The Art of Building Reception: Aris Konstantinidis behind the Global Published Life of his Weekend House in Anavyssos (1962–2014)

Stylianos Giamarelos

doi:10.5334/ah.bx

Abstract

Aris Konstantinidis’s Weekend House in Anavyssos (1962–1964) holds an emblematic place within his oeuvre. This article uncovers the architect’s own role in building the global reception of this project through a tripartite account of its global published life from the printed page to the digital website over the last five decades (1962–2014). Konstantinidis created a uniquely hermetic zone around his work by adopting a publishing practice that combines his own photographs as narrative and his accompanying text as an architectural manifesto of his regional modernism. Highlighting turning points in the published life of this building, the article relates the original gaze of the architect to the gaze adopted by each subsequent researcher of his work. The conclusion recalibrates the gaze of the contemporary architectural historian towards an architectural work that has effectively been doubly built to be received as canonical, as well as an architectural persona that is often easily romanticised in its dominant interpretations.

Highlights

If Beatriz Colomina (1994) was right to imply that the history of the Modern Movement and its eventual reception is inextricably linked with the way in which its canonical figures made use of photography and mass media, contemporary architectural historians cannot help but wonder whether this has been the case for alternative regional modernisms that have historically developed around the world
Greek architecture’ (Tzonis and Lefaivre 1985: 17). It does so by offering a historically informed recalibration of the gaze of the contemporary architectural historian towards an architectural work that has effectively been doubly built to be received as canonical, as well as an architectural persona that is often romanticised in its dominant interpretations
Art. 22, page 7 of 19 grayscale photographs feels almost like an unnecessary luxury; his Weekend House in Anavyssos establishes its own harmonic integration in the landscape in full colour. Konstantinidis republished this photograph in full colour in his 1981 publication, Projects and Buildings, and spread it over two pages in the catalogue accompanying the monographic exhibition of his work in the Greek National Gallery in 1989.17 Whenever he published the plan of the Weekend House, the drawing is intended as a mental map for navigating the building through its photographs

Summary

Introduction

If Beatriz Colomina (1994) was right to imply that the history of the Modern Movement and its eventual reception is inextricably linked with the way in which its canonical figures made use of photography and mass media, contemporary architectural historians cannot help but wonder whether this has been the case for alternative regional modernisms that have historically developed around the world. The Weekend House is still missing from the 1964 monographic presentation of Aris Konstantinidis’s work in Architectural Design, a whole two years later.10 the actual moment of birth of the building is not the final moment of its construction process, but the moment of its first photo-shoot.

Results

Conclusion