Made in Athens

Panos Dragonas and Anna Skiada, curators of the Greek Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition — Venice Biennale, are presenting Made In Athens, an installation portraying a country that has been in the eye of the media storm in recent times, and not for its art or architecture. Making apparent that creativity is alive and well even, or especially, in the face of a stumbling economy, the Greek Pavilion presents a detailed and austere overview that also shows great hope for the future in its fascinating (albeit disintegrated) and striking (albeit decadent) capital.

"Contemporary Athens is a city of strong contradictions: It is a city whose particular identity was shaped during post-World-War-II reconstruction... A city that is expressed via the people who live there and where the game is played between public and private spaces (the recession has resulted in the halting of most State works, prompting a surge in unemployment and social hardship)... A city which has at its disposal an exceptionally talented cadre of young architects, international in orientation, well educated and with a wealth of professional experience," explain the two curators. "These architects, who have successfully exploited and benefited from the positive dynamics and information of globalisation, find themselves having to today with a level of wellbeing and professional opportunities decidedly inferior to the past... It is, however, the city that was most stricken by the current economic crisis."

"Conditions are being created in Athens to expand the links between architecture and the city..." adds Dragonas. "Furthermore, conditions are being created to bring to the forefront new ways of viewing the role of architecture, removed from the standards of well-being of the previous decade."

What will happen after the economic crisis? What is the best approach after the tempest? What is the link between wellbeing and architecture? What will happen to the city's social network? These are the unanswered questions raised by the Pavilion, which focuses on two themes: a first, more strictly urban one, concerning the contrast between the construction of the so-called polykatoikia — large, anonymous apartment blocks built in the second half of the 20th century, which constantly repeat in the city fabric — and eponymous builds. The second looks at the fragmentation of the city and its perceived decadence as well as the various efforts made to reuse and convert areas of core importance by organised citizens, activists and groups of architects, told in eight narratives by Andreas Angelidakis, ANTONAS Office (Aristide Antonas, Katerina Koutsogianni), Aesopos Architecture, AREA Architecture Research Athens (Styliani DaouI, Giorgos Mitroulias, Michaeljohn Rafopoulos), buerger katsota architects (Stephan Buerger, Demetra Katsota), decaARCHITECTURE (Alexandros Vaitsos, Carlos Loperena, Eleni Zabeli), drafworks* (ChrisIana Ioannou, Christos Papastergiou) and Point Supreme Architects (Konstaninos Pantazis, Marianna Rentzou).

Dragonias and Skiada explain that the projects can be divided into the practicable and the non-practicable. The former include a two-metre paper and blue-biro model, a painstaking work by AREA, who have designed a communal square between two 1950s' buildings in Victoria, a central part of the capital. The construction of which is, so far, given for certain; this is a concrete proposal on the creation of shared living places in disused spaces.

The non-practicable ones include a work by the versatile Andreas Angelidakis, a pioneer of the critical and constructive interpretation of disintegration and differentiation as a distinctive and dynamic value of the city he lives in. He believes that it is the diversity and different architectural layers that make the place unique. Considering new conditions and ways to rethink architecture —which does not necessarily have to be built but also works when making "real" suggestions —, Angelidakis reads and interprets the world through different lenses, seeking new directions. His Troll Casino project is a visual narration unfolding in the separate and parallel stories of two Modernist buildings, that symbolise the current suffocation in the Greek capital and explain how this status developed over time.

"Catapulting these stories into an imaginary future, I assessed the potential of contemporary architecture — proposal and theory, solution and fantasy — as a response to the economic crisis", explains Angelidakis. The relationship is between a luxury apartment complex, called Troll, and Casino, the 1960s' gambling house on the edge of the city where money circulated freely and people were carefree. The two models consist in pictures, rendering and an animation, and are presented facing each other in the exhibition, in a sort of silent conversation.

The exhibition design of the Greek Pavilion is like a 3D miniature mosaic of the capital's fragmentation, with 6 Voids – PXATHENS, a playground project by buerger katsota architects appearing here and there. At the corners of the models are six pieces of coloured children's games or play structures, confirmation that architects have not given up on radiant projects — inspired by a quest for levity that is in the nation's dynamic and genial DNA — to infect the urban soil. The entrance to the pavilion features a brightly coloured mural by the Athenian writer b., born in 1982, an architect and street artist.

As well as with pieces of city playground, the exhibition provides visors for slides that allow you to peep into the bedrooms of Athens residents. The Bedrooms project is by decaARCHITECTURE, who believe bedrooms paint a telling picture of their inhabitants and their living standard.

While waiting and hoping that Greece may emerge quickly from intensive care, what shines clearly through is the country's ability to clearly interpret a complex historic condition, in the hope that architecture may help improve the current situation. Contemporary Greek creativity is, you could say, in the neonatal unit. Full of life and willing, ready to make good use of other countries' contributions to be able to look forward. Maria Cristina Didero

NB: The Made In Athens exhibition at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition — Venice Biennale was jointly funded by Greece and the European Union.