WRT
Research
VARIOUS
2009

Athens Project

Research project on the city of Athens, its architecture and planning history, in relation to the politics of labour, economy, law and social struggles.
(2009 – PRESENT)

Team
Platon Issaias
Categories
Architecture, Archive, Collective Equipment, Criticism, Domesticity, Economy, Housing, Infrastructure, Movements, Policy, Social movements, Study, Territorial, Theory, Urban

Platon’s main research interests in architecture and urban design explore architecture in relation to the politics of labour, economy, law and social struggles. Tracing the link between conflict, urban management and architectural form, his research work has been formulated within The City as a Project Research Collective and developed to his PhD dissertation and multiple publications, lectures, seminars, and course material – history/theory and design studios.

His thesis ‘Beyond the Informal City: Athens and the possibility of an Urban Common’ investigated the recent history of planning in Athens and the Greek city, defining an original method of study of urban form through distinct paradigmatic objects, legal frameworks and the politics of urban development. Since, this relation between archetypes and protocols has formulated a new approach into the history of the city and research-by-design practices.

Currently, Platon is working on a book proposal with selected chapters and essays on Athens as a Project (to be published in 2022)

The following book chapters, articles and conference papers emerged from this work: 

2020. From asset to debt and dispossession: Housing in the years of economic crisis in Greece.

Paper presentation and lead panel in: Housing and the City, organised by AHRA (Architectural Humanities Research Association), 19-21 November 2020.

Paper presentation in: PhD Symposium, organised by the City/Architecture PhD Programme of the Architectural Association, London, 26 October 2016.

2019. Designing the Informal – The case of Greece.

Essay and conference transcripts published in: Athens: From Informal to Paradigm. Athens: Futura, 190-205.

[link to the book]

2017. Domestic, Production and Debt: for a Theory of the Informal.

Book chapter in: Stoppani, Teresa, Giorgio Ponzo, and George Themistokleous, eds. This Thing Called Theory. London: Routledge, 220-230.

[Link to the book]

2017. From Flat to the City: The construction of Modern Greek Subjectivity.

Essay in: Joelho – Journal of Architecture 8 (2017): Ideas and Practices for the European City: 126-139.

Paper presentation in: Existential Territories: Architecture and Subjectivity, conference organised by the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art, 17-18 November 2017) and Hong Kong University, Faculty of Architecture, 26 January 2018.

[Link to the journal]

2015. Language/Diagram/Machine: Dom-ino and the Greek City.

Paper presentation in: Ελ/Le Corbusier: Genealogies, international conference organised by the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, 29-31 October 2015.

2015. What the Generic is not: Athens as a case against the informal.

Paper presentation in: Changing Cities II: Spatial Design, Landscape and Socio-economic Dimensions, international conference organized by the Department of Planning and Regional Development, University of Thessaly, under the aegis of the Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy & Climate Change, Porto Heli, Peloponnese, Greece, 22-26 June 2015. Special session: Urban Design as a Creative Tool, organizer: Dr. Thanos Pagonis.

2015. From Archetypes to Protocols: Projects for Athens.

Paper presentation in: Thinking Spatial Practice within and against the Law, conference organised by Birkbeck Institute of Social Research (BISR), University of London, 19 June 2015.

2014. Tout va bien: The Maison Dom-ino and the Social Contract of Modern Greece.

Paper presentation in: the Dom-ino Effect, symposium organised by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Thomas Weaver at the Architectural Association, School of Architecture, 14 March 2014.

2013. The Absence of Plan as a Project.

Book chapter in: Aureli, Pier Vittorio, ed. The City as a Project. Berlin: Ruby Press, 292-331.

[Link to the book]

2013. Domestic Nightmares: Social Conflicts and the Production of Residential Space in Interwar Athens, 1922-1936.

Paper presentation in: Plentitudes and Emptiness, symposium of Architectural Research by Design, organised by the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, College of Art – University of Edinburgh, 4-6 October 2013.

2013. Two Buildings and a Movie: Alienation, Conflict and Architectural Form.

Paper presentation in: Athens Symposium, organised by the MArch Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, 27 May 2013.

2012. From Dom-ino to Polykatoikia.

Essay published in: DOMUS 962 (October 2012): 74-87. With Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici.

[Link to the essay] 

2012. Labour, City, Architecture.

Essay published in: Dragonas, Panos and Anna Skiada, eds. Made In Athens, catalogue of the Greek Pavilion on the 13th International Architectural Exhibition – Venice Biennale. Athens: YPEKA, 313-319. With Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria S. Giudici.

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.

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