Architectural works 1980-2010 | |
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Demetrios Issaias and Tassis Papaioannou are probably the most important architects of their generation. Their public and private buildings do not stand out for their regional character or the uncritical adoption of international paradigms. They follow a third way, between the objective narrative of structure and the reductive capacity of form, which forms the aspirations of regionality, integration, functions, handling of physical data, life habits, collective desires and construction possibilities with the ideological and design tools of the most progressive, politically and socially, postwar European avant-garde. Their starting point is the Greek modern movement of the 1930’s and the timeless example of Le Corbusier. They seek, however, to produce an architecture which is authentically Greek –therefore, universal as well– without being romantic or formalist, by following a road of design rigor and consistency, which was first initiated by Aris Konstantinidis.
Edited by A. Giakoumakatos and comprising introduction texts by him, B. Hoidn and W. Wang, this volume examines the 30-year architectural work of the two Athenian architects, summarizing stimuli and memories of a place, being also a field of creative action with absolute and unquestionable cultural autonomy.
(A.G.)