|
|
Archive@NYU >
Institute of Fine Arts >
Institute of Fine Arts Conference Proceedings >
Front to Rear: Architecture and Planning during World War II, March 7-8, 2009 >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30277
|
| Title: | Constantinos A. Doxiadis: The War and the Archive |
| Authors: | Theocharopoulou, Ioanna |
| Keywords: | architecture
Word War II
Greece
Doxiadis, Constantinos A.
urban planning |
| Issue Date: | 19-Sep-2011 |
| Abstract: | Architect and planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis's entire professional
life involved collecting and classifying information in exhaustive
detail. His process of working was archival: we sense that he was
personally far more interested in gathering, enumerating, and organizing
a multitude of facts--analysis, research, were some of his favorite
terms--than the synthesis of these facts into a project. Doxiadis's
commitment to the archive, both literally, as evidenced by his own
extensive personal and office archives, and figuratively--his diligence
in gathering a mass of details on what some saw as increasingly
unrelated topics--rendered his work difficult for many of his
contemporaries. This paper will explore how Doxiadis's tendency to
collect, organize and manage facts that grew increasingly sophisticated
throughout his life, was particularly colored by his experience during
the war. During the war, Doxiadis (1913-1975) turned his official
post as Chief Town Planner into a way of gathering information for the
Greek Resistance. He founded and maintained a veritable 'architects'
underground', that became the 'scientific' staff of the resistance
movement, deploying hundreds of architects and engineers throughout
Greece who often risked their lives to collect data and intelligence. It
is less well-known that during this time Doxiadis also led a series of
clandestine meetings in Athens, the 'Circle of Scientists', who
discussed 'technical topics'. The Circle was comprised of a group of
architects and other intellectuals mostly drawn from Doxiadis's close
associates. Their project was to compile and exchange more data
primarily about architecture and experiments in housing from Northern
Europe and Russia but also casting a broad look at topics ranging from
vernacular art and building to aerial photography, the language question
and the baking of bread in urban centers. The transcripts of the Circle
of Scientists meetings were recorded in a journal, Chorotaxìa
(from choros = space and taxi = order), a single copy of which exists in
the Doxiadis Archive in Athens, dating from 1942. The work of the
'scientific' resistance movement was elaborated into a recently
re-discovered, large-format catalogue, 'Sacrifices of Greece During the
Second World War', published immediately after the end of the War.
Transcribing war-time losses, 'Sacrifices of Greece' gave further
incentive to classify and enumerate: no longer just about cultural
artifacts but also about olives, wheat, goats, donkeys, mules and
starving children, this time the numbers and data also turned into
sophisticated visual information. Doxiadis's life-long mission of
preserving and classifying facts, developed during a period of wartime
resistance, endowed his work with a special urgency. As a high-ranking
government employee during the decade of the 1940s, we sense that he
felt personally responsible to protect and organize the totality of
knowledge about his country. Compounded by the lack of access to the
war-time material until very recently, and by the political and personal
antagonism felt towards Doxiadis, accentuated during the Civil War
(1946-49) and again during the early 1970s, this early period of intense
and prolific architectural activity has been largely misunderstood and
all but forgotten. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/30277 |
| Appears in Collections: | Front to Rear: Architecture and Planning during World War II, March 7-8, 2009
|
All items in Faculty Digital Archive are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved.
|
