Nikos Ktenas

The Hellenic Institute of Architecture organized a new series of lectures by Greek architects titled “HIA Lectures 2005–2006”. The aim of this series was to broaden public awareness and understanding of the work of architects. To this end, prominent professionals were selected and invited to share their views on Greek architecture and present their own work.

Greek architecture today remains a subject of ongoing inquiry. Several issues continue to shape and, at times, hinder its development: the processes surrounding professional practice, the limited implementation of architectural competitions, the relationship between architecture and the broader economic realities of the country, the role and potential of construction technology, the gradual transformation of architects into executors of pre-determined choices made by construction companies, the legacy of the Olympic projects, architecture’s relationship with society, the problematic role of Greece’s artistic architectural and urban tradition, the relationship between contemporary architecture and the realities of Greek cities, the issue of architectural education, the connection between Greek and international architecture, the lack of a coherent strategy for promoting architecture both within Greece and abroad, and the role of architectural criticism. These are issues that often do not support design research itself nor the development of the overall quality of architectural work.
Architecture in Greece today still raises questions that remain unanswered—questions that have already been addressed not only in the West but also in many countries of the so-called “Third World.”

The Hellenic Institute of Architecture’s lecture series aimed to address these questions. The architects invited, many of whom belong to the younger generation, sought both to express theoretical positions on these matters and to articulate the principles that underpin their own personal design philosophy within the context of the built environment.

“Besides the building, architecture is…”

NIKOS KTENAS

He was born in Piraeus in 1960 and studied at Cooper Union, NY and Cornell University, NY, graduating in 1983. He taught at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with Luigi Snozzi from 1985 to 1993. He has received various awards in European architectural competitions. He participated in the exhibition “Landscapes of Modernisation – Greek Architecture in the 60s and 90s” in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and in the 7th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2000, with a permanent exhibit at the Greek Pavilion. He maintained an architectural office in Lugano, Switzerland from 1987, and in Athens from 1993.

A fundamental principle of architecture historically is the exploration of the relationship between humans and nature. Not only the relationship between interior and exterior space, which is considered self-evident in our work, but the dialectical relationship between structure and nature—that is, the inevitable essential transformation that architecture imposes on every site of intervention, urban or otherwise. As we could also argue, the manner and location of the intervention is the first act in the architectural work.