Αθήνα! (Athens!)
How do you begin in a city whose inhabitants make up 40% of the population of the country? What does that mean for a city? And if a city is its people, then who are these people? Packed into Athens’ 412 km2 larger urban zone, are an estimated 4 million people – though there are doubtless many more unregistered immigrants.
How also to begin in a city where property means everything: 63% of households live in owned dwellings. To be is to build. And that means concrete. Athens is covered in concrete. Huge swathes of the city seem to have been poured out during the 1970s: a brutal kind of functionalism seemingly without architectural ambition …
