37 Stories from the Athenian Apartment Blocks – Greek Edition

Seeing Athens from above, one revels in its most characteristic view: a ‘sea’ of apartment buildings. The ‘polykatoikia,’ a key component of Athens’ contemporary history and current structure, emerged from post-war urbanization as a reconstruction model, providing wider social strata with the opportunity to rebuild the city, building by building. These processes have long become a subject of public discussion, as well-established myths around those “who destroyed Athens” have allowed a perceived divide between the agents of ‘antiparochi’ and ‘polykatoikia’ and the city’s present-day residents.

As an effort to entwine these two worlds, the book, on the one hand, profiles stories from within—narratives that trace what took and still takes place in the interior of the Athenian polykatoikia—and, on the other hand, tracks grassroots tales of the city, namely narrations around the people who built, passed through, inhabited, and still inhabit the city.

The interpolating stories and theoretical texts are not necessarily read in the book’s intended order but rather in a ‘free-floating’ manner on the reader’s part. Recounts, memories, personal experiences, photographs, diagrams, building codes, contracts, and operating regulations all together trace the histories of people and buildings, while at the same time charting composite processes that transpire across the scale of the neighborhood and the Athenian society at large.