Aris Constantinidis ΆΡΗΣ ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΙΔΗΣ
Born 1913 in Athens Died September 18, 1993
Section One, Number 482
The Architect Who Helped bring Modernism to Greece
Aris Constantinidis was one of the great Greek architects of the 20th century and with his work in the public and private sphere he has left an indelible mark on the Greek landscape. Looking at his oeuvre, from the Xenia Hotels to the 16 buildings he created as a freelancer, the picture of a passionate and committed artist emerges. Aris Constantinidis had so many talents. He was an excellent photographer and an eloquent writer; both of these talents helped him to promote his work and vision.
His private practice remained small because he was notoriously unwilling to compromise with his clients on even the smallest detail of the houses he built. They were meant to be ‘vessels of life planted in the landscape’ in which form and function were seamlessly fused, a fusion he believed that the architects of ancient Greek temples and the anonymous architects of every day Greek homes had also achieved. And yet, he was a true modernist in his use of form and raw materials: natural stone, reinforced concrete, and metal. His iconic weekend house at Anavyssos is Constantinidis at his most basic, embodying one of his famous mantras: “Let us learn to be simple and to live sparsely”.
For some, this style is too uncompromising. I admit I have had to think about it before I became a convert.
His Life
Aris was born in Athens. His Cypriot father worked in a bank and his mother hailed from Corinthia. He and his two siblings grew up on 2 Karolou Street in central Athens near Plateia Karaiskaki and he received a good education at the Varvakeion High School before leaving for Munich, where between 1931 and 1936 he studied architecture at the technical university. It was here that he was introduced to modernism, an artistic movement (which included the Bauhaus movement) that wanted to leave behind outdated and obsolete traditional art forms. Architecturally, modernism attempted to combine form and function, and reject embellishment. Strong lines and geometric shapes became the hallmarks of this architecture. Consatantinidis was lucky that his stay in Munich occurred when it did because, after 1933, modernism in all its forms would be suppressed by the Nazi regime as ‘decadent’.
So Long Neoclassicism
Aris did not immediately return home after his studies but opted to travel extensively in Europe, often by motorcycle, to see what trends were emerging. During his travels he even met Mies Van der Rohe and returned home to Greece convinced that the Neoclassical architecture so favoured in his own country was obsolete.
This idea takes a moment to unpack because we are so used to thinking of Neoclassical Athens as modern Athens. But he had some compelling arguments lined up for rejecting it as a ‘foreign import’ that did not take into account the environment it was meant to enhance. In any case, he did not believe in an international architecture like neoclassicism because he believed that buildings had to be environmentally topical and use only locally available materials. It is true that, by and large, Neoclassical houses did not incorporate the natural landscape. A garden, if it existed, was ‘out there’, an ‘aside’ to the house, not an integral part of it. As structures, they did not bring the outside in and the inside out, nor did they take any real advantage of the famous Greek light. And then there were those tiny balconies – hardly suitable for people who could live outdoors eight months of the year if they chose to.
As an interesting aside, I am reminded of one of Capodistria’s first orders after he arrived in Nauplion as governor. He embraced the neoclassical style which he was so familiar with and, not only ordained it, but forbade state architects to build the wooden enclosed porches with their underlying shaded area on the ground floor. These extensions (χαγιάτια) which were ubiquitous at the time, he considered hateful holdovers from the Ottoman occupation!
What Every House Needs
Constantinidis believed that a building should have at least three integral and integrated parts, the interior room, the surrounding outside environment, and the all important shaded courtyard where, in the traditional anonymous architecture of the Greek people, so much of life actually took place. A shaded courtyard or even a canopy held up by four posts was all one really needed for cooking, washing, sleeping, and socializing. In the spare yet functional geometric designs of Greek temples and in the houses of the ordinary people on the islands and the mainland, he saw that the seeds of modernism were already inherent. He would always insist on this Greek element as fundamental to his concept of modernism.
An old Athenian house still there at 29 Tripodou Street near the Lysicratas monument displays elements of Constantinidis ‘anonymous architecture’
Cycladic houses were ‘modernist’ before modernism; the form was perfect for its function and there was nothing superfluous. Le Cobusier during a visit to Greece in 1933 would see and be intrigued by this architecture.
During the thirties and war years, Constantinidis travelled extensively in the islands and the Peloponnese, photographing houses which illustrated his belief that, left to their own devices, ordinary people would always prefer his trinity of interior, exterior, and shaded courtyard.
The photographer at work
The Thirties: The House in Eleusis and a ‘Youthful Mistake’
During the thirties in Greece he designed one private home, a house in Eleusis which incorporated his modernist ideas. In this case he used plaster because the local stone was of poor quality.
The House in Eleusis
His ‘youthful mistake’ in the late thirties is one you can easily examine on a visit to the First Cemetery. It was the monumental entrance he designed along with Andreas Ploumistos while working for the City Planning Department of Athens.
I hate it; enough said.
In 1951 he married Natalia Mela, a wonderful sculptress in her own right and whose family connections and artistic circle would certainly have widened her husband’s horizons. Their artistic circle included such Greek luminaries as Diamantis Diamantopoulos, Ioannis Tsarouchis, Ioannis Morales, and Odysseus Elytis. It was a wonderful era to be an artist
The Fifties and Sixties were his most prolific decades. His work with the Ministry of Public works continued into 1953; he worked and designed for the Low Income Housing Department (OEK) from 1955-7, and for the Greek National Tourist Organization (EOT) from 1957 to 1967 and again after the Junta until 1978. During the first years of the Junta, he went into self exile and taught at the Zurich Polytechnical School in Switzerland. This would be his only stint as a teacher.
Aris and Natalia
Aris at their Spetses summer home sitting beside one of Natalia’s roosters
The Xenia Hotels
Anyone of a certain age today who travelled in Greece in the sixties or seventies probably stayed at a Xenia hotel more than once. They were built during the era when Marshall plan money was readily available and Greece’s tourism industry was gearing up for the influx of visitors it hoped would become a mainstay of the economy. It was a heady era when the government were hiring the likes of Demitris Pikionis to create a new entrance to the acropolis and modernist architects like Constantinidis were given the go ahead to plan and build hotels in important but at that time out of the way sites.
Andros, by Constantinidis 1958
The Xenia on Andros was the first of a cascade of 44 or so hotels, motels and tourist pavilions that were built all over Greece.
Constantinidis did not build them all although he designed at least ten of them, but they all reflected his style, so much so, that you could identify almost any Xenia by sight:
Mykonos by Constantinidis 1962
Xenias, like this one, often covered a large area:
The Xenia Mykonos complex
Even if the geometrical form was not everyone’s cup of tea, there were other advantages, all of them from the modernist’s handbook: the rooms were roomy, airy, and took advantage of the light; there was always a balcony, one with a view to the sea or a garden. The garden settings were often stunning and the public rooms spacious, something woefully missing in a lot of modern hotels in Greece.
I am particularly fond of one Constantinidis contribution that is not a hotel at all but rather a pavillion and the dressing rooms for the actors at Epidavros. These buildings and the way they enhance the environment around the theatre is magical.
Epidavros
Three Examples of Works from His Private Practice
I have chosen three houses that illuminated his work for me. He did build two apartment buildings in Athens which are excellent in themselves but do not fit as harmoniously in their surroundings as his suburban houses have done. He was not as successful in an urban setting and that is perhaps why his plan for a Syntagma square renovation proposed in 1957, was rejected.
The Xydis House, Achimedes and Klitomachou Street in Athens. 1961
This building near the Kalimarmaro stadium is a tour de force. It was built on an irregular pentagon shaped piece of land with a steep slope His solution was to create a house on five levels, the first two hewn out of the bedrock and to make brilliant use of balconies and somehow creating his trademark feeling of light and space in what could have been a cramped interior.
A mock up of the house showing the elevations
The exterior
The interior.
All three of the designs discussed here utilized one spacious open planned living room
Weekend House at Anavyssos, Attica (1962)
This weekend home embodies so much of his aesthetic: Natural stone (locally quarried), bare reinforced concrete, large windows and openings to let the outside and inside meld together in harmony.
The Giannis Morales House on Spetses
This 500 square metre house was built on a 1500 square metre property and was used by Morales as a studio and a home.
He used this vast living space as a studio.
The view
After the painter’s death, it was put up for auction with a starting price of one million one hundred Euros.
His Publications
Constantinidis used his publications not just to illustrate his work, but to present his own ideas about what architecture should be. As one writer noted, his oeuvre and his publications are a closed loop, two sides of the same coin.
Old Athenian House (1950)
Two Churches on Mykonos (1953)
Elements of Self Knowledge: Towards a True Architecture (1975)
Sinner and Plagarists: Architecture Takes Off (1987)
Theoktista (God Built) in 1994
The End Game
What I have built, I do not recognize...
By all accounts, Aris Constantinidis could be critical and assertive to the point where he offended co-workers and, more importantly, clients. He was highly critical of fellow modernist Dimitris Pikionis although they were not as fundamentally as far apart as he would often claim. His ideas on architecture and its relation to life amounted to a heartfelt manifesto and, as time passed, he became increasingly distraught by what he saw as the deteriorating architectural situation in Greece. He was especially pained by the alterations and slow decline of the Xenia hotels as the Greek government withdrew from the hotel business in the 80s and new owners took charge. His theories, once fully formed, made him resistant to change. When the lady of the house at Anavyssos wanted a stairway built to take advantage of the home’s flat roof, he suggested she just use a wooden ladder rather than spoil its perfect lines. Not surprisingly, she built a metal staircase. He was a minimalist and could only have moaned at the additions of bits and pieces owners would inevitably add to those spacious rooms and massive mantle pieces.
Had he somehow left behind the modernist mantra coined by Ezra Pound in the 30s: Make it New? When you are convinced you have achieved aesthetic perfection, what possible benefit could there be in alteration? In 1987 he published a work against post modernism, late modernism, and deconstruction. The title says it all: Sinners and Plagiarists.
Sadly, Constantinidis had begun to feel that the world, a lesser one than the one he had envisioned, had somehow passed him by. He committed suicide on September 16, 1993 at the age of 80.
From the excellent publication The First Cemetery of Athens
There is one other work of Constantinidis in the First which is far more elegant than that botched entrance. He designed the grave marker of poet and Nobel prize winner George Seferis, which, like his own monument, is elegant in its simplicity.
Section 12, Number 65
The Map
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