Athens’s architecture from the 1830s to the 1950s ranges from Neoclassicism and Eclecticism to Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Modernism. The post-World War II period brought significant changes to the Athenian built environment. As the rural population accumulated in the city center, devastated by the Second World War and the ensuing three-year Civil War, the need for cheap and readily available accommodation emerged. Over a period of two decades, without any organized governmental policy or planning, the majority of existing buildings were demolished and substituted with largely nondescript blocks of flats. The destruction of existing architecture resulted in the dramatic deterioration of the built environment and, eventually, the degradation of quality of life in the city center. Today, an unidentified number of old buildings exist in the city center, the only remains of the pre-war period and culture. Their current conditions vary, from derelict carcasses to restored residences of organizations or individuals. Their present and past life is mapped in the building database www.ktiriothiki.com, whose aim is to engage people and researchers in a discussion on upgrading the current Athenian living space.

The article belongs to the thematic "Crisis of the Profession" of the themes set by the curator —Association of Greek Architects (SADAS-PEA). This article was published in English and Greek languages in the official edition of the catalogue of the Greek participation in the 15th Venice Architectural Biennale "Reporting from the Front" in 2016.

In his Modern Architecture since 1900 (1982) William J.R. Curtis attempts to present a “balanced, readable overall view of the development of modern architecture from its beginning until the recent past” and to include the architecture of the non-western world, a subject overlooked by previous histories of modern architecture. Curtis places authenticity at the core of his research and uses it as the criterion to assess the historicity of modern architecture. While the second edition (1987) of Curtis’ book appeared with just an addendum, for the third edition (1996) he undertook a full revision, expansion and reorganization of the content. This paper proposes that Curtis presented a more ‘authentic’ account of the development of modern architecture in other parts of the world with the third edition of his book. In the first edition of Modern Architecture since 1900, Greece appears only as inspiration to the work of Le Corbusier: the Acropolis is regarded as having made the greatest impression in the memory of the modern master. It is not until the third edition that Curtis discusses Greek modern architecture, embodied in the work of Dimitris Pikionis in the late 1930s and later on in the 1950s. It is also not until the 1996 edition that Greece is ‘authentically’ addressed in terms of ‘national identity’, ‘universalism’ or ‘regionalism’. Between the first and the third editions of the book, regionalism in architecture was debated and framed in seminal essays and conferences by Curtis himself, Paul Rudolph and Kenneth Frampton. Focusing the attention on the example of Greek architecture, this paper will seek to discern developments in Curtis’ discourse on regionalism between all of Modern Architecture since 1900 from inspiration to authenticity.

The infiltration of British architectural thought in Greece and in the Greek architectural press during the thirty-year period from 1967 to 1996 is mainly associated with the two most important periodical publications of the era: Orestes Doumanis' Architecture in Greece and the magazine Tefchos by Koumbis, Papoulias, Simaioforidis, and Tzirtzilakis. Its mathematical curve is not straight, but shows peaks at different periods, often linked to the relationships of the publishers of the two magazines with Greek architects active in the educational and professional architectural scene of the United Kingdom. The first such peak corresponds to the period 1966-1973 and concerns the establishment of Panos Koulermos in Athens and the creation in 1966 of the office Kalogeras – Amourgis - Koulermos and the Workshop of Environmental Design Athens Greece (WEDAG), as well as the relationship developed by the three architects with Orestes Doumanis. The second is marked by the close collaboration of Dimitris Porphyrios with Architecture in Greece between 1977-1982. The third and least traceable of the three corresponds to the period 1980-1987 and relates to the founding of the Greek branch of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Athens in 1980 by Elias Zenghelis and his students at the Architectural Association school in London, Elias Veneris and Stavros Aliferis. Finally, the fourth peak, corresponding to the period 1989-1996, is associated with the activities of George Simaioforidis and the founding in 1989 of the magazine Tefchos in Athens.