Aris Konstantindis
(1913-1993)
Aris Konstantinidis was born in Athens. His studies in Germany from 1931 to 1936 gave him the opportunity of coming into immediate contact with the most important architectural concepts of the time --those of the modern movement.
Konstantinidis returned to Greece in 1936 and spent some years working for the Town Planning Department of the city of Athens and, after the war, for the Ministry of Public Works. His engagement with the major problems of the time and his conviction that architecture is a social function led him to assume the position of head of the Workers Housing Organisation from 1955 to 1975 and that of head of the Technical Service of the Greek National Tourism Organisation from 1957 to 1967.
During these years he planned and oversaw the construction of a series of workers' houses and of hotels and was the first architect in Greece to introduce into public works, effectively and on a large scale, the notions of standardisation in composition and construction. At the same time, Konstantinidis planned and realised several private projects.
The architecture of Aris Konstantinidis is characterised by a national disposition of floor plans, attention to the convenience and functionality of spaces, by a concern to incorporate structures into the natural environment, to take into account the particular climatic conditions of each place, as well as to ensure the quality of each type of material used in his constructions, and to stress its particular features. Thus, each work of his contrives to become not only a "Receptacle of life" --a term he himself coined-- for the use of each particular individual, but also to put forth, through its very existence, clear architectural positions on the issues of his time and his native country.
Konstantinidis' interest in creating a contemporary architecture evolving from the needs of Greece itself, led him to study extensively the anonymous architecture of his country and to publish three books, from 1947 to 1953, in which he examines particular examples of this anonymous architecture. In 1975 he publishes a comprehensive book concerning the anonymous architecture of Greece, entitled Elements of Self-knowledge-Towards a true architecture. It is there that one can see how much Aris Konstantinidis was influenced by the architectural tradition of his homeland and how he drew lessons from the past to develop an architecture for his time.
In his last book, entitled Theoktista ("God-built"), the architect once again underlines his belief that anonymous architecture as well as the landscape of Greece itself, constitute the foundations on which modern architectural practice can and must be grounded.
We must stress here that Aris Konstantinidis found himself in diametrical opposition, from his very early days as an architect, to the tendency to be enamoured with the past which often led to a "stage set-like imitation of past forms and styles as well as to a tendency, exhibited by many architects, to copy modern European models, produced for the needs of other lands".
Through his work, Aris Konstantinidis creates architectural solution unique in Greece, which give birth to a modern Greek architecture. This architecture, standing firmly as it does on modern precepts and on today's needs, has the ability to assimilate the essence and not simply the form of the architectural tradition of Greece.
