Mutually Generative: Athens and Polykatoikia

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, the ancient city of Athens underwent a massive transformation into simple sets of apartment blocks, or polykatoikia. Today, these multifamily residential units define the city’s landscape from center to periphery and house the majority of Greek population. Yet specific circumstances and cultural patterns set Athens’s transformation apart from the arrival of architectural modernity in other countries, and what has emerged in Athens is a distinctly Greek variety of modern urban development.

The Public-Private House examines Athens’s urban character and the apparently unlimited adaptability of the building type of the polykatoikia, based on the Maison Dom-ino architectural type. The specific article investigates top-down and bottom-up processes of urban development in Athens. Furthermore, it establishes polykatoikia as a resilient building type while questions Athens as a resilient city.