territory, Urban

The book, a collaboration between Yiorgis Yerolymbos and Platon Issaias, is an interdisciplinary publication that presents the findings of a research and “parallel” project in the fields of architecture and photography on Athens and the Greek urban environment. Tracing the connection between social transformation, urban management and architectural form, the book presents a survey of the city, its architecture, its space, its history and contemporary life. Using Athens as a case study, it aims to define an original method of studying the city and urban form. 

The first chapter of the book, which is based on historical and archival research, discusses the “informal” urbanization that characterizes contemporary Greek cities and especially Athens as a direct derivative of a complex political project, which manifests itself mainly through architectural and urban typologies and protocols. As a case study, Greek cities, and especially Athens, offer a possible critique of recent perceptions regarding the distinction between “informal” and “formal” urbanization, as well as the multiple forms of their representation and documentation. 

In the second part, the book focuses on the analysis of exemplary architectural projects, from the 1930s to the present. The city is studied and presented through its smaller scales, the residential unit, the apartment and the apartment building, which have built and shaped the city with a seemingly random and fragmented pattern. In this part, text, architectural drawings and photographs by Yiorgis Yerolymbos present an “Atlas of Athens”, classifications of objects, atmospheres and everyday practices. 

In the third and final part, the book delves into the history of the city over the last 25 years, aiming to question the structure and form of contemporary Athens. Architectural analysis, drawings and photographic essays are utilized here to map the spaces of emerging desires, individual and collective spatial experiences of the contemporary city. 

As Pier Vittorio Aureli characteristically notes in the book’s preface “the core of the project described in this book is the famous Polykatoikia, a generic concrete structure that can host housing and other activities and that constitutes the quasi totality of Athens’ urban fabric. This type was the outcome of the extreme parcelization of land through which the urban population in Greece was managed since the early 20th century. Rather than just celebrating—once again—the versatility and informality of this type, Issaias and Yerolymbos expose it as an architectural and urban project. In this project, class interests, market conditions, and public legislation produced a specific architectural form with a specific political and economic goal: the transformation of dwellers into a society home-owners. In his essay, Issaias chronicles this project not just through sweeping social commentary but by a rigorous close reading of architecture. By analyzing, redrawing, and photographing exemplary case studies, Issaias and Yerolymbos rediscuss the most quintessential disciplinary aspects of architecture and domestic space: plan, distribution, proportions, etc. Athens as a Project exposes the extent to which the discipline of architecture is ontologically instrumental to a political and economic project. For this reason, Athens as a Project, is not only a book on modern and contemporary Athens but a profound meditation on what architecture and urban form are really about.”  

Contributors
Design: Akis Ioannides
Editing: Leela Keshav
Drawings, Diagrams: Myrto Vravosinou, Christos Smyrniotis (Fatura Collaborative)
Photo Processing: Vicky Lemoni
Production: Kati Klaeske
Project management: Kassandra Nakas
Reproduction: Schwabenrepro, Germany

[Buy online here]

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

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 Professor of Practice 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.

COLLABO RATORS

>< FERENIKI FOTOPOULOU

>< MARIOS GERONTAS

FORMER MEMBERS

ELISAVET HASA

FATURA

RESEARCH & DESIGN PRACTICE

CONTACT