Giamarelos, S; (2021) Building before Theorising Resistance: 118 Benaki Street beyond Critical Regionalism. In: Doucet, I and Gosseye, J, (eds.) Activism at Home: Architects Dwelling Between Politics, Aesthetics and Resistance. (pp. 247-259). Jovis Verlag: Berlin, Germany.

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Abstract

Suzana and Dimitris Antonakakis’ apartment building on 118 Benaki Street (1972–75) was heralded as a flagship project of critical regionalism in the mid-1980s. For its architects, the project embodied a critique of the standard Athenian building typology. But crucially, the building also subverted existing design hierarchies, standard modes of production and everyday practices of sharing a collective life within an Athenian apartment building. Revisiting the lived history of this project from the moment of its initial conception to the present, this chapter unveils the multifarious, resilient and dissipating, aspects of resistance on 118 Benaki Street. In so doing, it also highlights the tensions that rose between the original resistant intentions and their implementation in practice over four decades. The historically short lifespan of the architects’ original intentions also highlights the contradictions involved in attempts to orchestrate unconventional ways of living. Similar problems emerge when one considers the residual hierarchies and operative modes that remain unchallenged or resist change at 118 Benaki Street. These long-standing tensions unsettle the ways in which this project has been appropriated to theorise critical regionalism. As Kenneth Frampton bypassed the nuanced history of this project, he offered only an idealised image of architectural resistance. But it is only a return to the fullness of the historical image, to the social world as the Antonakakis wanted to see it transformed alongside the contingent fate of their actions, that foregrounds the political core of resistant architectures for the present.

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