Alexandras Avenue Refugee Building Complex

Background

1.1922

After the "Asia minor disaster",a treaty was signed specifying a large-scale population exchange.Some 1,2000,000 Greeks,mostly from cities on Turkey's Aegean coast,had to leave their homes and be transported to Greece,deprived of all their possessions,while Turks from Greek mainland,mainly peasants,had to follow the opposite route.

2.Shanty Towns

Greece's government keep almost half population of the refugees around the major cities,so as to control them and to "integrate" them into the local economy.The other half who were allowed to stay in Athens had to build their houses on empty public lots mainly outside the city by whatever materials they could find.Shanty towns with no roads and living facilities had appeared since then around Athens and Piraeus.

The country showed a strong hostile to those uprooted people,they are demonized as invaders who would destroy the city's public life,and those shanty towns were spatially and socially formed as ghettoes.

3.The refugee housing complex

Almost ten years after the Asia Minor,a slum clearance project produced a series of model settlements.The Alexandras complex was built during the years 1934-35,which was distinctive in its abundance of open space between the buildings.

All these residential apartments are small but offer air and light from both sides,  consist of a sitting room, a bedroom, a small kitchen and a tiny toilet. And it's one of the earliest examples of the modern movement in Greece.

Balconies as boxes(1943)

Be treated like "others"

Socially the buildings were a place where the refugees were to be secluded.No care was taken for the remaining open space,no initiatives were established for the complexes to be incorporated into the city.Those complexes were both physically and symbolically set apart from the city,surrounded as they were by amorous public space easily read as separating zone.Residents had to face a unfrendly environment.

Self-organized public place

Nevertheless,an evolving comman life burst out of the buildings thanks to the loose spaces with no defined uses in between. Residents transformed outdoor space into an ambiguous network of small courtyards,pavements,tree-shaded areas,improvised playgrounds and meeting points.

The outdoor space was not marked by absolute boundaries, the staircases were not simply used to cross but noisy play areas especially in winter,the laundry room became the living room for women,most of the basement flat were extended into small courtyards.

Decay

Since the late 1960s,the complex have been the focus of the governments who promised a park in place of a degrated housing area.The pressure produced a precarious situation for the residents who were hesitant to spend money for housing maintenance.The fomer public places like the staircases,the laundry rooms and the pavements started crumbling.Also this ares became a large informal parking lot for people using the nearby hospitals or stadium.

Most of the owners sold their apartments,while others abandoned their houses or have rented them to comtemporary immigrants or low income people.The buildings appeared to be almost abandoned.

During the Athens 2004 Olympic games, a huge cloth with Acopolis printed on it was used to cover the facade of the building facing the Alexandras Avenue.

 

However,some  public events like exhibitions or festivals were orgnized by volunteers and those who resist the demolition,they attended to regenerate the former vivid public place,and tried to show that the history of the buildings has transformed them to protential sites of an osmotic public life.