Theory

[UN]FINISHED

+++Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings - A Story of Hidden Antimonuments+++

+++Maria Lalou, Skafte Aymo-Boot+++

ISBN

978-94-92852-26-7

Authors

Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot

Texts

Elpida Karaba, Brooke Holmes, Platon Issaias, Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot

Graphic designer

Sam de Groot

Number of pages

288

Book size

19.5 x 27.5 cm

Binding

Hardcover

Language

English / Greek

Release date

October 2023

Publisher

Jap Sam Books

Made possible with the generous support of The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation.

Keywords: contemporary archaeology, concrete ruins, antimonument

http://un-finished.org

+++

With its character of a ruin of a forgotten purpose the unfinished building is at the same time pointing to the past and to the future.

With this work in the form of a book, Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot present the phenomenon of a particular pending architecture mutely present all over Athens. The concrete skeletons of polykatoikia – multi-story apartment buildings – are emblematic of the development of modern Greece throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

The book deals with the politics of urban space by treating the unfinished buildings as study objects and tracing their individual histories. Through the words of current owners and by means of photographs, archival documents and found artefacts, a different chronicle of the development of modern Arthens is taking shape.

Essays by Brooke Holmes, Platon Issaias and Elpida Karaba critically touch upon the phenomenon from different perspectives. Moving in scale from a tactile portrait of one specific concrete structure to a complete building index, the Atlas introduces a method for extracting forgotten memories and hidden structures, suggesting an alternative reading of the city.

Since 2012, Lalou and Aymo-Boot have worked together on the project [UN]FINISHED, a continuous archival research project on the unfinished concrete buildings of Athens, engaging the spectator in a process of viewing parts of the void in the history of the city, architecturally, socially, and politically. The project has been presented at Contemporary Art ReMap 4 (Athens), UNIDEE/Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella), The Symptom Project (Amfissa), as well as Università Iuav di Venezia, ETH Zürich, and Princeton University, among others. In 2020 they established cross section archive in Athens.

Maria Lalou is a Greek conceptual sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Her works are based on accumulative research on the role of institutions and their tools, respectively the institution of Art itself in dialogue with the artist role, and as the third element, the ‘political role’ of the viewer. From the small scale of the object-space, she moves to large scale sculptural installations, multiple spaces and interventions in the public space, with the means of film production, performances, directed algorithms, diagrammatic drawings and texts. Lalou holds a number of grants and awards including a Fulbright grant. Her art works are situated on the edge of social experiments and practised rhetorics, staging and recording sculptural installations. Her research is focused on the role of the camera apparatus: its significance in the commons, its personification in the private, its appropriation in the surveillance of everyday networked reality and its potentiality as a weapon of truth in recording history. She is presenting her work internationally in exhibitions, screenings, publications and lectures and she has published two monographs [theatro] (2015 Onomatopee, Eindhoven) and the camera (2019 Dolce Publications, Athens). Maria Lalou is a candidate for Doctorate of Philosophy, at CREAM, University of Westminster.

Skafte Aymo-Boot is a Danish architect. In 2009, he co-founded NEZU AYMO architects in Amsterdam, and since 2019 he is a partner in OP – Open Platform in Copenhagen. Through research and unconventional thinking, he formulates new ideas in the form of buildings, urban plans, interiors, and spatial concepts. The practical process of giving form to and materializing architecture and the production of thought-based research have equal weight in his practice. He has realized a wide variety of architectural projects, in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Greece, and his work has won several first prizes and awards. His research focuses on developing methods and tools for reading the city and its spatial circumstances, creating new understandings of our physical surroundings. A significant part of his practice includes collaborations with artists working in the overlap between architecture and visual art, which has resulted in a number of permanent and temporary works in Europe and Asia. He has presented his work in lectures at, among others, the Royal Academy of Art, Copenhagen, Universidad National, Bogotá, TU Delft and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam.

Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings - A Story of Hidden Antimonuments

Maria Lalou, Skafte Aymo-Boot

€30.00

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