Hommage: D. Issaias – T. Papaioannou

Dimitris Isaias (1952) and Tasis Papaioannou (1953) were born in Athens with one year difference.
They graduated from National university of Athens NTUA and on 1979 they started a common architectural career by creating their own architectural office, which is located at the familiar street of Themistokleous.

An "architecturally" structured choice, if one considers that parallelly with their professional activities, they continued to visit daily NTUA, not as students anymore but as academic professors of architectural synthesis at the department of architecture.

Their parallel career of the two former fellow students does not stop here. Daily, both of them are developed in the field of research and reflection with their endless attendance in the dialogue for architecture, with participations in architectural competitions, rich editorial work and continuous interventions.

Apparently, their significant and numerous times awarded architectural work classifies them on the list with the most distinguished Greek architectural teams. They have developed many private and public buildings that possess a prominent place in every Greek and international bibliography.

GreekArchitects.gr presents you from today a wide range of the architectural work of Dimitris Isaias and Tasis Papaioannou (15 projects) and at the same time a dialogue that we had with them.

1. Interview, (By Vassilis Mistriotis)
Translation by:Maria Papadimitriou, architect engineer

The city
Vassilis Mistriotis: Greek society constantly denies incorporating economic immigrants, with the result not only the creation of ghettoes in the city of Athens but also their progressive appearance in other cities.
Researches about the integration of economic immigrants in the urban site either failed or were never realized.Do you think that architecture can contribute in the process of the self-conscious of the man (Antonio Monisteroli) by expelling the dark human instincts and give solutions?

Dimitris Isaias - Tasis Papaioannou: Social conflicts cannot be solved with architecture. The resolution of economic immigrants' problem and their repercussions in our city do not need "skilful" architectural handlings. Architectural determinism of previous periods is totally exceeded and many times conceals an inclination to hide the deepest causes that give birth to such nature problems. Architecture may attempt to propose a solution to what corresponds to it and for what it serves. Phenomena, as the one that you describe, exceed architecture and concern behaviors and practices of the entire society.

V.M: Let's accept that the "magic stick" of a incoming urbanist can save Athens, it has become fashion nowadays. But what about the Greek countryside and the legal regime - "off limits constuction" phenomenon- that allow the thoughtless construction and that destroys the landscape? What do you think we can do about it?

D.I.-T.P: Our cities and the countryside that surround them are in the situation that we all know, not due to the ignorance of an equitable way to manage the problems or the lack of national or foreign experts. "Off limits constuction " phenomenon and the lack of institutional frame of forests' protection, the intentional ambiguity of various legislative regulations, the elasticity in the protection of public areas that is intensified with the lacks of national land registry office  are aspects of "growth"  policy that were never expressed formally but have taken place consequently for decades. We do not believe that what happens around us is simply accidentally fact. The policy of the extension of our cities took place in the past, but also continues in our days with the same way. Take as an example the region of Eastern Attica: the creation of the new Airport and the Axis resulted on a constructional explosion that developed without program and planning. The cost of such growth affected unfortunately not only us, but also our future generations. The change of this model of growth means conflicts with teams of interests. The level of planning that follows is much simpler.

A question that we often address to academic professors.
V.M: Which are your first thoughts when the white paper waits for your new work to develop? Has ever your academic career become an obstacle in your architectural experimentations? Have you ever felt "encircled" by theories that you may teach?

D.I.-T.P: Before the "white paper" there is the Place that is about to welcome the building. Its special features, its disciplines and the engagements that impose, the life that it includes. By the moment the first lines appear on the white paper, automatically a creative "conversation" between the architect and these abstract lines begins. Architectural synthesis is a torturing and laborious process and particularly these first stages. It is a phase of exceptionally complex and complicated intellectual procedures. Memories, experiences, images, livings are recalled in order to supply this process. As long as the depiction of the idea proceeds, the landscape and the atmosphere of the sketch starts to clear and the form of the building appears.

Teaching and practice of Architecture did never constitute for us independent operations, but communicating vessels. The one continuously and ceaselessly supplies the other. What we believe or to be precise what we attempt is to offer our theoretical knowledge and our experience to our students, and simultaneously to receive from them stimuli for our architectural procedure. Our academic position, consequently, was never an obstacle in our research and experimentation, but on the contrary it helped them to develop.

National Acropolis Museum.
V.M: Many times a building, even with a violent way, being indifferent to the scale of a region, invades suddenly in the urban site and finally becomes acceptable from the residents and the architects. What did happened with the NMA and not managed to be included in Athens site? Not yet at least? I would appreciate it if your answer focuses in the building itself and no in the site, problematic or not, where it was finally realized.

D.I.-T.P: It is difficult, if not impossible to focus our answer only in the building, ignoring the site. A building cannot be criticized independently from the place in which it was realized. Each building is built next to what preexisted and it is prepared to welcome what will be built next to it in the future. In the case of National Acropolis Museum the problem is located, therefore, not only in the particular place that was selected, but also in the program of uses that the architects of the building were compelled to follow. We often pass through this point by concentrating our criticism on the final result. Consequently, the "scale" of the building had been pre-decided and this had its importance not only concerning the surrounding buildings, but mainly in relation to the general archaeological site of Acropolis. It is not, therefore, a question of scale or great synthetic lines or materials and colors, but a question of what the building as architectural idea expresses and symbolizes. The idea of a building that views the Acropolis, but mainly it is viewed from it appears to express better the "greatness" of those that decided.

Architecture is criticized for its materialized result and this judgment requires time. The building of the New Museum deserves time, because obligatorily there is no equivalence in what the architect may have thought for his building and in the building itself, between the "intention" and the "epenergy", that is to say the radiation of the building work in the city and the society. And this radiation is that it matters and that vindicates Architecture.

Dimitris -Tasis.
V.M: Tell us about your cooperation. Are the roles distinguishable during your long-lasting common architectural career? Could you present us the collaborators architects of your office?

D.I.-T.P: Architecture is team work and this is something that we realized since our studies, when the discussions with our fellow students and the team works constituted a second school. Architecture hardly accepts solitary way or at least thus we believed and we always tried to be open in cooperations. The constant core of our team is the two of us, but all these years we have worked with many colleagues. In the frame of a long-lasting cooperation it is hard to determine distinguishable roles. There are common opinions and apprehension in the basic choices that determine architecture and there are also differences that give reason for discussions and reflections that enrich our architecture, but also each one separately.
 
Many were the architects that worked with us. Our friend and colleague G.Makris, our friend-colleague and fellow student G. Papakonstantinou, from the younger generation A. Mourelatos and M. Filippopoulou, the even younger colleague S Gyftopoulos who works with us many years. In our team,  all these years, there were many more architects, as well as our friends and collaborators civil engineers Y. Koubopoulos and A. Papathanasiou.

Color in architecture.
V.M: Modern architecture does not often appear to use color, apart from white and those that exist in natural or not structural materials. It is a matter of weakness - of architects' education or we can accept the common answer, that white includes all the colors?

D.I.-T.P: Color and architecture are integral and indivisible significances in time. If we keep that in mind, from the first sketches that we make trying to crystallize the central idea of a building, colors would play a decisive role in the way that we compose the form of the building and combine its materials.
Color and materials generally have to do with the general synthetic and constructional building language. Perfectly different chromatic rules, for example, exist in a neoclassic building, a middle-war building or a modern building of '60s. Color does not come as an afterthought to decorate and ameliorate the building, but it constitutes an integral synthetic element of its central idea and it is used from the beginning.
The color however should be perceived and used as "structural building material". That is to say we build with the color! Thus we could say, for example "we build with red" and not "we build with bricks". When the architect imagines the architectural space, he should imagine colors, materials, light. Each natural or artificial material has color. How it is possible, therefore, to build with materials, without at the same time build with colors?

2. Architectural Work

Residences

TWO-FAMILY HOUSE IN PENTELI - ATHENS

HOUSE AT RIBARI, NEAR KERATEA, ATTICA

HOUSE IN ALIMOS

HOUSES IN NORTHERN ATHENS

ADDITAMENT AND REFURBISHMENT OF AN EXISTING HOUSE FROM MID SEVENTIES IN EKALI, ATTIKA

COMPLEX OF THREE VACATION HOUSES ON THE ISLAND OF AEGINA

Public Buildings

Museums

NATIONAL RESISTANCE MUSEUM AND MONUMENT TO ELECTRA APOSTOLOU IN NEON HERAKLEION, ATHENS- 1ST & 3rd PRIZE

NEW PATRAS MUSEUM

MUSEUM FOR THE ENVIRONMENT IN STYMPHALIA

Buildings of Offices

OFFICE BUILDING IN ATHENS

ADMINISTRATION'S BUILDING OF A CORPORATIVE BANK OF TRIKALA

Buildings of Education

FILEKPEDEFTIKI ETERIA ARSAKEIO OF TIRANA GREEKALBANIAN SCHOOL

FILEKPEDEFTIKI ETERIA ARSAKEIO OF PATRAS

Buildings of Special Uses

MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS FACTORY AT RAFINA, ATTICA

COURTHOUSE IN AIGION