6.
The NEVER BUILT Athens Skyscrapers or, what they don't want you to know about them
Conspiracy theories in today's Urbanism
So…
…a long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away…
…there was a city that was lucky enough to have people with visions and unlucky that these visions came in the wrong place and in the wrong time as these plans were envisaged by people working for or being entrusted by the then oppressive regime in power… When a change in the ruling authority took place, the new rulers associated the plans of the previous rulers with the ultimate evils that might possibly happen to this city. One of the symbolisms of these previous rulers was the building of tall edifices to be used for accommodating state agencies of residences alike. Thus, building heights became the ultimate taboo in the Newfoundland of Democracy and all the plans for something taller that 30m became the object of contempt and public resentment. Schools and Universities started talking about "democratic", "human scale buildings" which would not be provocative with their dimensions and especially, their height. Over the years, the few opposing voices that dared to oppose this ideological and scientific fundamentalism ism have been isolated and scorned when not being subjected to angry attacks.
At the same time, armies of fanatic brainwashed NIMBYs were patrolling the neighbourhoods looking for undetected "behemoths" (in Greek: "μεγαθήρια"
), the term referring to whatever was taller than 6 floors. These species of fundamentalist janissaries have been trained to develop automatic reflexes against anything constituting a novelty and going beyond their aesthetic conceptions, which were limited to what is known in Greek as "polykatoikia", i.e. "block of flats".
Trough all these years a small boy managed to save some of those designs and keep them for the eyes of the future generations to come as he knew that after the age of unreason and backward fundamentalism where judgement would be clouded by anger as to the works and deeds of the past regardless of wrongdoing, perhaps the younger generations might see things with new vision, undistorted by the hating filters of the last 30 years.
Take for instance the blasphemous scrolls containing plans about an area they used to call "The Faliron Delta" and which, although it was located in
the most privileged part of town, between the city and the sea, right on the coastal avenue, it remained a dumpster until the city was given the Olympic games. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the coastline between the two "Phalerons" old and new, a 2.5km piece of seaside urban zone for which other cities WOULD DIE FOR, served by three highways, a metro line (and now a tram line too) remained a barren and unused piece of reclaimed land until the Olympics.
However, the old jedi remembers that back in the days he was just a young padawan there already plans to transform this piece of land and sea into this!!!
…and remember the year is
1974…
This is the model of the then proposed Athens Intercontinental Hotel in the Faliron Delta. Looks a bit better than the one we have now, which was built some 9 years later and which is beautiful but some 6-7 storeys shorter
as the Mujahendin of urban flatness had already taken over…
I repeat,
the year is 1974…
this is the "Four Seasons Hotel" and Casino In the Phaliron Delta. Also never built
I repeat,
the year is 1974…
This is the Holiday Inn, which was supposed to be built in the current location of "Intercontinental" Hotel being some 3 storeys taller.
Now this is a tpurist complex that was supposed to be built at the Varkiza bay on the greater coastal zone of Athens (for the Greeks: It is right on the straight section of the coastal highway off Varkiza).
These are the designs for a home for the… incurables proposed for Korydallos, to the west of Athens. Yes, this is from 1974
]
Wanna see more? Here samples of two architectural competiotions that took place in
1972 to accommodate the head offices of the Greek Telecom Organisation (OTE) and the Hellenic Power Corporation
This is the runner-up building that won the prize in the architectural competition for the OTE Head Offices Building which took place in the –I repeat-
1972 In the absence of a first prize, this solution was adopted the building was completed in late 1978, albeit with some modification (for the worse in my view) from the original design as follows. Thanks to it though, the suburb of Maroussi looks somewhat impressive at this spot.
This is the building that won the prize in the architectural competition for the DEH Head Offices Building
in 1972 . designed by the A. Tombazis Architecture office.
I repeat: In case you haven’t noticed the year is
1972:
Now the funny thing: This is another entry for this competition that
didn't even get a prize!!!. The architects are Molfessis and Pagkalos and I believe that they need a mention somewhere at least once for their proposal.
I want you to stop here, take a close look at the above picture and think:
If the above building was built
in 1972 in La Defence especially close to the RER station, wouldn't it be seen as a worthwhile addition to its skyline? Yet this was proposed for Athens in 1972.
But there were not just the professionals and the accomplished professionals thinking about tall buildings back then. Last but not least, here is the summary of a final year dissertation of a student of the National Technical University of Athens, as appearing in "Architectonika Themata Vol6/1972. The topic of his thesis is the "Renewal" of the then (and even more now!!!
) dense inner district of Athens called "Kypseli". The supervising professor is Mr Aravantinos and
the year is, er… 1971. In the beginning I wanted just show you the picture, but the text, both in Greek and English – is equally interesting and indicative to the spirit of the times.
And the obvious question comes next:
What happened to all those heroic, never-heard-of architects that were visualising buildings or
regenerations of whole districts and coastal fronts even on a case study basis
35 years ago and at a time that projects of such a scale and magnitude were possible only in areas such as La Defence (and even there; with the exception of the RER station, the rest of the structures were boxy modernist NY-style 1950's towers in their vast majority, being the "first generation towers" or "Les tours de la première génération", as they are known).
Why the above designs were and are systematically kept in the dark by the mujahendins of an ill-conceived "traditionalism" which is exhausted in everything being mediocre and equal in size and height? Why
there had to be a Spanish architect (you know who ) to teach us-again the meaning of the word "grace" and "grandeur?". Why in today's architectural magazines we see the works of even the smallest interior designer and "trendy" decorator, and yet, I repeat, the works and projects of those
daring men both proposed and/ or realised- have never been displayed in the open? Why all this cover-up?
7.
The Last Drama
Actually, Athens is one of the few cities in the world where the sheer number of highrises was
[reduced by one since in the early 1990's, the old 15-storey unfinished
Red Cross Hospital was bought by the "Vakon" construction company. The building was demolished in early 1996 and in its place were built two other (how typical) lowrise complexes, namely the new
Errikos Dunant Red Cross Hospital and an 11-storey complex "
Politeia Business Centre".
The whole case received extensive coverage from the news and thus the pictures below which are EXCLUSIVE captures of the coverage by the "Antenna" TV channel.
-Two pictures of the building before its demolition:
You can see the people on Messogeion Avenue waiting for the event in this picture:
Big Bang time as the building implodes after a series of controlled explosions from demolition charges… I did the collage using captured frames from the Antenna Channel news reel video
And this is the cloud of smoke which covered the area after the demilition. In a symbolic manner just one year before Greece took the Olympic games, it signifies the end of an era that came and went without any significant changes taking place since, neeedless to say that the thought of building something of equal height probably never crossed the mind of the developers… after all, the building codes are much stricter now …
On the other hand, an old building located in Syggrou avenue, the head offices of the Insurance company "Interamerican", have completely re-clad their head offices.
This is what the building looked like before the recladding:
…and his is what it looked after the recladding:
-Front view:
-Rear View
In essence, this 14-storey building is probably paving the way for others to follow, and in a sense, in the absence of others, one may say that this is the first Greek skyscraper of the new millennium!!!
8.
The future… Are there any chances?
Despite the fact that the previously mentioned "fundamentalism" was utterly dominating, there have been some voices of reason trying to state the obvious truth: what beauty is, lies in the eye of the beholder. Voices for instance like the one of N. Margaris who is a professor of ecosystems (which means that he knows abut ecology much more deeply than most of the Taleban NIMBY's and their ignorant mentors). Yet this guy is asking (click here to read the full article in Greek) in contrast to may of his counrterparts: "What was the reason for not building skyscrapers in Athens?", while Mr Athanasios Zoulias points out: "Every Saturday, most of the Greek architects as well as the students of architecture go to specialised bookstores to keep up to speed about the masterpieces created by their foreign counterparts, (where) most of these creations have been built with much more lenient building codes and height restrictions than ours" in other words, they want to learn about buildings they admire, yet they won't be able to build in their home country, not unless they fight with the absurd laws, the Taleban NIMBYs (who are probably the most militant in Europe, after all these years of continuous brainwashing) and the backward academic community…
But could there be any places, or better, are there left any places for skyscraper construction in today's Athens? The answer is not hypothetical since what we have all learned to believe that Athens is, is a small area or few blocks between the Acropolis, the Constitution Square, the Ononia square, and the picturesque district of Plaka.
However, modern Athens is a conurbation with 5,000,000 inhabitants quickly expanding outside the Attica Basin known by the physical boundaries set by the mountains of Hymettus, Pendeli, Parnitha and Aegaleo. Most of the lowrise fundamentalists talk about the 150m-tall Acropolis rock whose sight must remain unmolested from ALL spots around it. However, nobody would argue that to build scrapers NEXT or even NEAR to the Acropolis would constitute an act of sacrilege and blasphemy. In fact, the Athens tower in my view is somewhat close to it at a distance of some 5 km, as well as at a dangerously close distance of about 1km to the 270m Lycabettus hill. However, there are still places where the Acropolis will not be offended and they are right in the middle of the new developments. In the map below I have marked with circles three proposals for areas pointed out by various city planners.
Area #1 (blue circle) : This is located around the roundabout junction of Kifissias and Attica Road junction, in -where else?-Maroussi. What makes the area the best candidate for the construction of tall buildings is the access by all means of transport, i.e. Metro, Suburban rail, car and buses and its direct connection with the new Athens airport via the Attica Road. The openness of the space, the existence of many unbuilt estates would allow for a 160+m-tall, 40-something storey slim, "pencil" tower with a cluster of half a dozen buildings between 100-14m height and a few satellites between 50-100m. Ideally, the planned extension of a branch of the metro line #3 there can make the area a dream business district with three lines of metro and suburban rail connecting it with the airport, Athens city centre, Piraeus, and even the city of Corithos (the Korinthos – Loutraki extension of the suburban rail will be operational this June
.
Area #2: Kifissos Avenue (a.k.a. national Road #1, Athens-North, green circle) between the junctions with Kavalas Avenue and Peiraios Avenues, where also the famous "elaionas" is located. Foe there, I would envisage something of high density and up to 120m heights. Well?
Area #3: This is the area of Drapetsona close to Piraeus and to the best of my understanding they were planning to build a shipping business centre there. The area is perfect since it is hidden from the Acropolis, but it also can provide for a dramatic "by the sea" mini-skyline as I wouldn't think that anything above 80m would be necessary there.
Areas that I WOULDN’T build anything tall:
1. The old airport which is to become a metropolitan park, Hyde-Park style (part of it was used as the "Hellenikon Olympic Centre"-see map). The tallest structure could be a 12-storey hotel and Casino as well as convention centre, using the existing installations.
2. Anywhere between the Acropolis and the sea as this would destroy one of Athens's major advantages, i.e. the aphitheatrical view of the seaside. This includes Syggrou avenue where probably there can be a couple of some locations for 2-3 15-storey buildings.
3. Anywhere between the Acropolis and the Lycabettus. Both are natural monuments and anything above the existing building heights would ruin the view.
Also, how about a 220-m tall TV-observation tower in the main Athens Olympic Complex in Maroussi-Kalogreza?
In any case, and to cut a long (VERY LONG in fact) story short:
-Do NOT listen to the propaganda about the total need for "flatness" in a big city of 5 million people with diverse needs of all sorts because of it's antiquities. It is urban planning discipline and good organisation that matters,
not the absence of tall buildings. On the other hand, a real metropolis has to look like a metropolis and I just pointed some places where hundreds of square metres of office space can be built without any serious harm to the environment. Nobody said that we should build 40-storey towers next to the Acropolis.
-
All historical cities in Europe are resorting to solutions reminiscent of La Defence: Preserving their historic core and creating a second financial centre outside the main city centre where economic pragmatism does not interfere with the need to preserve a city's history. In Paris – La Defence, in London –the City and Canary Wharf, in Mardid - the Azka district, in Istanbul – (
) Levent, Maslak and Kozyatagi, in Vienna: DonauCity and Wieneberg and I don't know the names of of the places where things are moving in Bratislava, Warsow, Vilnius, Prague, Brussels, Rotterdam, you name it. Even in Italy, which does not have tall buildings
in proportion to its economic size they are seriously reconsidering and we should not forget the Centro Direzionale in Naples where I wish we had have these babies in Elaionas for instance
. After all, Rome has the EUR district since 30 years ago and Milan hosted the Pirelli skyscraper, one of the first outside US Soil!!! Almost same as Athens which had the Athens Tower in 1971
-Truing to artificially scale down the city's constructions in dimensions suitable to small towns and villages only managed to result in a fragmented urban development where, instead of streamlined urban and societal functions we are now in parts faced with anarchy, caused by the many conflicting uses of land – i.e. residence vs economic activity. In essence, cities have their own dynamics and this is proven by what happens in Maroussi where out of the blue and without any direction from the state, Kifissias Avenue, became in 20 years a business centre. Keeping building heights low only results in high real estate prices on specific locations of highly valued and prominent pieces of commercial property. This very moment, commercial property prices in Athens are equal to mid-town Manhattan which, after all is an island in one of the biggest financial centres of the globe. Also, Athens is in places equal to London, more expensive than Hong Kong and equal to Paris. My understanding is that in the next decade development cannot be stopped. It may be possible to regulate it (as the case is anywhere) but to try to quell it would be wrong-unless we want the buildings tenants, i.e. companies that employ hundreds of qualified Greek employees to leave the city for a more friendly destination. And you know what this means…
-It is rather unlikely for a new generation of highrises-even for residential purposes, to be built in the same fashion that their older cousins were built… Technology and a new breed of Greek architects that more and more are posing the same question along with everybody else: "
why don't they build skyscrapers in Maroussi or other suitable place away from the Acropolis?
And I leave the potential bomb for the end:
It's been quite some time-since the beginning of the millennium- that I was reading scattered articles of people –architects, journalists, etc asking the very same question.
Looks like this time, there was a listening ear from the other side: Mr Souflias, Minister of the Environment and Public Works (isn't he? ) very seriously stated that "
the existing master plan (meaning the 1983 one) served its goal but is nowadays outdated and in serious need of an 'update' (using the awkward Greek word: "επικαιροποίηση" )
to be in par with the needs of contemporary society". This is a statement that doesn’t come easily and by itself entails a hope for many changes.
Also, in the pro-government newspaper "Kathimerini" there was an article by an architect-urban planner whose name eludes me, that also talked about the need for "updates" in the master plans of Greece's major cities, especially with regards to the "coefficients" of production-utilisation.
And, I feel something may be changing. Now of course it may be early to tell but things may be moving really fast in a few months. Of course, years and years of negativism may be difficult to be washed away in just a few months… But life works in mysterious ways… Well, this day may not be that far away after all. After all, who would believe ten years ago that the Olympic Games would change this city so much…
I mean…
Just imagine telling your girlfriends: My office is in the "Atlas Towers" block B, 25th floor…
So, before we end this presentation, I leave you with a part of an old Athens postcard which I edited by scanning this part (a very small part of the original postcard) in very high resolution and then by making it look like an antique using special effects…
The way it was when few thought that it could have happened what never came…
But who says it's all over ????
9.
Epilogue Grand Opening – Olympic Towers Athens
Friday 23 April 2010(Reuters)
Gm2263 reporting from Athens, Greece
Athens Olympic Towers (2010)
(Original design by me used as part of an assignment in an HND Marketing class in 2001)
Following a four-year frantic pace of construction, the new Olympic Towers complex comprising a 44-storey, 167m-tall office tower and a twin 33-storey, 135m-tall hotel and Casino open their doors today to tenants, guests and visitors in a grand opening ceremony, 30 years after the last highrise was completed in Athens. The highrise complex also hosts the biggest dedicated convention centre in the country with some 12,000 seating capacity, as well as a night club at the top of the hotel the SkyCity which is expected to become one of the top hot spots of the Greek capital in the years to come. Also, the new 5,000 capacity parking ensures that here will be plenty of parking spaces for all users and guests of the complex.
The complex is located in the booming suburb of Maroussi, which has now taken the lead from the historical centre of Athens as the premier business centre in this metropolis of 5mn inhabitants. According to market experts, it is the first of a new generation of highrises to be built in the area, which until the year 2020 is expected to look like similar highrise business districts in Europe.
According to the mayor of Maroussi "we expect that the new complex will further upgrade our city's position as the leading business centre in Greece. Our motto is: Go to the Acropolis for tourism, come to Maroussi for business". As to the concerns about this new wave of highrise construction from some interest groups, he also pointed out: "All contactors are committed to regenerate parks and squares in the region for free. We expect an increase of 10% in the overall green spaces in Maroussi for the next five years, not including the existing regeneration projects. For us, building tall means going green all the way up".
Also, the president of LandScope constructions is back in Athens to finalise the details for a new 220m-250m-tall TV tower to be built in the Olympic Sports centre, now turned into a sports and architecture theme park.
Seems like Greeks rediscovered the art of building Parthenons again, who knows?
_____________________________________________
I mean…
WHY NOT?
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Suggested further readings (in English and Greek)
Aggelos Dimitriou (2001), Article, Newspaper "TA NEA"
(in Greek)- " The 7 bullets in the heart of Athens", click
here to access
Charalabakis Antonis (2003) Article, Newspaper "TA NEA"
(in Greek) on "Controversy of tall buildings in Greece", click
here to access
Margaris N – "To higher places" (Προς τα πάνω ) article copied from Newspaper"to vima" and stored by me in Pathfinder.gr
(in Greek), click
here to access
Margaris N – "Who is responsible for the destruction of Athens?" (1998) Article, Newspaper "TA NEA"
(in Greek) click
here to access
Zoulias Ath. – Architect, Article, "Architecture - Building Coefficient and Buildings' Height -
Peri-urban Land Management,
(in Greek) click here to access the
article in Greek and here, to access the same
article in English.
Georganas S (2005),
The 10 Modern Hellenic Myths: Myth # 5: Athens Was Destroyed from the Big Buildings (in Greek)
Perlikos F (2005),
To Uplift Us a little Higher (in Greek)
Manolas C (2006), Newspaper "TA NEA",
Athens Following on the Steps of Los Angeles? (in Greek)
ALL-TIME CLASSIC:
THEY LIVE!!! -
Know thy enemy!!!!
Greek NIMBYs Action Page!!!: The Lion's Den!!! -
(in Greek), click
here to access