The Bankruptcy of Architecture: Visiting the OTE Building

19.8.10

Visiting the OTE Building

As part of the KAM Workshops 2010, the Bankruptcy of Architecture, we visited this morning the OTE building making a time travel and acting like archeologist inside their building in Chania.

Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE S.A.) is the largest telecommunications provider in Greece. Their infrastructure includes more than 20.000 Km of fiber-optic cables, numerous satellite, submarine and terrestrial cables all over the world. Part of these big infrastructure are their buildings network. This year KAM workshops will deal with architecture in a time of crisis, focusing in the building we visited, as a paradigmatic case of insufficiently used buildings in central urban areas.

To see a photo-set of the OTE building, please go here

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Participants

DIMITRIS ANTONAKAKIS (A66 Architects) / ARISTIDE ANTONAS (Antonas Office, Associate Professor, University of Thessaly) / ANDREA BALESTRERO (Gruppo A12) / ETHEL BARAONA POHL (dpr Barcelona) / VASSILIS BOURDAKIS (Associate Professor, University of Thessaly) / ELIAS CONSTANTOPOULOS (Associate Professor, University of Patras) / DIMITRIS DIMITRIADIS (Writer) / DIMITRIS ISSAIAS (Associate Professor, National Technical University of Athens) / ELINA KARANASTASI (Lecturer, University of Crete) / POLIXENI MATZIOU (Associate Professor, Dimokritio University of Thrace) / GEORGIOS PANETSOS (Head, Department of Architecture, University of Patras, University of Crete) / NIKOS PATSAVOS (Assistant Professor, University of Crete) / VASSILIKI PETRIDOU (Professor, University of Patras) / PANAYOTA PYLA (Associate professor, University of Cyprus) / MARIOS PHOCAS (Head, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus) / ALCYSTIS RODI (ass. Professor, University of Patras) YORGOS TZIRTZILAKIS (DESTE Foundation, Assistant Professor, University of Thessaly) / DIMITRIS TSAKALAKIS (University of Crete) STAVROS VERGOPOULOS (Assistant Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) / ARISTOMENIS VAROUDAKIS (Professor, University of Crete) ARIADNE VOZANI, (Assistant Professor, National Technical University of Athens)

together with
ELINA AXIOTI (mRes, London Consortium, London) / DIMITRIS GOURDOUKIS (phD candidate, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki) / PLATON ISSAIAS (phD candidate Berlage Institute, Rotterdam) / PETROS PHOKAIDES (phD candidate, National Technical University, Athens) / EVI SOUGKARA (masters, Central Saint Martins College, London) / YANNIKOS VASILOULIS (architect and web designer) / ALEXANDRA VOUGIA (mPhil, Columbia University New York)

About KAM workshops

The KAM summer workshops were initiated as a particular way to think again what "architecture in a local frame" could mean; how an architectonic investigation could be driven towards local phenomena? Aristide Αntonas, Filippos Oraiopoulos and Ζafos Χagoraris formed the first working team. A determination to approach architecture as a "site specific elaboration" brings us to the 2010's "Bankruptcy of Architecture": it was always a question of propagating the local to an international level: an interest for a city’s “insignificant” places was the first manifested declaration of the team. The third workshop (proposed under the name “paradigmata”) represented Greece for the 9th architecture biennale of Venice. The biennial project, extended the investigation to insignificant places around Greece and in Cyprus. The “paradigmata” project formed the field of an intense experiment of defining sites through groups of invitees. After the “paradigmata” year, the term «κτιστό συμβάν» (built event) was used in order to describe a particular architectonic area between a procedure and the procedure’s traces: "built event" was also the name of a series of works undertaken by different teams, directed by Antonas and Oraiopoulos. A theatrical preparation of a built procedure, a work of tracing, and the procedure’s resultant traces were considered as equally important parts of the same constructive procedure: a problematic description was always at stake defining or "building" insignificant places. The deposited projects were proposed as alternative views of the places, as constructed definitions of the insignificant spots.