There is no doubt that we live in a time of great social, political and economic crisis with international characteristics, which have serious implications for the “weak” links in southern Europe. There have been other major crises in recent years which were often international, and perhaps cyclical, or exclusively national. A great deal has certainly been written on all these. But if there is a difference in the crisis that we are experiencing in this 21st century, then that is the difficulty we have in describing it in the terms of the last century. Now there are many crises simultaneously, not due to localized and geographically controlled causes; they are crises that interact with each other and have effects similar to those of the storm that broke out in Europe by the mere flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Asia. In fact, reality has lost much of its materiality and the crisis phenomena arise from the interaction of cultures, with social, economic and political circumstances. Crises are now numerous and simultaneous; they are a storm of crises, which seems out of control. It makes it possible to speak of a crisis of crises that might lead to a new colonialism. If, ten years ago, it was still possible to describe a crisis and maybe define emergency procedures, it is now extremely difficult to interpret the complexity of the phenomenon, when we have to face the consequences, without controlling causes. The tools of criticism in the 19th and 20th century no longer fit in the conditions of the 21st century.
At this critical juncture, where it is difficult to see if there is a changing in the geopolitical setting of the world in the long term in terms of economic and political relations between East and West, North and South, the debate about architecture and the city comes necessarily to the fore. The first reason is that much of the economy, at least in my country, Greece, is deeply rooted in construction, at the same time that housing is a primary value of culture. The second, and perhaps more important, reason is that the house has been connected, over the course of history - in my country, and Portugal also - with the identity of place and tradition, both in towns and villages, showing a relationship to the place which exceeded the cosmopolitan characteristics and has been based on the value of the economy, in a deeper, almost philosophical sense. It is of great consequence that in Portugal and Greece, countries of the sea and the ship, the architecture of the last 50 years at least claimed a balance between international searches of modernity and those of place, keeping a distance to both radical internationalism and globalization. 1
The effects of the storm are always destructive upon productive activities, people and all kind of constructions. In this present crisis we might not know how and when to settle the phenomena, but we are willing to be observant and optimistic, that is attentive and ready to take the world back into our hands, as the captains have learnt on their ships. But we don’t know well what dawn will bring, because the crisis is a result of crises that come from elsewhere, and their starting point no longer has any home. In this difficult environment the most important thing is to mobilize survival rules and find a measure of autonomy to be able to coexist with globalization.
In the first sense, which is not specific to the city or architecture, we need the critical consciousness of social subjects, who have lived through real disasters – major earthquakes, tsunamis and dictatorships - to stand up against global storms and digital disasters. That is the consciousness that adds a resigned maturity in everyday life and a creative restraint in any new construction. Starting with that consciousness, the second direction imposes a critical introspection into architecture and the city, which may mitigate the effects of individualization and defend the general good, the social dimension of building and dwelling. To an extent this means that the private initiative, no matter how strong it is, should contribute substantially to recasting the collective, social, cultural and built environment. With such an approach, the crisis, as a crisis of crises, can ultimately have, beyond the negative consequences, a number of positive and far-reaching effects on society, which must necessarily stand together.
Can (Greek) architecture benefit from the crisis?
Architecture is linked to the economy! This very obvious fact may, a few years back, have disturbed the visions of young architects and students, and a significant part of their teachers, who see the architect as a creator, regardless of social and economic parameters. The cult of the creative subject, the radiation of the starchitect and the depreciation of the common client who wants only to satisfy his needs and with less is a concept that grows easily in times of prosperity and easy money. We experienced this kind of prosperity in Greece in the late 20th and early 21st century, of course, as we have experienced great crises in the past, in the 1930s and 1970s, for example. But beyond the obvious negative consequences, crises have always had a positive side that we must also take into account.
Through the crisis of the interwar period, which peaked in 1929 and was simultaneously a crisis of economy, society and politics, we learned the value of functional design, rational construction, simple materials, unpretentious style. Especially in Greece, the crisis was linked to a national disaster, which ledt to an influx of 1,200,000 refugees from Asia Minor and the bankruptcy of the modern state in 1932. Architecture learned to reduce spatial needs drastically, to suit ideally the minimum needs of more people at lower cost, and also reduced, for the same reasons, superfluous decorations, making use of new industrial materials and seeking standardization. The architect’s targets turned to the collective interest, the functional organization of cities and the social dimension of housing. The great crisis of the interwar years lies behind the maturation of ideas that led to modern archi-
tecture and the radical and simultaneously optimistic search for a world that was new in ideological, political, aesthetic and constructional terms.
Similarly, but subject to other conditions, the passage from the 1960s to the 1970s was internationally associated with major social and political strife, a search for ideological identity and the oil crisis, while in Greece (and in Portugal, of course) military dictatorship prevailed. At that time we recognized the importance of vernacular architecture and the liberating value of the return to roots, in terms of politics and self-awareness. We read history critically and gave meaning to the restoration and reuse of old buildings. At the same time we discovered bioclimatic design, turning to renewable energy sources, first and foremost to the sun, and we gained a wealth of reflection and theoretical investigation, opening up new paths in architectural creation. The general crisis led to the birth of the architect who thinks in a society that respects the past and the environment.
Centuries of poverty have bequeathed to our times a great architectural heritage and a natural environment, which we tried to consume in a hurry during the last 20 years, and a moderation that we arrogantly ignored for the sake of luxury, spectacle and fast profit. We may be accused today, by northern Europe, of being junk, but we must not forget that in Greece we have also built a lot of architectural junk during uncritical prosperity.2 The deep crisis is necessarily slowing down hasty building, contributing indirectly to restraint. Let there be, even now, the awareness that architecture is an accumulation of social work and wealth that belongs to the realm of the long term. It should not be consumed easily with voracity and velocity in the fast turnover of the market economy. Architecture is part of an economy of space and time, an economy of culture, and should express a vision and a philosophy of life.
In this sense, a great undesirable crisis may have some beneficial effects on the quality of the architectural environment. It will give us time to think, to read, and to come into direct contact with our world. It will force us to reassess the value of measure and the importance of the sufficient and necessary, of simplicity, of all that which acquires more meaning when everyday use ‘inscribes’ on it the the passage of time. It will reduce our junk, literally and figuratively. It will help us to think twice about the value of sizes, materials and equipment to reduce costs and thus will move us away from the ‘rich’ north, giving another meaning to our pride. In this sense we can build a new creativity. I do not know what will be the outcome of this crisis of crises in southern Europe, how long it will last and what ruins it will leave us with; nor can I predict the course of architecture in the subsequent years, at the practical and theoretical level, but I think that, in the end, Greek architecture will have changed and will have gained.
The crisis Athens faces is the greatest motivation for its radical regeneration
The crisis in construction has reduced dramatically the activity of architects – primarily the young – and forced them to focus on creativity expressed through public events, research efforts on common problems and visionary exhibitions. These activities are found above all in Athens, combined with the great urban crisis that we all recognize in the centre and the suburbia of the capital city. This crisis has two faces. In a period of approximately 25 years of economic growth the city extended diffusely in every direction (sprawl), creating many secondary centres in the region, with negative consequences for the natural environment and the rural cultures. Quite conversely, the centre of Athens, that was synonymous with political power, commerce, history and culture, has experienced growing decline, which has reached a critical peak in recent years.
In the second sense specifically, the centre has experienced a sharp decline in economic and commercial activity, the abandonment of a large number of buildings, many of which are listed, and the withdrawal of symbolic uses of urban centrality, such as the ministries and the judicial authorities. The diffuse ‘void’, which was already installed there at the beginning of the economic crisis, has been exacerbated by frequent manifestations of political violence and has created a field of attraction for marginal social groups, homeless people, immigrants and drug users, forming clusters of limited access and delinquency. The crisis, which now is partly international, partly local, found a real face in the symbolic centre of Athens, where it has turned anxiously to the attention of public opinion and the state together with that of the politically active social groups, and of course architects, urban planners and other specialists.
The latest financial crisis has now jointed in Athens the long lasting urban crisis, which is continuously expanding and now concerns the entire city. Both are important and they run parallel even though they are separate and independent. The meeting of these two crises stimulated the interest of the state and citizens in the town centre, bringing to the fore the need for studies and proposals that address the phenomenon of metropolis over time. By reading the problem of the city centre, the studies raised in a new way the question of urban space and centrality, elaborating proposals beyond the limits of the known urban practices. A new Master Plan, that was proposed last July, puts the whole of the capital city on a new basis, reversing the explosion into a kind of implosion, which redirects the focus to the economic, political, cultural and historical centre, while trying to connect it with the sea front. At the same time the suburban mountains and natural environment are redefined in stark contrast to the interests of private property, and new terms are specified for green development, climate change, restriction of building, human-friendly circulation and the reversal of urban highways in urban boulevards. At the very heart of the city there is a new urban planning proposal that revises the old relationship between vehicular traffic and pedestrians in the main avenues and seeks to recast the broader area of public space together with the right to the city for all citizens.
Nobody can predict the degree of implementation of these proposals at such a critical economic and political situation, but their contribution to the critical thinking on the contemporary metropolis is a major contribution to the very future of the capital. When one can think of the city in another way, then the city is changing, because the way of perception is changing. Sooner or later the material culture changes as well. In this sense, the Athens crisis is the greatest motivation for radical reconstruction. Students, young and not-so-young architects are working on this in their daily lives. From the shadow of the crisis is emerging the optimism of reflective criticism and that is the other side and may be the only way to reflective modernity.
The militant demand for critical thinking, which is aimed at the general interest, requires that people who are out in the boat that is drifting in the storm, could eventually lead the way to the harbour, in spite of the storm, without going down, so that they can revenge that storm, God who sent it and those who will always conspire against, or even worse, like pirates in the story of Asterix. The critical consciousness of that breakthrough is the main challenge facing the crisis of junk space and the junk of the crisis, whether it is shining like gold or turns grey like carbon. The same applies to architecture and the city. All this requires one to think and create beyond metropolitan thought, in a globalization that gives greater meaning to the value of the difference than to the difference in value. |
1 See the architecture of the 20th century in Portugal and Greece in the two parallel catalogues of exhibitions at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt: Annete Becker; Ana Tostões; Wilfried Wang (eds.). Portugal: Architektur im 20. Jahrhundert. MÜnchen: Prestel, 1997; and Savas Contaratos; Wilfried Wang (eds.). Greece: 20th century architecture. Munich : Prestel, 1999.
2 I am certainly aware of “Junkspace” by Rem Koolhaas (October. Vol. 100 (Spring 2002), p. 175-190) and a large part of the junk to which I refer is the same as his, but I am also referring, and perhaps more so, to the property of the superfluous, which exists independently, including even its own architecture as a typical junkspace example. In this direction I am closer to the economics of Socrates as described in the writings of Adolf Loos.