Every time a new building is unveiled in Athens, usually following a reconstruction, I wait anxiously to see the facade. The scale model, when it exists, may suggest the result but it does not show the quality of the materials, nor the integration of the new building into the surrounding environment. As a rule, the impression is disappointing.
On Lavriou Square, on Tritis Septemvriou Street, on Amalias, Stadiou, Panepistimiou, Akadimias and Syngrou, but also on countless smaller streets, dozens of facades have been unveiled recently or are expected to be unveiled soon. As a rule, this involves the removal of older facades, usually from the first post-war decades, and the creation of a new facade, signed by an architectural firm. There are exceptions, but even these do not surpass a minimum level of a merely tolerable or even fleetingly pleasant effect, which is usually due to the attractiveness of anything new and clean – a rare sight in the Greek capital.
Athens is acquiring many new but bad or indifferent facades, which reproduce a poorly conceived trend of delivering one uniform aesthetics. I am of the impression that the facades that we are unveiling in the city today will be demolished with great eagerness by the next generations. Syntagma Square, for example, which has four or five buildings in need of immediate reconstruction (if not demolition), is in danger of inheriting this formulaic-style aesthetic that some architectural firms reproduce with great ease, perhaps believing that they are providing a service to the city.
This issue is not only aesthetic or architectural. It is a social, more broadly political issue, and without a doubt an issue that reveals our priorities and the low expectations of our society. Athens needs some “shocks” of high quality architecture in its central districts. Who will cause them and who can finance them? The city also needs a vernacular of its own and a connection to the memory of its urban life.
At present, there is no such trend in sight. The standardized, non-local, internationalized and ultimately stereotypical and essentially conservative variation of an indistinguishable aesthetic coexists with the stifling construction of seven-storey apartment buildings on every small or large plot of the city, in districts or suburbs.
The center of Athens is waiting for true benefactors.
