Athens 1933. A new theatre in the urban scenario

Luisa Ferro



We have a theatre now: an open-air theatre, fully equipped, modern and built on up-to-date principles and concepts hitherto unknown in the Greek theatrical world. […] On the corner of Heyden Street and Mavromataion Street - which is the first street on the right-hand corner of Patision Street after Alexandras Avenue and on the corner of the Field of Mars, a cool and quiet corner - in less than a month a veritable new world has been created (Kotopouli 1933).

The placement of the theatre is not accidental, it is a well-placed move in the Athens under construction. After all, theatres have always been a significant presence in cities, both symbolically and physically. Place (location) is a constitutive element of theatre identity. What is more, if we think that throughout history we find the theatre, not always figured in a building, also in fairs, markets, farmyards, and in the gathering spaces of a community. Thus, along with theatres as clearly identifiable architectural places, it is the very organization of urban space itself that very often acts as the background of representations. In other words, the relationship between the theatre space as a place of performance and its surroundings is always dialectical and multiform, and above all never too neutral. Only recently has the term “environmental theatres” been coined, built in poor or transitory spaces, often in out-of-the-way neighborhoods. This is research theatre (which had already begun with the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century) conceived in close relation to the surrounding context (Brook 1968, Cruciani 2005).

Urban Scene

Modern Athens, that of Nivasio Dolcemare, in Alberto Savinio’s stories, was a village. A city reduced to its essentials, where the traditional contrast between town and country was stripped of meaning: it was no surprise to see herds of transhumant goats from the Pentelicus pushing their way into the centre. The crucial date is undoubtedly 1922 (the Asia Minor catastrophe, the genocide against the population of Pontos and the forced population exchange), when things changed drastically: the mass arrival of refugees completely subverted the urban policy implemented until then. (Clogg 1996) In the face of this enormous drama, it was not known what values to express for the urban landscape. The city adopted the idea of a break with the nearest past: modernism became a sign of optimism and prosperity and left a legacy so wide-ranging that it had no parallel in Europe. The orientation of architectural thought definitively degrades the role of typological invention in housing policy. For the people of the shacks (the poor and refugees), the price for a more humane life is the apartment block, which spreads impressively according to the logic of the market economy, the engine of promised prosperity. This process is either self-perpetuating and transcends any urban planning programme. Not only that, but the cultural role and architectural direction of Modern Movement architecture is replaced by a current 'modernist' style, which becomes the most widespread in post-war Greece, even more so than the neoclassical style.

While the latter, starting from the monumental models of official architecture, becomes in minor construction an expression of continuity with the popular typological tradition, with the modernist style not only is a disconnect created with the principles of cultured and refined rationalism, which sought mediation with history, but all cultural reference with the heritage of tradition is erased. Current construction tends towards an international style and becomes a model for master builders and constructors, leading to the complete negation of the past in the name of modernization. Alongside master plans that were never truly realized, the vast and unplanned extension of the city advances (Christofellis 1987; Filippidis 1999; Giacoumacatos 1999; Ferro 2004).

But let us go in order. Let us begin with the numbers that reveal the extent of the wave of refugees arriving in a short period and settling in the areas of Athens and Piraeus: the population increased by 30.6 per cent, according to the 1928 census data. In Athens, refugees represented a quarter of the population, in Piraeus a third. Thus the already existing housing crisis increased enormously. In 1928, 244,929 refugees settled in the Athens metropolitan area; new expansions required the mobilization of multiple institutions and funds.

The main actors in charge of providing solutions to this colossal humanitarian crisis and organizing its spatial footprint were the Greek state and foreign charitable organizations such as the Red Cross and the Near East Foundation. Initially, the situation was perceived as temporary, so the refugees were housed in public buildings or in private buildings occupied or requisitioned for this purpose. The great need for immediate accommodation led to the creation of temporary slum-like structures in open spaces in and around the urban fabric. Later, having accepted the permanence of the situation, a series of legislative measures attempted to solve the housing problem by creating planned settlements.

Several institutional bodies were founded at that time: the Refugee Assistance Fund (in Greek TPP, born in 1922), later replaced by the Refugee Settlement Commission (in Greek EAP, 1923-1930), financed by the League of Nations in the form of an international loan. The EAP was supposed to act autonomously, without the involvement of the government or any administrative authority. However, the Ministry of Welfare, which was already involved in settlement construction, took over the work of the EAP after the land under its jurisdiction had been used (Kairou, Kremos 1983-84, Mandouvalou 1988, Hirschon 1989).

In a first phase, TPP (later PAE and Ministry of Welfare) builds new settlements in peripheral areas, creating new housing or restoring existing properties, or giving land, building permits, subsidies and technical assistance. But a second phase, almost parallel to the first, soon takes place: landowners subdivide their land by selling it to refugees, to build neighborhoods near organized settlements or wherever they find space, creating new self-built settlements. The settlements have an investment character, not a charitable one. Refugees have contracts for houses in the form of a mortgage, paying the rates and the rest with interest. The location of refugee settlements in some cases exploits the proximity to industrial-manufacturing facilities. In other cases, the process is reversed. However, the main declared objective is that the settlements should be as invisible and socially isolated as possible. Social segregation is accentuated in the spatial layout of the capital with the creation of purely working-class and popular communities: «they must not disturb the normal life of Athens»[1].

As the city grew over the following decades, these satellite settlements became part of the city, the previously uninhabited areas between Athens and Piraeus were completely occupied and the two cities, which had always been two autonomous entities even morphologically, formed a single urban complex.

The urban plans of the settlements reflect a complicated and heated architectural debate, sometimes applying the principles and standards of modernist architecture (a grid system of parallel and perpendicular streets forming blocks of buildings of the same size) and sometimes those of garden cities (circular streets and symmetrical squares): the shacks are organized in rows and some empty spaces are left for communal spaces such as bathrooms, toilets, laundries.

The temporary housing units provided by the OPT and the EAP are: single-family wooden houses, known as “Germanika”, as compensation for the First World War; one- or two-storey houses, single or double; two-storey houses with external stairs, arranged on square plots around a common area; two-storey houses that each housed two families; a one-storey house with a single room and a kitchenette (about 32sqm per family) with a shared bathroom. (Vassiliou 1936)

In Athens and Piraeus, 56 neighborhoods are formed around the 19th century city, forming a belt of new buildings. The first “prototype” neighborhoods are born, such as those of Nea Smyrna, Nea Philadelphia, Nea Gallipoli. Then there are suburbs built as garden cities for middle-class social strata (Psichikó, Filothei...). However, there are very few council houses compared to the need. Thus, a large percentage of the refugees found accommodation in self-built shacks in spaces granted by the state.

Between 1928 and 1932 (Venizelos government) a more organized housing policy was set up. In the 1930s, the use of multi-storey dwellings of which the typical dwelling is about 40 square meters, according to modernist minimum dwelling standards, became increasingly common. These blocks of flats are built to replace temporary housing. The type of one-room houses, which can be joined under favorable conditions, follows in detail the standard applied in the Frankfurt municipality’s programmes «for the poorest of the poor». The same standard is applied for two- and four-storey houses, again designed according to German examples (famous are those of Ernst May and Walter Gropius).

In spite of the state’s settlement law, some even very innovative standards are often not respected. In some cases, attempts are made to ease critical social situations through the cheap sale of building land. Thus the most widespread type of housing remains that of minimal dwellings (one or two rooms) made of wood, stone or brick with rammed-earth floors, built on expropriated land and parceled out in square blocks bounded by an orthogonal road network (Kandilis, Maloutas 2017, Filippidis 1999).

In this context, the architectural debate between the wars (of the 20th century) in the capital became complex, contradictory and full of ideological conflicts, and episodically found a way to develop, particularly in the construction of key architectural sites for the new neighborhoods: open spaces and collective spaces, schools. Emblematic is the case of school construction, which became an important testing ground for modern architecture in Greece and which affected not only the centre, but above all the suburbs, the refugee quarters and the old suburbs. The school, often built in the middle of undeveloped farmland, proves to be the only reference for a different (cultural and urban) use of the city and for future development. The open spaces of school buildings will become public squares and places for sports in the newly built neighborhoods. (Giacoumacatos 1985, 1999)[2].

A common theme in the architectural debate is continuity with tradition, its formal codification in contemporaneity. Thus, at a time when architectural culture strives to assimilate the main international currents, at the same time, in Greece, a movement of resistance to cultural imports develops, giving rise to exceptional works that are revolutionary manifestations of art capable of opening a complex dialogue with Greek regionalism. In this sense, the modern transcends those limits that had hitherto been ascribed to it to develop in multiple directions.

Adding to the complexity of the debate is Dimitris Pikionis, a (sometimes uncomfortable) protagonist on the architectural scene. The intellectual battle (individual and collective [3]) of Pikionis gives concrete answers to the uncontrolled reconstruction taking place (in Athens in particular), to the savage destruction of the architecture of tradition. The concept of modernity becomes increasingly subtle and elaborate, as a critical reflection of the legacy of the past (Ferlenga 1999, Ferro 2004).

Pikionis takes a critical viewpoint by using the concept of tradition to highlight the dehumanisation of the contemporary environment. The Greek idiom is a tragic voice, the spirit of dissent, a kind of “light substance” (Elitis 2005), a true category of the spirit for interpreting reality. This “Greekness” has vital roots in the ancient world, going back in time (Yannopoulos 1909, Pikionis 1927, Psomopoulos 1993). And the refugees are not “other” than the Greeks are part of it. Figures, types, forms of houses, of life, of art, everything must express the one origin. Pikionis reverses the trend on the figuration of the house, identifies the characters of that light matter, that 'red thread', which gives continuity to the architecture of the Greek tradition (including that of Asia Minor) from the typologies of antiquity to the forms of contemporary spontaneous dwellings (Pikionis 1927). The Greeks were up to Asia Minor now in the suburbs of Athens in barracks.

The meaning of tradition has a very broad scope. Tradition is not a heritage that can be easily inherited; those who want to take possession of it must conquer it with great effort. Art does not improve but is in constant motion. Places must be studied in their formal values, in their configuration, in their topography, as a spiritual value for the mental associations they can evoke mythical and archaic images that give meaning to things.

«The architect’s work is not to invent ephemeral forms, but to revise the eternal figures of tradition in the form determined by the conditions of the present» (Pikionis 1925, 1927, 1950-51).

The aim was on the one hand to preserve popular art that was falling into oblivion and on the other hand to hand down memory in contemporary design. «We must not lower us in the direction of vernacular art, in search of the picturesque or genre fascination, but in order to search for leaven to make our work grow» (Pikionis 1927, 1950-51).

To ignore the rhythm of the landscape, Pikionis often writes, the demands of life in the name of functionalist slogans is to become an uncritical importer of a culture that demands, on the contrary, to be utilized and transformed by imagination.

In opposition to modernist slogans, he proposes formal principles that enshrine poeticism in minimal spaces, which is not a question of square footage but of variation of type, of working on the autonomy of the pieces of the composition, on the volumes and levels that shape the terrain[4].

To the standard he opposes the theme of diversification of the universal type:

Infinite are the variations that can thus be applied to the basic form. And the line mysteriously takes you now towards the ancient, now towards the medieval, now towards the primitive, now towards a popular neo-classicism. And it is up to you, if you know the mysterious language of form, to express that particular form that would be the symbol both of the deepest essence of your tradition and of the time in which you live. (Pikionis 1925, 1927, 1950-51; Psomopoulos 1993; Ferro 2002, 2004)

Thus, the concept of modernity becomes ever more subtle and elaborate as a critical reflection of the legacy of the past. Conveying the true meaning of the spaces of the home is the task of architecture, that is, to express the poetry of everyday life» and to help the Greeks remember that kind of identity of thought in which even refugees can recognize themselves.
So he studies the refugee villages with their self-built houses, drawing from them a kind of substantial form of human habitation, which basically tells us how cities came into being. He also takes into account that many of them had indeed become poor, but they were cultured, well-educated people. «Even in the poorest houses made of old planks and pieces of tin and tar paper, one could find the golden section of Pythagoras. ... We then gained exceptional experiences from our contact with space, a space that confused us, that was neither indoor nor outdoor» (Hatzikyriakos-Ghykas 1934).

 
The Theatre

As mentioned in the opening, the location of the new Pikionis Theatre in the city has a very specific meaning. It is located at the crossroads of an important crossroads, the matrix of the future city. The perpendicular axes could have constituted in turn itineraries studded with important urban facts of modernity, specialized places, collective spaces for the city.
Mavromataion Street, runs parallel to Patission (28th October Avenue, the street of the Athens Polytechnic, the Archaeological Museum and the Academy of Art) and with it defines a narrow strip of blocks that come to rest on the Field of Mars, the great green area of the 1920s master plan. Patission was born from the geometry of the neoclassical plan of the new capital city, the work of genetic engineering, which reshaped the forma urbis and compacted itself in the mesh of the triangle Sintagma, Omonia, Ceramico (Mandouvalou 1988). It is the matrix of an orthogonal (almost Hippodamian) development linking the ancient city towards the peripheral districts to the north. The design begins with the first expansions (1864- 1909). The master plan (1920-25 Kalligas, Hébrard) draws, following the figure of the orthogonal chessboard, the avenue Alexandras (north of Mount Lycabettus). The axis connects Patission with the new neighborhoods to the east, that is Ambelokipi. The planned design of the crossroads is at odds with the rest of the city, which proceeds haphazardly and without coordination (Biris 1966, Filippidis 1999).
Along these axes a number of important architectural landmarks: among them the blocks of houses in a line, the houses for the 'poorest of the poor', shreds of the rationalist city arranged perpendicularly on Alexandras Avenue and facing the green area of the Field of Mars, the Mitzakis school in Ambelokipi immersed in the urban scene of the self-built shacks of refugees. And so, in the centre of this important carriage house, the new theatre was established in June 1933, to give new perspectives of entertainment to the neighborhoods under construction, opening up possible visual fields, even dramatic ones, in the city.
A kind of anticipation of the Biris 1946 master plan (never fully realised): Patision and Alexandras as the new crossroads of the contemporary city. Alexandras connects Kolonos (ancient academy) with Ambelokipi, Patision the large archaeological area, the design of the capital city with the neighbourhoods to the north. New urban places, city design and refugee neighbourhoods within a defined, geometric urban design (Mandouvalou 1988, Filippidis 1999).
In Greece, experimentation with open-air theatres has had particular important contributions.
Sikelianos, Eva Palmer, the painters Tsarouchis, Steris, Papalukas, Hatzikyriakos-Ghykas contributed, in a way influenced, despite Greece’s marginal position in the theatrical world, the changes and experimentation on theatre architecture in the early 20th century (Fessas-Hemmanouil 1999, Ferro 2004). It was a kind of return to the theatrical tradition of ancient Greek culture and to certain popular performing traditions, a kind of transmitter of Greek thinking, a factor of identity even for those who came from the distant territories of Asia Minor. It evokes a time when theatre is not in a theatre, but on moving stage, chariots, raised platforms; spectators standing or seated at tables, in front of a glass, taking part in the action, replaying the actors; theatre done in backrooms, attics, barns; one-night stands, a tattered sheet pinned to either end of the room, battered panels concealing rapid changes. The problem is not whether a building is beautiful or ugly which formal code it uses: the theatre building must become an extraordinary meeting place or it remains unresolved, cold, empty. This is the mystery of theatre and the architecture of the small theatre in Pikionis encompasses this mystery. It can be a puppet theatre, a shadow play or, as in this case, classical and avant-garde performances (Brook 1968).
The theatre consists of the architecture of a stage set (designed as a prototype) within an enclosure that, like the ancient Dionysian theatre, is open to the city:

All around is a high wall with a promenade with a decorative iron railing. A booth next to the entrance houses the ticket office, while a small building in front of us as we cross the threshold contains a large, comfortable bar. But there is nothing else inside the new theatre, and even these few structures are simple, without any particular decoration. Yet the simplicity is imbued with grace and an aesthetic concept. (Kotopouli 1933)

There are no seats. Chairs (old chairs from the Attic Cinema) are stacked in a corner and available. Or they can be brought from home. «There will be 995 such seats in the stalls, with about two hundred at the back, like a sort of gallery, and it will be possible to place another 150 around the stage at each evening performance» (Kotopouli 1933).
The important part of the new theatre (the only one) is its stage. And it is this dimension that gives it its character, that makes it different, that makes it a truly valuable acquisition for the Athens of the time.
The stage building

is unusual, especially in that it is divided into three parts, and is quite dissimilar to what we have so far called by this name in Greek theatre. The Athenian scenic space originated from imported models that, in turn, were connected to a basic concept borrowed from painting: that is, the possibility of creating an impression by suspending scenic backdrops and trying to obtain a maximum of perspective. This concept ignored entirely the structure of the building in which it sought to reproduce the desired impression. However, modern developments in the theatre (Kandinskji for example: light and color instead of scenes, or Gropius with his theatre) have introduced the predominance of an architectural concept, i.e. they aesthetically take care of the envelope and the stage by attempting to achieve the atmosphere sought by the author with simple and clear details, without making use of pictorial effects, but rather by using space and a suitable adaptation of color, form, masses. (Pikionis 1958)

The new theatre will have walls on both sides, like walls, which will enclose the stage and truly give it the form of a room, into which the actors can only enter or leave through real doors. Thanks to a special mechanism they can open in the middle and rotate to act as wings. But in addition to the main stage, there are two smaller stages at the sides, where scenes of secondary importance can be performed. ... When the curtains closing the central stage are open, the three-part stage will form a single unit, with only two pillars to remind us of the partitions. (Kotopouli 1933)

Pikionis quotes Japanese theatre as an example, understood not as a kind of permanence of a universal original form. The architecture of the stage space is a return to ancient theatre, even to that of the Mansiones, the demountable rooms of medieval theatre. But above all it is a reference to popular theatre, to the white cloth of the hut where the animator of the Shadow Theatre moves: «The shadows of the Karaghiosis theatre descend from the mysterious ancient cinema, from the play of shadows projected on the wall of a cave, to which Plato compared our memories» (Yourcenar 1989). The theatre will be demolished to make room for new building lots.

 

IV Ciam

On the first of August, the steamship “Patris II” of the Neptòs company arrived in Piraeus after three days of sailing, with the hundred congress participants on board. The great spectacle of the 4th International Congress of Modern Architecture begins and the participants are completely unaware of the Greek context and the ongoing architectural debate (Bottoni 1933; Ferro 2002, 2004). True, on this occasion the charter of the rational city is drawn up, but it seems almost out of place: Athens was already going further, in negative and in positive.

[…] Difficilmente è possibile immaginare una città contemporanea tanto degradata quanto Atene. Forse in nessun altro campo si nota così tanto la mancanza di uno spirito creativo capace e sapiente, di una volontà in grado di contrastare le forze negative.

[...] It is hard to imagine a contemporary city as degraded as Athens. Perhaps nowhere else is the lack of a capable and wise creative spirit, of a will capable of counteracting negative forces, so noticeable. It is fair to say that awareness of this situation is a matter of individual conscience and responsibility: it is natural and human - but perhaps also necessary - to feel diminished, at least the most sensitive of us, when confronted with the state of our city and the ideal solutions, and the efforts of contemporary urban planning. [...] This land is not just any land. Its spirituality is a supreme model, insistently demanding to be applied by dominating and integrating all other demands of functionalist architecture and urbanism. Of course, I am not just talking about a physical place, but also a spiritual place. Thus I find the operation that every artist must perform twofold: 1. bring his work back to the rhythm of the landscape; 2. submit it to the sacred demands of life. The first operation requires a harmonization of the potential of the spaces, volumes, forms and themes of the work in relation to the dynamics of the light, the rhythm of the landscape, the nature of the climate. [...] The second operation presupposes acute psychological observation, a sensitivity capable of registering and then giving form to the hidden virtualities of our lives. [...] This twofold operation has no rules. It is, as El Greco says for painting: action, purely personal inspiration. Judging by the form the new movement is taking in our country, I must say that this is the operation we all need to perform, along with all the others, if we want to be cultured operators rather than importers of civilization. This alone will make us capable of critically reading the transitory mottos of art, which for reasons of polemics and the need to define an artistic movement (rationalism) limit it, excluding the potential of a multitude of virtues, thus limiting the concept of Art. It is necessary to reflect better on the solutions that the West offers us, in order to avoid what is fast becoming true: the crystallization of a new banality, the establishment of a new academicism. (Pikioins 1933)

The event of the Congress is well known, but what is important to emphasise is a kind of “hidden” debate concerning Greece and the concept of tradition. Anastasios Orlandos’s speech during the 3 August ceremony at the Polytechnic and Pikionis’s paper will give an unexpected twist to the proceedings[5].

  

Notes

[1] Updated studies have recently been published, with an extensive bibliography: MYOFA N., STAVRIANAKIS S. (Harokopio University) 2019, Α comparative study of refugees' housing of 1922 and 2016 in the Metropolitan area of Athens https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336107098. e KLIMI M. (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment) 2022, The Housing Rehabilitation of the 1922 Asia Minor refugees in Athens and Piraeus, http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6f65e6dc-f33f-4a93-a357-453f904f3b43.

[2] In 1930, Minister Papandreou reformed the Technical Office of the Ministry of Education by establishing a «Directorate of Architectural Services». Head of this office is Nikos Mitzàkis (1899-1941), whose presence would become fundamental in the choice of architectural direction and the cultural role of school construction in the city. Among the design staff is the architect Patroklos Karantinos (1903-1976, a pupil of Pikionis), one of the main advocates and defenders of a modern architecture in Greece linked to the experiences of European rationalism and a new strategy that manifests a critical awareness of history but finds its roots in the building tradition of the Greek islands.

[3] «And then there were the others: Kòndoglu, Papalukàs, and the architect Mitsàkis, Stratìs Doukas and Velmos; and then the younger generation: Ghikas, Tsarouchis, Engonopoulos, Diamantopoulos. How many fruitful lessons were drawn from the context between these different spirits, from the antitheses that each of them represented! I honestly do not know what I could give them in return. But I am aware of what I got from each of them» (Pikionis, Autobiography).

Pikionis is the protagonist of real intellectual battles. The guiding principles of these battles also became a living part of teaching. A large group of artists and architects, who called themselves Omada Filon (group of friends), worked on them. With the magazine “To Trito mati” (The Third Eye, 1935-37) and other events related to it (e.g. the 1938 exhibition on Greek Folk Art), he clarified the research direction he intended to take with respect to the Modern Movement.

[4] In the early 1950s, with the Exonì project and the magazine of the same name, Pikionis fine-tuned his way of thinking about living through a renewed idea of the city. Exonì was a manifesto through which didactics, experimentation and the theory of composition became a motif for reflection, but also a philosophy of life. Every part of this small settlement was designed for refugees and homeless people. On this subject see FERRO L. (2014), Dimitris Pikionis e il villaggio di Exonì. La Casa Greca: mito dell’antico e tradizione/ Dimitris Pikionis and the Village of Exonì. The Greek House: the Myth and the Tradition, in Aa.Vv., Culture mediterranee dell’abitare/Mediterranean housing cultures, Clean, Napoli.

[5] Le Corbusier himself, after the congress, manifested a new line of research: modern spirit and archaism, human scale and landscape became the new themes of his architecture. The French architect was strongly influenced by his second and last trip to Greece. In 1934, Christian Zervos, editor of the magazine “Cahier d’art”, wrote a book on primitive art in Greece and published Panos Tzelepis’ article on the houses of the Greek archipelago. Le Corbusier’s article La ville radieuse dates back to 1935: «In 1933, the Congress of Modern Architecture was held in Greece: we travelled around the islands, the Cyclades. The deep, millenary life remains intact. We discover eternal houses, living houses, of today, which rise from history and have a section and a plan, which are precisely what we have imagined for ten years. In this place of human measure, in Greece, in these lands open to simplicity, to intimacy, to well-being, to the rational still guided by the joy of living, the measures of the human scale are present... ». The journey to the islands is also documented in: HATZIKYRIAKOS-GHYKAS N., Some more memories of Le Corbusier, in “Architecture in Greece”, No. 21, 1987.

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