3 - Wasmuth-Verlag

O’Neil Ford Monograph Series, Vol. 3
The University of Texas at Austin
Ed.: Elias Constantopoulos, Wilfried Wang
Texts: Alekos Fassianos, Leti Arvaniti Krokos,
Elias Constantopoulos, Wilfried Wang
English
144 pages with c. 220 illustrations in color
29,5 × 21,5 cm. Paperback
EUR 29,80 (D)
ISBN 978 3 8030 0718 6
4 th quarter of 2010
Reforming existing architecture
with the help of a profound
vision for the present
The comprehensive documenta -
tion of an outstanding
example of architecture
Foto: Charalambos Louizidis
Foto: Daniel Sylvester
Foto: Daniel Sylvester
Foto: Daniel Sylvester
O’Neil Ford Monograph Series
The volumes of the series use the luxury of hundreds
of images on almost as many pages, to -
gether with insightful essays, to once again assert
the presence of the architectural book in the
age of the internet. To this aim the Center for
Kyriakos Krokos: Fassianos Building
Athens 1987–1992
Amongst a city dominated by balconied apartment buildings, Athens
possesses not only the monuments of an ancient civilization but also a
handful of mod ern attempts at reconnecting to this intellectual and art -
istic achieve ment. Unperturbed by such a task was a group of architects
of the 20 th century, to whom Kyriakos Krokos (1941–1998) be longed.
Kyriakos Krokos studied at the Polytechnic School in Athens and later in
Paris with the painter Yannis Tsarouxis (1910–1989). His close interest in
the fine arts brought him into early contact with Alekos Fassianos (born
in 1935), Greece’ foremost painter, with whom he shared the goal of
developing a language from the subconscious continuity of anonymous
Aegean culture, reaching as far back as Cycladic civilization.
In 1977 Krokos was awarded the first prize in the competition for the
Byzantine Museum in Thessaloniki. It was to be his largest and most
comprehensive architectural statement in terms of a new freestanding
building. However, the much smaller commission of the conversion and
remodelling of an Athenian apartment building (1987–1992) belonging
to the Fassianos family provided the experimental grounds for his architectural
visions and details, many of which would also be realized in the
Byzantine Museum (1989–1993). In the afterwards mixed-use Fassianos
building that includes a private art gallery and apartments, both Krokos
and Fassianos have realized their idea of a quotidian urban life, in
which art and architecture are mutually sustaining.
Krokos showed here a sculptor’s penetrating vision: seeing in a rough
block of stone the potential of a carefully hewn figure. Few commis -
sions and even fewer architectural designs have transformed an otherwise
harmless, not to say banal building into a radically different reality.
While identical in structure and substance, the typology of the Fassianos
building has been carefully adjusted and rectified in its syntax,
many pre-existing elements have been exposed, some details have been
added, and the result is a concise, precise piece of architecture. This
pub lication documenting the building includes the reproduction of extensive
hitherto unpublished archival material and numerous photos.
American Architecture and Design (CAAD) and the O’Neil Ford Chair in
Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, School of Architecture
have joined forces.
Each monograph sets out to document an important work of modern
architecture economically and permanently, in a format that allows the
reader to study its contents close-at-hand.
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