Architecture between a glorious past and a questionable present: An interview with the Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis

Architecture between a glorious past and a questionable present: An interview with the Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis

How might your personality or action differ if you had to push yourself against society’s expectations and limitations, embracing your quirkiness and preferences? Looking at the impact of individuality, we spoke to Andreas Angelidakis, an architect who calls himself an “architect who doesn’t build” but sees architecture as a place for social interaction, creating works that reflect urban culture by mixing ruins, digital media and psychology to better understand the power of finding different design paths.

Based in Athens, Angelidakis explores the idea of ​​ruin in ancient and modern societies. To present a sharp perspective on our present and possibilities for the future, the Greek architect adopts a language that unites virtual and physical elements in one artistic practice. This practice questions the world through a gaze that crosses the past and different cultures.

Victor Delaqua (ArchDaily): In the text “I as a Building,” you connect the intersections between understanding your sexuality and how you see architecture and the city. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Andreas Angelidakis (AA):

During a session with my therapist at the time, I wondered why I kept coming back to unfinished or illegal buildings, studying their form and economic function, etc. And Mr. Bakirzoglu replied “maybe because you grew up as an ‘unauthorized’ too, you wanted to wear your mother’s dresses and play with your makeup.”

At this point I began to see Athens as a city that was working its way through people’s expectations of it, a classical ruin, when in fact it was a city that wanted to become something else, and obviously the geopolitical decisions of the post-war, the reconstruction program of the Marshall Plan shaped it. In the text, as I reflect on how Athens had to build itself, had to repeatedly revise its identity between a glorious past and a very doubtful present, I realize that maybe I am talking about myself, the glorious past is the childhood where I experienced the world more or less beyond social professional or personal expectations. Childhood is the time in our lives when we still start trying to “be” someone, we just are. As such, it seems a glorious moment of personal freedom, of inner strength, of being yourself effortlessly in the freest way. Basically, childhood is the time of your life when you are slaying, living, or as Paris Hilton would say, you are Sliving. And the same can be said for 5th century BC Athens, she was totally killing it, gave birth to the western world (oops) and generally lived her best life. Little did she know that over the centuries she would be sold as a slave to the Ottoman Empire, then tricked into becoming a nation rather than a carefree colony, finally ending up as a pariah to Europe in 2010.

Quite a downfall, it must be said, but perhaps through hardship one finds oneself. The way I think about cities or buildings is the way I think about my own progress in life, doing the work with different types of psychotherapy, energy healing, pilates, tarot cards, whatever.

Finding your way as a queer man has its problems because society is not queer. Perhaps the type of city that Athens wants to become does not recognize itself in its parents, it wants to be different.

(VD): In 1992, you were in charge of the Factory Nightclub project in Athens, and you said that you treated the renovation of the space as “a kind of urban forensic remake-renovation of a drag queen.” Could you talk a little bit more about that? And how does the queer experience inform your architectural practice?

(AA): I had just graduated with honors from Sci-ARC, which at the time was the cutting edge architecture school, and a friend and PR agent introduced me to the nightclub mafia in Athens to design nightclubs.

The mafia lords showed me a closed kebab shop near Omonia Square, wondering what kind of nightclub to turn it into in such a seedy neighborhood. I convinced them that an underground gay house music club was the way to go. They shrugged well and I left.

My first instinct as I was thinking about how to actually fabricate something underground that was somehow about not being fabricated and authentic and raw, just like the guys you like. So creating a decor inside a kebab place seemed a bit ridiculous and I wanted the space to have a DIY quality, to become a space that the tribe made for themselves. I had the kebab place painted a shiny silver to turn the random kebab details into something a little more abstract. Painting over an existing space gives it a surreal, even vivid George Segal vibe, but without the people. I found some couches in the space and reupholstered them in orange fluorescent tech fabric and left the basement refrigerator area completely untouched as that would be the club’s darkroom floor.

The process of turning the kebab shop into a gay club was like a drag queen makeover for me, just paint and a few phosphorescent details. Obviously, it was the club I wanted to go to, so I just introduced it to the client and the Factory became the hottest club that all the old gays remember from the 1990s, even though it had only been open for a little over a year. Like a moth and almost every gay man I know, she got too close to the light and got burned. Just like Crystal Meth and G for gays today.

(VD): Your work deals with the concept of ruin. This makes a big impact when we think about a society that values ​​monumentality so much while seeing itself more and more in “ruin”. How can looking at ruins be an important source of creating new perspectives or concepts?

(AA): I guess the adoration of the ruin comes from the drama that comes from the ruin reminding its admirers of a grand past and the subsequent doom all at once, so the conflicting messages must be kind of high.

At the same time, the ruins somehow help one to let go of one’s agonizing ambitions, because if even the ruined buildings are worth considering, then maybe you are too. I think it’s good to look at the future as a place where we no longer wish to be other than what we already are.

I am currently working on the Center for the Critical Appraisal of Antiquity at the Espace Niemeyer in Paris in October, commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. The project is about negotiating the duality between the ancient and the present, while Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture tries to predict a future that never came, but it seems to make us look strangely nostalgic. I guess I couldn’t resist Mr. Niemeyer a bit because he is a revered figure, although let’s face it, Lina Bo Bardi gave us a more nuanced and engaged vision of Brazil and the future. Antiquity in this case is cast in the role of our civilizations and perhaps our own Childhood.

So it’s basically a self-portrait of a queer man trying to feel the freedom of being a kid again, in the face of society’s expectations and restrictions. The Center for Critical Appraisal of Antiquity examines and examines the small fragments of your childhood civilization that could inform the reality you are building today.

(VD): Switching roles between architecture, art and curation, you have a practice that blurs the lines between fact and fiction. How does the fusion of these concepts influence your work and help you create new perspectives on ordinary life?

(AA): I think any time you blur the line between two roles, you get closer to what meditation is, is a flow state. For me, the blurring of the lines between fact, fiction, architecture, etc. is close to such a flow state, but unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to turn that into an emotional or physical flow yet.