Keynote Speech by

Suzana and Dimitris Antonakakis, Architects

Presentation of the honorary guests by Maria Voyatzaki

It is a great pleasure and an honor for me to introduce the next key-note speakers, whom
you already know. Dimitris Antonakakis, the founder of the Center for Mediterranean
Architecture. You see him in the last five years in this capacity but this is something that
he does with great pleasure as a voluntary work offered to his home town, Hania. But his
capacity is to be an architect; a famous, well-known, imaginative architect the one half
of Atelier 66. I have the honor to have on my right Susana Antonakakis, his life partner,
who is the other half of Atelier 66, which is obviously called like this because it was founded
in 1966 and ever since it has operated with many partners with this name: The scale of
projects Ateliers 66 design vary from tiny residences up to huge public buildings, university
campuses, master plans, train stations and so on open-air theaters. Their projects vary
also in terms of content and context. What I would like to say as the last thing is that for
all these years I have been admiring these people for being great architects. When I
recently had the pleasure of translating their lecture into English I realized that they are
not only great architects but great poets. I shall leave you to their lecture to find out for
yourselves. Susana and Dimitris Antonakakis on "Thoughts on Architecture, the Defined
and the Interminable".

119

Thoughts on Architecture
Suzana and Dimitris ANTONAKAKIS
Architects, Athens, Greece

Suzana Antonakaki
Through some thoughts on architecture we will speak about
the Defined and the Interminable.

Defined and the Interminable:

The old Venetian Harbor, Hania

"Diastima" is for the Greeks the word for space, which expresses
even on our days the defined void, as well as the interminable
area of the sky. Defined and Interminable: two meanings
directly related to architecture. Let us remember the
interminable space, which according to P. Michelis constitutes
one of the characteristics of the Byzantine church.1
The defined void, in which the creation takes place, the limit
and its process, constitutes an important point of reference,
whether it concerns fiction, music, cinema, painting and of
course (for one more reason) architecture.
The terms used for the analysis and criticism of works of art
often allude to spatial relationships of movement and stop,
solid and void, cyclical, linear or daedal routes, in repetitions
which count time and measure space, on planes and volumes,
in open and closed forms, organized geometrically or freely.

Defined and Interminable:

the Byzantine Church

Italo Calvino, in his Six American Lectures, written in 1985 and

published after his death entitled Six proposals for the next
millennium 2 (he only managed to finish five of them) he had
recorded and analyzed six points which according to him
characterize tendencies and define directions for the process
of creating literature.
The six points, which the author has chosen with great care
in order to project the future of literature, are:
1. Lightness
2. Quickness
3. Exactitude
4. Visibility
5. Multiplicity
6. Consistency
The introduction of the book refers to the texts by Massimi
1
2

120

NH E
talo Calvino Lezioni Americane Sei Proposte per il Prossimo Millennio
Garzanti Milano 1988-E
. 1995

Keynote speech

Piatelli Palamarini, which was published in the newspaper

Corriere de la Serra on 20.09.1985.

He was talking in the lectures, as someone who is getting

ready to demonstrate a new and admirable game, a
distribution of playing cards, capable of transferring simply
to others the pleasure of being thinking
Reading the same book this summer and enjoying this
elaboration we could draw parallels between literature and
architecture. As we work for many years now, designing and
writing, we think that we have got to some principles, which
constitute some kind of guidelines which direct us from the
concept to its treatment and its materialisation.
They are some departure points for our work that with time
have created an esoteric typology which creates the
conditions for cooperation in teamwork.
Dimitris Antonakakis
I shall attempt to illustrate the approach that Suzana described
using as an example the project for the two faculties of the
Polytechnic of Crete.
A diagram, which is adapted to the local data and defines in
space the areas of activities as these are prescribed by the
brief, precedes the model. In this phase the open spaces are
defined by the volumes of the buildings. It is more important
to us to relate and to organize accordingly the two opposite
sides of the two different buildings which define the open
space, than the facades of the building itself. We consider the
open space the square- as a larger hall with no roof on it.
The buildings which define it are its walls and they ought to
obey to common rhythms, common scale, relevant materials.
Their treatment on these buildings comes later as a variation
of the homogeneity of the whole. Typology in this particular
case refers to the entities of indoor spaces which are repeated
with variations, as well as to the open spaces that contribute
to this relation of the entities.

The diagram for the Polytechnic of

Crete, 1982

The model for the Polytechnic of Crete,

1982

Suzana Antonakaki
Although the projection of an art onto another art, is often
considered by theoreticians a risky process, which can only
cause confusion (I would like to remind you that Sartre
supported such view with confidence in his essay "What is
literature?" 3) nevertheless (bearing in mind the possibilities
3

Jean Paul Sartre Que cest que la Littrature? Ed Gallimard. Ides 1948

The Central Square, Polytechnic of

Crete, 1982
121

Keynote speech

offered by technology as well as the general attitude that

artists have adopted on approaching the arts) and continuing
on the playful mood of Calvino, I think that it is interesting to
take the risk and search a few correspondences between
architecture and Calvinos views on literature.

Ioniki Bank, Heraklion Crete, Ground

Floor, 1987

Let us consider these comments a brief introduction and a

staring point on our problematic and the accumulated doubts
which stimulate our architectural work in Atelier 66, for many
years, but also views which to a great extent represent
paradoxically the current scene of architecture on our days
These are the tendencies that have appeared on the horizon,
with regard to the design activity, as well as with regard to the
brief and the treatment of limits influencing this way the style
of the projects both in terms of design and in terms of
realisation.
Italo Calvinos sensitivity for the cities and their inhabitants is
known from his book Invisible Cities:

Ioniki Bank, Heraklion Crete, Section

after the intervention (left) and before
the intervention (right), 1987

The city, an exceptionally complex symbol, gave him the

possibility to express the tension between the geometric logic
and the mosaic of the human existence. This relationship of
geometry with the human activities, in everyday life and on a
special day is and might continue to be a successful definition
of architecture.
Dimitris Antonakakis

Faliro Residencies, Sequence of

proposals for extension, 1954-67-72

This relationship of geometry with the developing human

behaviour is expressed in the Greek architectural reality either
with the regeneration of old buildings, or with successive
extensions to the existing constructions, which transform their
geometry, adapting it to the new needs of their inhabitants.
Two examples of this rich in experience type of projects are:
the first one, the Ionian Bank Branch, in Heraklion, Crete. Here
the intervention to the section of the slope illustrates the
effectiveness of the rearrangement of the regenerated indoor
space.
The second example illustrates with elegance the geometric
transformations of an existing building (1956) with the
sequential extensions which we executed following the,
increasing with time, needs of a family.
Suzana Antonakaki

Faliro Residencies, View from the street

122

It is neither in our intentions, nor in the constraints of the time

available to deal with each one of these interesting themes,
which could certainly not be isolated but interrelated. The

Keynote speech

author with his chosen references has written amazing texts

on literature, always reminding us that each one characteristic
is in pair with its opposite.
At the end of reading this book, we realize that the remarks
on the style of a piece of literature are, to a great extent,
applicable to architecture. Meanings, repetitions, spatial and
time distances, connections in which precision is necessary
as well as an open narration for the reader to interpret.
If we think, however, that in architecture the "Topos"- place
(whatever that entails) the brief and the construction, are
even today, to a great extent, the axes which determine the
design activity, we would realize that the six points by Calvino
have to do with the tendencies of our times and the principles
which drive architecture and its possible projections in the
future.
According to the poet Seferis4, words are like ships. They depart
for new destinations and return to their departure ports. In the
same way "architectures" some times return from their trips
with valuables loads, that are useful elements adaptable to
the place they return to, and some other times return with
useless stuff. As you can appreciate these are the choices of
the poet architect, which judge the quality and the future
of the texts, built or written.
In an attempt to search for the driving force of our architectural
thinking and aiming to make it more understandable, beyond
slides which always show an incomplete reality, we will also
project some of our compositional views that, we think, make
it possible to relate to some of Calvinos points.
From his thoughts, I would stop to the one, in which the author,
by recognizing literature as an existential function, considers
the pursuit of lightness (with content far from frivolous) as a
reaction to the weight or load of life.
I would associate this characteristic with our choice to
reorganize the brief and to recompose units, which permit the
interpenetration of indoor and outdoor space in a way that
releases some weight from the composition. Scale and the
treatment of limits are also associated with this characteristic.
As the author claims, when he elaborates on the proposition
on lightness it does not mean that he underestimates gravity;
what concerns him is the dual relationship weight-lightness,
in the twin phenomenon, to use Aldo Van Eycks terminology.5
Lets remember at this point, the drawing with the centripetal
4
5

G . Seferis Dokimes vol.1 Ed. Ikaros 1974

Alldo Van Eyck Ethniki Pinakothiki, National Gallery Athens 1983

Aldo Van Eycks analysis on the weightlightness relationship

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Keynote speech

forces, which direct movement and stop towards the center

and the centrifugal forces as they open up to the open horizon.
This proposition by Aldo Van Eyck refers indirectly to the
relationship between weight and lightness: the stocky volume
that opens up to the horizon direct the spectators to look at
the infinite and in the other case, the two opposite hill sides
define the void attracting the stare of the spectators.
This reference, which is directly related to stare, the movement
of the eye, portrays with distinctness the relationship see and
be seen which has been analyzed by J. P. Vernant.6
The mutual stare alludes to relationships between theatricality
and architecture.

Hios Museum, 1965 The Organization of

the Construction and the Use of the
Grid

With our means and possibilities, we attempt in our work to

break the solid structures, in the buildings we design and built:
residencies, schools, museums, settlements or hotels. Our
intention starts from our intensive search for transparency and
interpenetration of solid and void, but also for ways in which
our works can touch the landscape, which will enhance it,
allowing it to pass in or through the built volumes.
Dimitris Antonakakis

Hios Museum, 1965 Access from street

level

House in Oxylithos

On this intention, which you have probably distinguished

already in our drawings for the Polytechnic of Crete, we
elaborate systematically on large as well as small scale
interventions. Two examples here:
In the first example of the Museum in Hios, the areasrequired
by the brief surround, as they open spaces, forming a series
of internal courtyards, and multiplying the area of exhibition
and studio-laboratory space.
The second example, a small summer house at Oxylithos, one
of many houses that we have design along the same lines of
varying the volumes and their use, is organized in alternate
parallel zones of indoor and outdoor spaces. The landscape,
in this case, constitutes a great part of these houses as the
open space is part of the concept and is not added to it after
it is formulated.
Suzana Antonakaki
In parallel with the successive zones which we explore in the
synthesis of small scale projects residencies- but also in small
complexes settlements and so on, we aim, when that is

House in Oxylithos, View of the master

bedroom
124

Jean Pierre Vernant Mythe et Pense chez les Grecs Maspero 1965

Keynote speech

possible to open the closed element to the interminable.

I would like to stress, at this point, the great importance we
place on the movement as an almost autonomous element
during our design activity.
The street with all its complexities, the external and internal
street as a meeting point and journey is one of the
fundamental themes, which articulate from the start the
determinants, and the tissue of the composition. (Barlos,
settlement in Distomo)
Dimitris Antonakakis
In this early, austere and utopian, to some extent for its times,
example (this could be perhaps the reason it was never
completed) we attempted to introduce to a sloppy site a
settlement for the work force of an industry in Distomo; a
proposal which opposed to the brief requirements to design
three blocks of flats. In this ambitious design there are three
alternate types of residences and their variations, sufficient
to adapt to the different positions in the layout of the settlement,
and limited to allow a kind of standardization. These three
types, organized in parallel zones, where the private open
space and the public open space with the zones of the
enclosed volumes of the residences alternate, they ascend
on the slope forming an articulate residential complex. The
public space zones the pedestrians routes- serve, with a
number of alternative entrances, the residences which lie on
either side of their zones, and which open up systematically
to other in-between zones of private open spaces which
include their inner courtyards.

Residential Complex, Distomo, 1969

Suzana Antonakaki
Similar is our intention to juxtapose the monolithic gravity of
the built volumes by the introduction of a defined or endless
void of the outdoor spaces, in complexes, which form more
complex entities.
There are some buildings which belong to the ambiguous
category: building - non-building rather built landscape one
could say, as: the open-air theatre of the Forest in Thessaloniki,
as we have designed it. It was finally built losing some of the
special characteristics of the treatment of limits, which, in our
opinion, would give it, the necessary vagueness in a wellcalculated complex, where the element of distortion of a selfexplicit geometry stresses the penetration of the theatre in
the landscape, creating relationships and proportions which
allude to Calvinos text on precision

Open-air Forest Theatre in Thessaloniki

125

Keynote speech

Our proposition on lightness was sustained on the restless

search for the diffusion and the impregnation of the built form
with tiny pieces of infinite sky as well as the adjacent or distant
landscape.
Our intentions of course, have been let down often by bad
construction, or by the hostile attitude of the inhabitants
towards the building, or even due to our wrong appreciation
of reality and real needs.
Dimitris Antonakakis

Lyttos Hotel, Heraklion, Crete, 1974-76,

View from the Entrance

In this example a three-hundred roomed hotel at Heraklion,

Crete- in order to avoid the feeling of a gigantic volume, we
broke it into wings, forming a new artificial landscape with
some level changes so that all wings can have a relationship
with the sea while nature would penetrate them. In an effort
to facilitate the legibility of space, we used a palette of colors
characteristic of Mediterranean settlements. These colors gave
scale to the necessarily large-scale volumes which inevitably
emerged from the brief requirements. Along the same lines,
we elaborated on the cantilevers of the rooms by alternating
their balustrades and the respective proportions, so that there
is variety in the big-scale facades.
Suzana Antonakaki

Lyttos Hotel, Heraklion, Crete, 1974-76,

Rooms

The briefs and the special conditions, have not always

permitted the fulfillment of these intentions, that is the
penetration of the void in the body of the building, such as
the cases of the blocks of flats in the urban tissue, where we
created, with the proportions of the plan and sections, internal
spaces, with characteristics of open air spaces and we treated
the limits with these presuppositions.
Examples in this direction are the Benaki Street, and the smaller
block of flats at Philopappou Hill, Zannas residence.
Dimitris Antonakakis

126

Apart from designing the entrance and the core of vertical

circulation of the block of flats of Benaki Street, the interior
space of the flats develops in most cases on more than level.
This arrangement, the analogous arrangement of openings
and the two-aspect reception areas the living room- apart
from their advantage to achieve excellent ventilation, remind
us of a kind of internal courtyards, to which the smaller units
of the more private rooms of the flat open up; the master
bedroom and the childrens room.

Keynote speech

Block of Flats, Benaki Street,

Athens, 1972

Block of Flats, Benaki Street,

Athens, 1972, Main entrance

Block of Flats, Benaki Street,

Athens, 1972, Interior

In Zannas residence, the childrens courts are placed on the

ground floor and have independent entrances. This is the
reason for their arrangement in relation to the pavement. The
main entrance of the couple ends on the upper floor, to a
piano nobile with high headroom, which as an enclosed
courtyard creates the reception space and its services, with
a study space on a mezzanine.
Suzana Antonakaki
Calvinos analysis on the point of precision, refers to the light
feather, which was used as a weight on the weight scales for
the souls of the ancient Egyptians the hieroglyphic Maat
(goddess of scales) implied the length of a brick which was
33 centimeters but also the basic note of the flute. It is worth
remarking, that the weighing that refers to the soul, the lightness
of a feather, as well as the reference to a tone for the music
or a, measure for construction have the same symbolism

Zannas Residence

Precision alludes in summary, to defined design, to linguistic

clarity and to images worth to remember, charged with an
esoteric necessity. Images that have the power to capture
the attention alluding to a plethora of probable signified,
remote from the well known phantasmagoric games with
which, we are uninterruptedly bombarded from everywhere,
the cloud of images that surrounds us and is blown up, leaving
us with a feeling of emptiness.
Calvinos analysis on the point of precision becomes very
interesting in architectural terms, where he distinguishes the
concept of infinite infini- from the concept of indefinite
indefini- and writes:

Zannas Residence, Living room

127

Keynote speech

I would like to refer to my preference to geometric forms,

symmetries, consequences, combinability, mathematic
proportions, I would like to explain the things I wrote, with guide
my faith in the idea of measure, of limit.Perhaps though it is
this idea of precision which also attracts the idea of the
absence of the end: the sequence of integer numbers, the
Euclidean lines
He goes on to refer to the obsession that conquers him so that
he limits the spectrum of his themes into smaller spectra, and
the obsession for the detail that conquers him reminding
Flauberts words that good God is in the detail, which was
also repeated by Mies Van der Rohe.
We have often felt this need of interminable search of the
small, which is contained within a bigger form and in the
elaboration, which blurs the roles of the small and the big, the
open and the close, the public and the private. It is perhaps
the search for the indetermination in explicitness, which is
expressed in many ways such as the preciousness in the
outdoor space and the sharpness in the indoor one, or the
study of movement in order to create dilemmas of choice and
intentions of labyrinthine character.
Atelier of a painter, Aegina, 1990

In this relationship of our architecture with precision, we have

practised from our student times, with the catalytic influence
of James Speyer, who as an open-minded apprentice of Mies
Van der Rohe- taught us, the importance of moderation and
measure which determines with precision the proportions, but
also the importance that deviations stress in these
normalities.
Dimitris Antonakakis

Two residencies in Heraklion, Crete,

1999, Interior

In these last examples, which follow the same principle we

used bear cement blocks with color in the mortar and we
obeyed to the constraints which were imposed by their size.
The first example is a painters atelier in Aegena. It consists of
a large and tall volume, the studio space, which is surrounded
by a zone of ancillary spaces and outdoor galleries which
function as protective wrap in which the principal space, the
core of the project, emerges.
The second example includes two residences at Heraklion,
Crete placed in the space available so that they form
courtyards of a greater or lesser degree of privacy, common
or separated for both residences.

Two residencies in Heraklion, Crete,

1999, the Courtyard
128

Once again in this example, the organization of the residences

in zones which accommodate movement, is evident. Such a
zone gallery- oriented towards South distributes activities to

Keynote speech

different levels in both residences. These levels, in turn, open

up to protected terraces or courtyards; a series of spaces
crossed by open or protected movement or are adjacent to
two-aspect transparent spaces of smooth transition from the
open to the protected or the indoor space of the two
residences.
Suzana Antonakaki
To this education we owe the practice of applied- s
discourse and the open interpretation of the grid in
architectural composition. A pace, which is selected in order
to allude to measures which correspond to elements repeated
in the building, a pace which measures vertical as well as
horizontal surfaces, indoor or outdoor spaces and it is therefore
diffused in all the volume.
With architectural terms we search a vocabulary and the
articulation of our own language, which will allow us, to apply
an open typology, which is useful as a starting point, for its
adaptation to the particularities that appear each time, due
to different reasons: financial, local, constructional, or even
due to the brief
However, we never stop considering, that we found something
that will solve all our problems. This is the charm of architecture.
It is a domain for the investigation of properties which coexist
influencing each other analogous to what Calvino refers.
"Training" in architecture in an attempt to summarize all those
things that for years we have been trying to articulate with
our work, fighting with tough reality, with the indifference that
surrounds us, with the inflation of the empty image that devours
the variable landscape, with a ruthless bureaucracy that only
rarely has a face and escapes from the neutral fear of
responsibility, is an extremely painful experience.
. And if one could think that we live in this magic land, Greece
and we speak a language, which has sustained its continuity
and its stemonologic vocabulary from Homers times. Words
such thalassa for the sea or the word plhiggi for wound,
which have been left, untouched.
Closing by returning to the texts, I would say that we architects
could with all the downfalls of architecture, as we experience
it everyday, derive the power from the strength of the Greek
language throughout the centuries. Its poetic infrastructure,
its assimilative confidence, recognizable especially on Crete
has proved that it receives and assimilates the particularities
of the Greek language, which according to M. Z. Kopidakis
are:7

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The ability to abstract

The plasticity
The richness of meanings
The competitive polytypy
A proof of the invention and the need of the Greeks to escape
from dry mathematics, is that in order to express the
particularities of individuals they invent thousands of names,
what M. Kopidakis has called idioprosopia. In a speech entitled
"Language is our home country", he refers to some of the fifty
names that Isiodos used to name Nirihides: Ploto, Amphitrite,
Pontoporia, Sao, Gallini, Glafki, Kymothoi
The difficulties that architecture comes across are infinite, in
this dual road of wish for legibility and plurality, for the design
and materialisation of spaces that are distinguished for their
narrativity and which allow us to fascinate others, beyond
our own self, spaces that offer what inhabitation really ought
to be. To be poetic as Heidegger8 so characteristically has
described.
In this difficult route that architecture has taken it is exposed
to everything, from inflation and deprivation, thousands of
mute images, verbosity of materials, bulimia and unlimited
exhibitionism, arrogance or indolence of power, pedantic
attitudes and fear of responsibility for the interpretation of the
laws and the most painful; indifference that leads to
aggressiveness and hostility to the bodies of buildings that
have been designed with love
Nevertheless we carry on regardless to hope and to dream.
Lets not forget that the word -dreamy- has been
left also untouched from Homers times
We would like to thank Maria Voyatzaki for translating and editing
our text.

130

M. Kopidakis Language is our home country Mikros Naftilos Heraklio

2000
M. Heideger Essais et conferences Gallimard 1958