Greek Met a Histories

7/31/2019 Greek Met a Histories

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The Usable Past


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ContentsFig ur e sForewordA c kno w le dg m e nts

1 . The Cupboard of the Yesterdays?Cri t i ca l Pe r s pe c t iv e s on the Usable PastK. S. Brown and Y a n n i s H a m i l a k i s

v i ixi...X L l l

I. Projects: T h e State in Act ion2 . Monumenta l Visions: The Past in Metaxas 'Weltanschauung 2 3P h i l i p Carabott3 . "Learn History!" Antiquity, NatianalNarrat ive , and History in GreekEducational Textbooks 3 9

Yann i s H a m i l a k i s

4 . The Polit ics o f Currency: Stamps, Coins,Banknotes , and the Circulat ion of ModernGreek Tradit ion 69Ba s i l C. Gounar i s

11. Fractures: Resi s t ing the Nat i ona l N ar r at i ve5 . The Ma c e do nia n Q ue s t io n in the 1920sand the P o l i t i c s o f His t o ry 8 7

Patrick F i n n e y

6. Recollecting Difference: A r c hiv e -Ma r x i s t sand Old Calendarists in an Exile C o m m u n i t y 105M a r g a r e t E . K e n n a


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7. The Ethnoarchaeology of a "Passive"Ethnic ity: The Arvanites of Central Greece 129John Bin f l i f f

111. Conversations: From Past t o Present8 . Dimitr is Pikionis and Sedad Eldem:Parallel Reflections of Vernacular andNat ional Architecture 147

EIeni Bastka9 . Spaces in Tense: History , Cont ingency ,and Place in a Cretan City 171Thomas M.Malaby10. Poked by the "Foreign Finger" in Greece:

Conspiracy Theory or the Hermeneuticsof Sus p i c i o n? 191David Sutton

11. AfterwordLoring M. anforihIndex 223About the Contributors 2 37


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Dinibis Pikionis and Sedad Eldem:Parallel Reflections of Vernacular andNationalArchitecture

IntroductionJn this chapter I examine how architectural heritage, woven into our livesthrough personal and collective mem ory, becomes a testimony to the past-+past, however, that reflects current theories of history and culhm. Beginningwith my own reflections on m y familiar architecture in G reece, I move to thewritings and work of two prominent architects of the twentieth century--Dimi-tris Pikionis (1887-1968) from Greece, and Sedad Hakk~Eldem (1908-1988)ftom Turkey-and examine the influences that the native landscape, built envi-ronment, and local history exerted on each. I reflect on the process throughwhich we come o understand local and national architecture from a personalpoint of view, acknowledging that some of these memories and experiencesembody both individual preconcep tions and national ideologies.Considering the efforts of their respective countries to develop distinct po-litical positions and national identities in the twentieth century, the considerablesimilarities in the architects' writings and built projects might come as a surpriseat fmt. If , however, we realize that the countries of southeastern Europe share acommon architectural heritage of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empiresand that they also followed similar steps in constructing their respective West-ern, national identities, then the modern architectural similarities become com-prehensible. Only by taking into account the broader region's common historicalpast can we begin to understand the foundations underlying these architecturalsimilarities that are apparent not only in the work of Eldem and Pikionis but alsoin the work of several other architectsworking in Greece and Turkey during thetwentieth century.

I believe that parallel studies of personal and collective stories about ourrelationship with built space can help us rebuild the historical and culturalbridges that crossed the Mediterranean in earlier times but have been neglectedmore recently.We can begin to learn how built space enters into o w ersonal


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and historical consciousness by examining how architects remember the builtenvironmentand how theymay interpret it in their own design work, keeping inmind the power of personal preconceptions and national ideologies to shape andalter those memories.

Personal ReflectionsIn an urban history seminar in St. Louis, I ask m y students to what city or placethey feel most connected. Proud of their adaptability, rnosfif them assure methat they could live almost anywhere, while those from small towns nsist thatthey certainly do not want to go back home. "Where is it that yon want to bewhen you die?" I prod them further, trying to get past their airs of detachmentand noncommitment. Of course, I do not get any answers. Maybe it is an inap-propriate question, given the un ivm ity setting, yet that is the only approach thatallows m e to examine my own attachment to the architecture of a place.I left Thessaloniki when I was seventeen, yet E find myself going back inspirit whenever I embark on a new project and need an infusion of courage andinspiration-whenever I am searching for a bit of my old self. When I actuallyvisit the city, I realize that I do not know the new generation of its inhabitan*slim girls in black tight pants, cool Eurokids, and recent immigrants of all ages.I secretlymiss the close-knit provincialism of the 1960s and 1970s and hold onto the city I remember from my chiIdhood with the stubborn, f w d gaze thatformer residents share with the elderly. Nevertheless, I claim Thessaloniki as" m y town."I grew up in an apartment building across from a mosque. J3e mosque,Alaca frnaret or Ihak P q a (Z484), was used by the local Boy Scout chapter untilmore recently, when it was spruced up and turned into a cultural exhibitionspace. My silent dialogue with the exterior of the mosque occurred every day, asI opened or closed the shutters to our second-story balcony doors, all the timefacing the generous curves of it s domes across the street from me, almost at eyelevel. In a wordless way, the perpetual presence of the mosque across from ourbalcony, surrounded by utilitarian apamnent buildings and a small square, be-came my firstaIphabet of architecture, my ownprimer for understanding space.

I discovered vernacular architecture by visiting Thessaloniki's Upper City,a short walk uphi11 from our house. The narrow seeets and the old, decayinghouses, painted in ocher tones became the subject of high school art projects:sketches, drawings, and even a slide presentation accompanied by popularGreek music. It was chic to look at your own city with the eyes of the tourist,camera-strap around the neck, eyes scanning the street for telling architecturaldetails, searching for the secrets of ancient aesthetics of the departed builders.At fifteen, I felt that reading modern Greek poehy and taking pictures of otherpeople's old houseswas the pinnacIe of culture.Coaking back at that period twenty-fiveyears later, with the inevitable lay-ers of other memories and references, I now come to realize that those powmfhland indelible experiences of space were also selective, eclectic, and ahistorical.


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Dimitris Pikionis andSedadEIdem 149Living in a city of homogeneous Greek population, I su hn sc io us ly transposedthat homogeneity to the past, assuming that most of the older buildings belongedto a similar but earlier era of the city. Even the powerful presence of the mosquedid not make me realize that it was originally part of an Ottoman-Turkish com-munity of buildings and people. It did not occur to me until much later that ourapartment building, like all others around us, must have been built on land thatwas owned by Turkish families. It did not register in my adolescent mind thatsome of the houses we loved to photograph in the Upper City that gave Thessa-Ioniki its undeniable local color were inhabited by MosIern Turks until the early1920s. I saw them as examples of "our" vernacular architecture that made meproud of our city in a personal, though vague, way.

What 1find puzzIing, however, is that as I look back I have no awareness ofthe city's earlier Moslem inhabitants. Of the 160,000 residents who lived inThessaloniki in 1912, 61,500 were Jews,46,000 were Moslems, 40,000 wereGreeks, and the rest were French, English, and Italian. Most Jewish familieslived in the flat downtown area,in small, densely built houses. The Greeks livedin some of the downtown sections,near the churches, and along the easternByzantine city walls. The Moslem population lived in the Upper City, alongwith the Enme Jews-followers of a Jewish mysticaI movement who wereforcd to adopt Islam but also maintained their Jewish tradition. J3e Moslem,Turlush-speaking families began a large-scale emigration to Turkey in 1912,with the lwt of the Moslems, the Donmes, and some Jewish families leavingThessaloniki in 1922 (Demetriades 1983; Anastasiadis and Stathakopoulos1986). Built for the most part after the 1950s, present-day Thessaloniki bearslittle resemblance to the early twentieth-century city. Most single-family houseshave been replaced by multistory apartment buildings, made of reinforced con-crete frameswith brick infiF1. The population is primarily Greek,with a Jewishcommunity of about 1,500, as rnost of the Jews were deported during the Ger-man occupation of the country (1940-1945) and perished in concentrationcamps .Taking my parents' families as the norm when I was growing up, I assumedfor the longest time that rnost of ThessaIonilu's inhabitants were also refirgeesfrom Asia Minor and central Anatolia. That was not, in fact, far from the ma,since the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece that was dictatedby the 1923Treaty of Lausanne brought 117,000 Christian Greek rehgees fromTurkey to Thessaloniki. Overall, approximately l,P00,000 Christian Greeksfrom present-day Turkey moved to the Greek hngdom, while some 380,000Moslem Turks were transferred to Turkey (Clogg 1992, 101). Smyrna, nowIzmir, the birthplace of my paternal grandparents, was always in the air as I wasgrowing up. The ambiance of the earlier Srnyrna and Thessaloniki, both puly-phonic and diverse Mediterranean commercial centers, comes alive, for me,only when I Ieaf through books, old or new illusbated volumes, coffee-tablebooks hat pander to nostalgia fo r a colorful, distant past. Old postcards from theearly twentieth century, with their legends in French, Ottoman Turkish, andGreek,now appear like stage sets of an era that has left few other marks.


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Painful as the thought appears to me, I am now coming to realize that simi-lady for the new generations growing up in Ezrnir, the old houses alone, even ifthey are d e s c n i as "Greek" or "Armenian" houses, cannot communicate anymore about the past than the houses of Thessaloniki's Upper City. Whether Irevisit Thessaloniki in penon or in my mind's eye, I acknowledge he impact ithas had on my own understanding of space. But I am also becoming aware ofthe attendant blind spots hat have marked me for life. Architecture students inTurkey, ust like architecture students in Greece and everywhere else where thepast weighs more than the present, take pride in the formal aesthetics of the lo-cal vernacular architecture, with only a vague understanding of the historkatand social realities reflected in those houses. They produce clean, measured linedrawings o f the old buildings, categorize them by building type, propose crea-tive reuses, and test their design skills as they undertake the study of local ver-nacular heritage for their professional diploma work.M y own path toward lemming the languageof space was also influenced bythe way ?hegovernment and my schooling packaged that architecture. While Iguard these memories as precious and inalienable parts of my identity and myyouth, I realize that I have also incorporated in my interpretation of space mycountry's nationaI agendas. J might have learned about space by facing amosque, walking home, and photographing old buildings. I might bear theirmemory like an afterimage etched on my retina, the murtiple exposures of thatcity written on my body. Yet, I also learned to see the city through the storiesand histories I heard at home and at school, through the books and newspapers Iread, through the movies and the television programs I watched. These placedmy private how le dge of Thessaloniki in a national context, shared by mostothers who grew up in Greece. At school I learned about th e MeIlenistic city thatKassandrosfounded n 315 BC,naming it after the sisterof AIexmder the Great.I did not 1m-n about the city that my grandparents encountered in 1922, or thepost World War I1 city of interior migration. Official modem Greek architectureresided in Athens, while the architecture of the Aegean islands came to repre-sent the country" oficial, pictureperfect vernacular building idiom. In Thes-saloniki, modernity was, on the whole, misrepresented in the gray concreteframe apartment buildings of the 1960s and 1970s that housed most residentsand filled themwith the pride of ownership. Modem architectme of the sort thatgraces magazine covers was employed primarily on the buildings of the univer-sity campus and the temp om y pavilions of the city's annual international eadefair. Though close to the downtown today, both the university campus and thefairgrounds are set apart from the rest of the city. For me, modern architecturewas disappointing. I followed the common pattern of identifyingmy love for thecity with love for the old buildings, the ones that are perpetually in danger ofdemolition. My immediate surroundings provided me with my original "lan-guage of space," a language that futwe experience might slowly expand but notalter fundamentally because it is intricately bound to my memory.


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Dimitris Pikionis andSedad EldemRecent Studies onMemoryCurrently, all fields are turning to the study of memory as a way to understandourselves and our environm ent better. Sociologists and psychologists have dis-tinguished three types of memory: the personal, the cognitive, and the habit-memov. Personal memories are located in one's own past. Cognitive memorycovers what we remember because we had to learn it at som e point in the past:maps we studied, poems and historical dates we once memorized. Habit-memory, also called "motor memory," describes the process of rememberinghow to write, read, swim, or ride a bicycle. We might not remember when orhow we learned to ride a bicycle, but we can demonstrate that we remember theact through performing it (Connerton 1989, 22-28). In his pioneering studies oncollective mem ory Les Cadres Sociaux de la Mkmoire (1925) and La MimoireCollective (195O), Maurice Halbwachs w e d hat every recollection, even themost personal and private thought and sentiment, exists in relationship to a so-cial group. Our memories are localized within a social p u p , situated in themental and material s p a c e provided by that group. The apparent stability ofthese material spaces sumunding us allows us to conserve our recol1ections(Connerton 1989,36-37; albwachs 1992,5243).While research on memory is continuously recasting its questions, methods,and conclusions, it can offer us a useful language for describing the personaland collective experience of built space. My experience of walking up and downthe streets of m y hometown, or of findingmy way from our house o m y aunt'shouse, is best described by the concept of habit-memory or motor memory,Nevertheless,we do not remember spaces through only one form of memory.cannot separate the experience of walking to my aunt's house from memories ofmy aunt herself and of our amily gatherings. All memory-personal, collective,and of habit-is connected to the social, poIitica1, and physical space of a com-munity. Our histories are bound in space, just as they are bound in time. Itwould follow, then, that built space could be the basis for a larger nmative thatnot only respects the unique characteristics of the local and national stories butalso achowledges their common myths and begins to compare them.Recent work among historians and anthropologists has also begun to estab-lish connections among memory, istory, and space. One of the most prominentand ambitious efforts is the muItivolume study on French history Les Lieux deMimoire (1984-1992)by Pierre Nora and his colleagues. In Nora's words, theirwork underscores the "importance of memory and the search for the lieux thatembody it, the return to our coIlective heritage and focus on the country's shat-tered identities" (Nora 1996, 1: xxiii-xxiv).Halbwachs had left historical devel-opments mostIy outside his analysis of collective memory (Boyarin 1994, 24);Nora and his coIleagues, on the other hand, concentrated on the collective mem-ory of the French republic in their effort "to write a history in multiple voices.. . A] history . . . ess interested in 'what actually happened' than in it3 perpet-ual reuse and misuse, it s influence on successive presents . . . . [A] history that isinterested in memory not a s remembrance but as the overall structure of the pastwithin the present" (Nora 1996, 1: xxiv). By focusing on rhe idea of the French


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nation, the work has downplayed the existence of opposing political communi-ties and their own collectivememories (Gildea 1994, 10-11; Boyarin 1994, 19).As otherhistorians have pointed out, there has been a consistent local oppositionto the concept of the French nation both from among the conservativesand fromthe peasantry (Gillis 1994, 3-91. Nevertheless, Nora's work, with its emphasison the multiple voices and its search for common cultural agents, offers a valu-able model. In my own work I do not focus on the construction of any one na-tion as a concept or as a symbol, but rather on the capacity of the built environ-ment to forge connections among the residents of neighboringcountries.

Dimitris Pikionis and Sedad Hakkl Eldem: Toward aComparativeApproachWhat first attracted me to a parallel review of the architecture of Pikionis andEldem was their common preoccupation with vernacular architecture, reinter-preted through modem means, nd the thematic affmity of their published testi-monies. Studying theirbackground, we can discern the palpable influence of thenative landscape, built environment,and local history and the intellectual cli-mate that charged the building heritage of each country with a distinctivemeaning. Furthermore, each architectm$eaching and design work reflects bothhisWestern training and his creative response to modern trends. If we step backfar enough from each architect's immediate surroundings, national culture, andhistory, it is possible, I believe, to discern several common pattems markingtheir respective bodies work, as transmitted through their buildings, writings,and teachings.These similarities should not be interpreted as the result of per-sonal acquaintance or reciprocal influence. None of the materia1 I have exam-ined suggests that Pikionis and Eldem knew each other or even knew of eachother's work Pikionis and Eldem conceived of their architecture as the local,indigenous, albeit learned product of heir own national culture, each respondingto his own country's historical, economic, and political conditions. So far, ar-chitectural historfans have also examined each architect's contributions withinthe Framework of his national environment, What I hope to show here is thateven work that has been conceived of and received as the product of a nationalculture can be examined in a broader, comparative context that underscores itssimilarities to contemporary work in a neighboring country that faced similarissues of nationalism and modernization.

While both Pikionis and Eldem came to be strong advocates for the Imalbuilding traditions, they were trained by Westem European architects and incor-$ porated both the principles and elements of the modem movement in some oftheir designs. Pikionis, who was born and grew up in Piraeus, completed hiscivil engineering degree at the National Technical University inAthens in 1907.


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Dirnitris Pikionis and Sedod Eldem 153

Figure8.1. State Monopolies Directorate (Sedam Eldem, 1934-1 957, Ankara.He continued his studies in painting and architecture in Munich and Pds, e-turning to Greece in 1912.Born in Istanbul, Eldem received his primary schooleducation in Geneva and attended the gymnasium in Munich. He studied archi-techlre at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul (1924-1928) under the Italianarchitect GuiIio Mongeri, who had designed some of the major buildings in Is-tanbul and Ankara. He continued his studies in Paris and Berlin (1929-1930)(Bozdogan, Qzkan, and Yenal 1987,26,159).Eldem's State Monopolies General Directorate in Ankara (1934-1 937) andPikionis' Elementary School on the Lycabems Hill, Athens (1933), reflect boththe architects' familiarity with modern architectureand each government's suppo>ortor modern architecture (figures8.1 and 8.2).Eldem won the commission for the Directorate, his first opportunity to de-sign a major state building, through an international competition. At the lime,the pursuit o f modernity in Turkey was reflected not only in Kemal Atatiirk'swesternizing refoms but also in the new economic policies that supported the


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Figure 8.2. Lycabethrs School (Dirnitn'sPikionis, 1933),Athens. (Mark Forte)extensivebuilding program of the early years of the republic. Further developedin the 19308, this program included the building of the new capital city, Ankara,the constructionof servim and industrial buildings throughout the country, andthe deveIopment o f models for school buildings (Batur 1984,68-93). The Lyca-beMrs school by Pikionis was part of a government schooI-building initiative(1930-1932) y Minister of Education George Papandreou that led to the con-struction of six-thousand new school rooms and the repair of two-thousand ex-isting ones. This ambitiousbuilding program also succeeded in establishing themodern architectural idiom in Greece (Philippides 1984, 181; Tzonis andbfa im 1984, 19). As each c o u n w was actively engaged in the ~onstructionofthe nationalist state, architecture came to the aid o f national ideology.In the 1930s, as the two countries were crafting their respective images,they each turned, in part, away from the international trends and closer to theirlocal traditions. In Greece th is turn reflected a broader cultural shift, as artistsand writen, fluent in the contemporary Western currents, sought to define theelements of Greehess in both high and Iaw art. This initially open and wide-ranging search became codified by the state after the establishment of GeneralMetaxas' dictatorship on 4 August 1936. Metaxas elaborated the notion of the"Third Hellenic Civilizatioq" third after the civilizations of ancient Greece and


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Dimitrts Pikionis andSedadEidem 155of Byzantium (cf. chapter two in this volume). m i l e this state-sanctioned "return to the roots" often resulted in uncritical imitation of existing works, broaderquestions regarding cultural heritage and identity remained in the foreground, attimes transcending official rhetoric.In Turkey, a similar m ovement to embrace regional architecture was ap-proved by legislation in 1934, decreeing that "the Ministry [of Public Works]will see to it that a Twkish architectural style is developed in order to maintain acertain uniformity." The focus on regional and national mhitecture gained fullmomentum in 1940, two years after Atatiirk's death, in part as the result ofWorld War II. Shortages in imported building materials forced architects to re-consider traditional building materials and construction methods. Ideologically,nationalism was caIled on to provide internal cohesion and withstand externalpressures (Phifippides 1984, 18 1-249; Vitti 1989; Alsaq 1984,94-104).In his 1965 essay "Universal Civilization and National Cultures," philosc-pher Paul Ricoeur described the following condition:

Whence the paradox: on the one hand, it [the nation] has to root itself in thesoil of the past, forge a national spirit, and unfurl this spiritual and cultural: re-vendication before the colonialist's personality. But in order to take part inmodern civilization, i t is necssary at the same time to take part in scientific,technical, and political rationality, something which very often requires thepure and simple abandon of a whole cultural past. . . .There is the paradox:how to k o m e modern and return to sources;how to revive an old, dormantcivilimtionand take part in universal civilization. (1965,277)While Greece and Turkey were not colonies per se, they did confront many ofthe czllhlral dilemmas facing former colonies. Dimitris Piluonis and Eldem em-body perfectly their generation's quandary: how to be modern and return tosources.Throughout their careers, each struggled with the ghosts of nationalismand modernity and each became a leading advocate for a '"return to the roots.''Representative Work by Pikionis and EIdem

Both Dimitris Pikionis and Sedad Eldem created buildings that were di-rectly inspuled by vernacular architecture. On larger-scale buildings we can seethe influence of local architecture on the Experimental School in Thessatoniki(1935) by Pikionis and on the Faculties of Sciences and Letters, University ofIstanbul (19421, designed by Eldem and Emin Onat (figures8.3 and 8.4).With their use of interior courts, projecting tile roofs, and overall formalvocabulary, both building complexes draw inspiration from the large, elaborateprivate mansions of the late Ottoman period that can be found to this day innorthern Greece, Turkey, and the Balkans (Architectural Association [AA]19 89 ,4 24 3; Philippides 1984, 207-9; Bozdogan, ~ z k a n ,nd Yenal 1987, 62-

67). Reflecting on his two schools, Pikionis wrote in 1958: "The LycabemsSchool was built around 1933. When it was completed, it did not satisfy me.


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Figure 83. Experimental School:(DimitrisPikionis, 1935). Thessaloniki. (Mark Fotte)

That is when I cons ided that the universal spirit had to be coup14 withthe spirit of nationhood;and from these. houghts came the Experimental Schoolin Thessaloniki[and others]" (Pikionis 1987,34).


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Dirnitris Pikionis andSedud Eldern 157

Figure 8.4. Faculties of Sciences and Letters, University of Istanbul (Sedam Efdem andEmin Onat, 1942). (Aga Khan Trust for Culture)

On a smaller scale,we can compare the T&k Coffee House in Istanbul byEldem (1947) with the refreshmentpavilion next to the small Byzantine churchof SLDimitri LoumbardiarisinAthens by Piluonis (1951-1957) (figures 8-5 and


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Figure 8.5. Tql$k Coffee House (Sedam Etdm, 19473, Istanbul. (Aga Khan Trust forCulture)8,6). These works are compacibEe and comparable because they are both sensi-tive to the site and draw inspiration from the local vernacular building traditionwithout simply imitating historical examples (AA 1989, 5 Z 57; Philippides1984, 295-304; Bozdogan, ~zkan,nd YenaZ 1987, 50-51). The Tqbk CoffeeHouse drew directly from local domesticarchitecture both in its plan layout andin the prominent cantilevered projection of the central sofa space. In incorpo-rating the language of traditional architecture into a contemporary building,Eldem aimed to demonstrate that tradition had a crucial role to play in the de-velopment of modern Turkish architecture, While drawing inspiration from hissurroundings, Pikionis also acknowledged the influence of Japanese mhitec-h e , as can be seen especially in his incorporation of wood and bamboo n theLoumbardiaris paviIion and in the generous wooden structure portico he addedin front of he church.


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Dimitris Pikionis and Sedad Eldem 159

Figure 8.6. Refreshment Pavilion (Wirnitris Pikionis, 1951-1457) by the church OF St.Dimitri Loumbardiaris, Philopappou Hill, Athens. (Mark Forte)

At the wban landscape scale, the Loumbardiaris complex was part o fPiikionis' most important design: the landscaping of the AcropoIis and Philopap-pou Hills in Athens (1 951-1957) figure 8.7). A sensitive and meticulous work,it was carried out primarily on the site, with little aid ofpreliminmy drawings.By employing a direct, hands-on approach to building and incorporating a vari-ety of paving materials, Pikionis tried to come a s close as possible to the build-ing methods of contemporary vernacular builders (A4 I989,70-97; hilippides1984,295-300; u k a k i 1997,306-29)-Eldem's design career was much more extensive and varied in scale thanPikionis's. For example, Eldem collaborated on he design of the Istanbul Hilton(1952) with the corporate fum of SOM, which was based in New York and di-rected by Gordon Bunshaft (Bozdogan 1997, 141;Krinsky 1988,52-55). In hislater buildings Eldem expertly married the elements of modern and Iocal archi-tecture, as we can see in one of his most celebrated works:,theSocial SecurityAgency Complex in Zeyrek, Istanbul (1962-1964) (figure 8.8). N o t only doesthe project incorporate building elements of traditional houses, but it also takesinto account the scale and morphology of urban neighborhoods (Bozdogan,o h , nd Yenal 1987,8595).


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Figure 8.7. Lamdraping by the Loumbovdiaris church and refreshment pavilion (Dimi-t r i s Pikionis, 195 1-1957), Athens. Pikionis arranged the landscaping mound the Ac roplis Hill (1 95 1-1957) in a similar manner. (Mark Forte)

Eldem and Pikionis: Rejections on Ancient and VernacularArchitectureEldern's recollections are permeated by a fervor for local landscapes and build-ing traditions. "As a student I was doubly rebellious," he asserted in the 1980s."I was violently against the 'neo-Turkish' of domes and arche8, . . . I wasequally against the kiibik international style. And at the same time, I was pas-sionately in love with the Turkish house. If thereafter I have achieved somethinginmy career owe this achievement to the persistence of these strong feeIings"(Bozdogan, and Yenal1987,44$.Recalling his studies in Istanbul, Eldem commented 71 ur free lime weused to go to theTopkap~ alace. . . was drawing sketches, taking down d etails.We were nourishing our souls (forgetting lunch time). It was a surprise forMongeri [Eldem's professor] to fmd out our extra-curricular studies aboutTurlash architecture1' Bozdogm,bzkan, and YenaI 1987, 28). ''To understandthe meaning and the beauty of the materials and to discover a modern characterin these old buildings, I was spendingall my Sundays and most of the weekdayswandering in the streets of Istanbul. . . . I was in love with the beauty I wasgradually discovering. It was not the beauty of finished classical compositions,it was rather the overall effect and harmony o f certain rhythms and motifs,


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Figure 8.8. Social SecurityAgency Complex, Zeyrek (Sedam Eldem, 1962- 1964), Istan-buI. (Aga Khan Trust forCulture)

certain smaller elements" (Bozdogan, ~ z k a n , nd Yenal 1987,261. For Eldem,"thegreatestachievementsof Islam are those of the past. . . .We must first jour-ney into our past and seek our inspiration there" (Bozdogan, bzkan, and Yenal1987,143).During the 1930s and 1940s Sedad Eldem advocated his commitment to the"native" or "national" style (terms hat he used interchangeably) of the Turkishhouse (Bozdogan, bzkan, and Yenal 1987,441. During his long and productivecareer, this commitment to regional heritage remained unflagging. Lecturing in1978, he advised his colleaguesand students:

Before attempting to look to the future, and in order to protect ourselves fromthe influence of alien cultures, we must concern ourselves with our own archi-tectural heritage, reap its fruits and take sbrength and inspiration from it . Anyother approach would be unproductive and would necessarilybe swallowed upin the flood of world architecture. We must first gain an understanding of ourown individuality, become familiar with the values of our own culture and ar-chitecture and l m o love them w d e proud of them. Only after structuringthe new foundations with the help of knowledge and sensitivity can we designour own new style (Bozdogan, Ozkan, and Yenal T 987, 165).


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Reflecting on his work in 1980, he reiterated: 'The chief aim of my fifiy yearsof professional life has been to create a regional architectural style. I have approached the probIem from various angles, not all of which have been appropri-ate or successful. With time I have become even more convinced that interna-tionalism in architecture is not a productive choice" (Bozdogan,~h,ndYenal 1987, 171).In an autobiographical essay written in 1958, Pikionis wove together refer-ences to his family, nature, and ancient ancestors:

My grandmother used to take my sister and m e down to the headland of thePhrattys every day fo r a walk.We strolled over the jagged rockswhere the seabreeze gently stirred the slender stalks of the wild plants that sprouted throughthe cracks; we wandered across the god-bearing soil that was littered with bitsof broken pottgr, picking our way betwen gaping wells that spoke to me ofthe ancient people who once dwelled in this land-my land. And thus 1 gradu-ally formed an image in my mind of the spirit and the history of my land. (AA1989,34)

Although nature inspired an almost religious awe in him, he experienced theancient landscape both through his body and through his mind: "While still atschool, I often took long walks exploring the Attic countryside. . . .But who canadequately describe the impact of these sites upon a young man still envelopedin Goethe" 'magic mantle of poetryv?'(AA 1989, 34). As a student in Munich,he reminisced: "I was studying Aeschylus and my eyes were filling with tears,contemplating, like Goethe's heroine, the distant land of th e Greek$' (AA 1989,28). Here he landscapesof Pikionis' own experience were refracted through themuItiple lenses of Aeschylus and Goethe and his heroine. Distance and nostalgiaetched them in his memory. Upon his return to Greece in 1912, after his studiesin Munich and Paris, the familiar landscape helped anchor him once again: "Asthe boat reached the port of Patras, my eyes were struck by the cold, dazzlingwhiteness of a piece of marble lying in the mud.Such was i ts impact against thethings surrounding it that I thought: 'Now I will have to revise everything I havelearned up till now"' (A4 1989, 36).Gradually, Pikionis began to discover vernacular architecture, the architec-ture of the people, which came to FgJresenlt a spiritual terrain fo r him. ''The localpeople [laos]are the true builders, holding on to the ancient quaIity of their art. ...But thoughtlessly we follow the foreign [prototype], always to be left behindit," charged Pikionis in a 1925 article which pioneered the study of vernaculararchitecture in Greece (l'ikionis 1987, 63, 69). In the same article, he cautionedthat when '"conditionsare agitated by something foreign, by the lie of civilizedlife, for example, this naturalness of the people is in danger of being lost"(Pikionis 1987, 59). Writing in 1952, he criticized rationalism, because i ts aimto "fulfill human needs in a sbictly materialistic way completeIy ignores thesphit'"(Pikionis 1987, 256). It is the people "who hold the memory . . . of theGreek essence [ousia]," he wrote in 1954 (Pikionis 1987, 44). Pikionis tried toincorporate vernacular building methods in his own works by studying localnatural material and local building details and by searching for truth in con-


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by 1926, however, and suddenly Kemalettin's buildings were criticized for b eing neither modem nor Turkish enough. The leaders of the republic, who fa-vored an international orientation, ushered in the period of "Ktibik [Cubist] orFunctional Architecture" (1927-1939). They invited European architects to de-sign many of the public buildings in the new capital ofAnkara and to reorganizethe Academy of FineArts (Tekeli 1984, 16).It w as in the midst of this modernist-internationat climate that Eldem beganthe study of the Turkish house and its reinterpretation with contemporarybuilding materials. In 1932 Eldem started a seminar on the Turkish house in theAcademy of Fine Ark, undertaking extensive documentation of the survivingtraditionalhouses in Istanbul, Bursa, and other towns of Anatolia. The seminaralso became the center for apposition to the imported Ebik style, fostering thedevelopment of the "Second National Movement" "940- 1949). This movementsought inspiration not from the lost world of the Ottoman Empire, but ratherfrom local @additionand national taste (Bozdogan, ~ z k a n , nd Yenal 1987,44-45). Sedad EIdem, who had originally faced considerable opposition, graduallygained prominence, though the debates regarding tradition and modernity inarchitecture remained heated. His retrospective thoughts, expressed in the late1970s and 19803, appear to reflect both a wisdom attained over a long careerand the lively intellectuaE life in Turkey during the late 1970s.

Pikionis also faced opposition from several of the mainstream architects inGreece, who considered him an incurable visionary, our of step with the times(Phlippides 1984, 304). Such criticisms must have been quite familiar toEldem, as well.Yet the overall political and cultural climate in Greecewasmoreresponsive to the study of vernacular architecture and local traditions. While theKemalist reforms spelled a radical break with the Ottoman past as they usheredin Western models, the Greek state and intellectual elite sought to establish aconnection and continuity among the different expressions of local cultural pro-duction. In the period between 1880 and 1922 the nineteenth-century worship ofthe ancients gave way to an orientation toward the recent past and the fi ture,with the Greek villager seen as the pure and genuine product of the ancientGreek soil, his songs, artifacts, and customs studied by Greek folklorists andother intellectuals (Kyriakidou-Nestoros 1978, 154-55; BastCa 1990, 94). The1922 military defeat of Greece shifted the political focus to the interior of thestate, strengthened the sense of "Greekness"-now amplified by the influx ofGreek immigrants-and hailed a "return to the roots." Studying contemporaryvilIagers and their environment acquired a new significance: it proved the unityand continuity of the Greek race.Pikionis' pronouncement, '"am from the East[eimai anatolites],"may reflect not only his spiritual affinity with the East butalso the cultural debt of the Greek state to the Hellenism of the East that hadbeen forcibly and forever uprooted from there after the Asia Minor Disaster of1922.Among the intellectualswho laid the foundations for the study of traditionalarchitecture was the art critic Pericles Giannopoulos who exalted in 1902 "theinvisible and incomprehensible nature which, like everything Greek, fiom theParthenon to the brigand-poet-the klepht-and the Megara villager to the dry


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Dirnirris PikJonis and Sedad Eldem 165little flower, without a single exception and dishetion, is invisible, because ofits beauty, to our c o m e eyes and . . . souls" (Bas& 2000, 182). One of the ar-chitects who had already been exploring local building traditions was MstotleZachos, whose first major design was the house for folklorist Angelike Chad-jimichale in Athens (1924-1927), While Zachos' interpretation o f vernaculararchitecture lacked originality, it prepared the ground for Pikionis' own foraysinto the vernacular.Architects, artists, and other intellectuals in both countries continued theirexplorations into native culhue during the postwar decades, but at a decidedlysmaller scale. Both Turkey and Greece were eager to display a westernized fa-~ a d eo the world, as is evident by the emblematic presence of the Hilton hotelsin IstanbuE and Athens (1958-1963). The fundamental similarities in the work ofEldern and Pikionis are aIso evident in the work of their followers. While theywere both distinguished md often pioneering in their theoretical and designcontributions, hey were certainly not alone in their explorations of vernacularand modem architecture.Having both also taught at the university, they influ-e n c d by example other practitioners, as well as their own. students. The legacyof Pikionis can be readily s e a in the work of Aris Kmtantinidis (1913-1993),who also blended the principles of vernacular architecture and the modemmovement. In Turkey, the work o f Turgut C m s m x and Ertur Y e n a , notablytheirTurkish Historical Society building in Ankara (1966), similarly employs anamalgam of modem and vernacular idioms that is becoming part of an evolvingM e d i t e m e a n tradition.

The Memory of PlaceAlthough the sources of architectural design cannot be pinned down to one ortwo specific factors, the similarities in the architectural work o f Pikionis andEldern may be attributed, in part, to the correspondence in the economic andcultural conditions facing their respective countries. Both states crafted a dis-tinct, national image that paid homage to the ancestors, underscored racial andcultural continuity of the population, and displayed the state's ability and eager-ness to join the Western world. While educated in the West and conversant inthe vocabulary of the modern movement, both Eldem and Pikionis resisted thetide of wmternization and came to be seen, alternately, as the lone and regres-sive apelogists for tradition, or as the visionary prophets for what is now called"critical regionalism" (Tzonis and Lefaivre 1992, 17-19; Frampton 1992, 3 14-27).

I believe that the evident paral1els in their work are also based, in part, ontheir memories o f similar vernacular buildings. The houses that they each stud-ied and recorded carefully, the houses that became prototypes for Turkish andGreek indigenous architecture, respectively,were part of the same building tra-dition that dated From theByzantine and Ottoman periods. As architecture cameto the serrice of the nationalist state agenda, the charge to develop a distinct,


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national architectural vocabulary k a m e an operative force in both countries,vimLally unchallenged by architects and their contemporaries. Given the politi-cal context of the interwar years, the focus of each state on distinct, nationalidentities in architecture and the arts may be understandable. Nevertheless,comparing the conditions in both countries from our paspective, it becomesevident that terms like the "Greek house"' and the "Turkish Ptouse," loaded asthey are in the political and cultural sphere of each counhy, are rather empty ofmeaning in an architectural sense, as they do not define distinctly different typesof form. Acknowledging the common architectural tradition in Greece and Tur-key, along with the attendant similarities and differences, wiI1 help us under-stand better our built environmentand its impact on us.

As is evident from each architect's evocative words, the impact of the fa-miliar landscape was fundamentaI in their later development. The processthrough which each architect came to discover this familiar landscape was nei-ther static nor monolithic. In drawing inspiration from their sumnnding envi-ronments, both Sedad Eldem and Dirnitris Pikionis were selective and focused,recording only those architectural examples that evoked a creative response inthem.Eldem made no references to the late Ottoman and OrientaIizing archi-tecture of the early twentieth century that he would have encountered as an ar-chitecture student. He consciously decided to see and study the architecture ofthe Topkap~ alace. Later, passing over the newer architecture of the 1930s, heconcentrated instead on the humbler domestic architecture of western Anataliathat he examined in his seminar on the Turkish house. When Pikionis fmt de-scribed the Attic landscape or the streets of Athens, he focused on the remnantsof antiquity and he testimonies of the ancient civiIization depicted in the poetryof his favorite authors. There were no references to the distinguished n m la ss i-ml Athenian buiIdings or even to the humble vernacular buildings that latercame to figure so prominently in his writings. As he started searching for anindigenous way of building, he began to notice and extol the works of the vet-nacular builders. And like Eldem, he made no references to the modern workthat was going up in the 1930s. As he revisited the old landscapes toward theend of his career, he d s o began to focus on specific examples of Moslem archi-tecture and decoration, at once familiar and foreign.One of the common patterns developing in this study of Eldern and Pikionisis the selective nature of the memory of space. These findings are also in keep-ingwithmy own experiences, outlined in the opening section, While the mem-ory of the built environmentmay be imprinted or encoded on our body at anunconscious level, it may not register in our conscious mind until we have aconceptual b e or understanding it and recalling it. Current theories on auto-biographical memory point out that we continuously revisit and rearrange ourpast memories to reflect and explain our current experiences (Kotre 1995). Fur-thermore, when people are asked to describe their life, they usually include onlythose events and experiences that fit into a logical narrative form (Robinson andTaylor 1998). Similarly, I would suggest, we cannot recall our memories of thebuilt environment unless we are able to integrate them into a coherent narrative.This narrative may reflect personal and family experiences, school instruction,


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Architectural Associatian [w . imitris Pikionis, Architect, 1887-1968: ASentimental Topography.London:Architectural Association, 1989.Bastka, Eleni. 'The Sweet Deceit of Tradition: National IdeoIogy and Greekhchitechrre."7bn@-OndArtand Culture I , no. 2 (Spring 1990):84- 101.. The Creation of M d e m Athens: Planning the Myth. Cambridge:Cambridge U~liversityPress, 000.."Thessaloniki." Pp. 1491-92 in The Encyclopedia of Vernacular Ar-chitecture of the World, vol. 2, edited by Paul Oliver. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1992.Batur, Afife, '"To Be Modem: Search for a Republican Architecture," Pp. 68-93in Modern Turkish Architecture, edited by Renata Holod and Ahrnet Evin.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984.Baywin, Jonathan, ed. Remapping Memorqr: The Poiitim of Thespace. Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1994.Bozdogan, Sibel. "The Predicament of Modernism in Turkish ArchitecturalCulture: An Overview." Pp. 133-56 in Rethinking Modernity and NationalIdentity in Turkey, edited by Sibel Bozdogan and Revat Kasaba, Seattle:University of Washington Press, 1997.

Bozdogan, Sibel, Suha Ozkan, and Engin Yenal. Sedad Eldem: Architect inTurkey.New York: Aperture, 1987.Clogg, Richard.A Concise Histov of Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1992.Comerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1989.Demetriades, Vsssilis. Topographia tes Thessallonikes kata ten Epoche tesTourkokraiias, 1430-1912 v r ba n History of Thessaloniki under the Turk-ish Rule, 1430-19121.Thessaloniki: Society fox Macedonian Studies, 1983.Frampton, Kenneth.Modern Architecture: A Critical History. 3rd ed. London:Thames and Hudson, 1992.Gildea, Robert. The Past in French History. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-sity Press, 1994.Gillis, John,ed. Commemorations: The Politics of NationaI Identity. Princeton,N.J.: rinceton University h s , 994.Balbwachs, Maurice.Les Cadres Sociuux de laM h o i r e . Paris:F.Alcan, 1925.

,LuM h o i r e Collective.Paris: Pressm Universitaires de France, 1950..'The Localizationof Memories.'WFp.2-53 in On CollectiveMemory,edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1992.Kotre, John. White Gloves: How We CreafeOurselves through Memoly. NewYork Free Press,1995.Krinsky, Carol. Henelle. Gordon Bunshafr of Skidmore, Ownings and Mewill.Cambridge,Mass.: rchitecturalHistoryFoundation and MIT Press, 1988.Kyriakidou-Nestoros,AIki. He 17reoria tes Hellenikes hographias meory ofGreek Folklore Studies]. Athens: Society for the Study of Modern GreekCulture and General Education,Moraites School, 1978.


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Greek Met a Histories

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