6th Biennale for Young Greek Architects - September 2010

The committee for choosing the works of young Greek Architects to participate in the 6th Biennale for Young Greek Architects, organised by the Hellenic Institute of Architecture and held this September at Benaki Museum in Athens has picked unanimously 75 works out of 368 submissions, the most works ever picked for the show. The criteria were their high design and construction quality but also their originality. The selections also cover a wide variety of categories.

Half of the projects chosen are already constructed, while the rest are still only at the design phase. The fact that many of the submitted projects have already received other architectural awards, some of them international, is very encouraging for the future of Greek Architecture.

The selection of the proposals on display was carried out by architects Nikos Kalogirou, Lois Papadopoulos, Dimitris Papalexopoulos and Elias Konstantopoulos.

The exhibition of the 75 projects will be held at the Benaki Museum at Pireus St., from the 16th of September to the 17th of October.

Greek Architecture Awards

The Hellenic Institute of Architecture, in co-operation with the Benaki Museum presents in an exhibition that opened on the 15th of April, the Architecture Awards for 2008. On the eve of the opening, the awards ceremony took place at the museum. The awards gathered a lot of press in Greece, which recently was become a bit more sensitive to architectural issues, prompted in a major part by the discussions about the New Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi.

The purpose of the awards, according to the Institute, is to highlight and promote the contemporary architectural projects whose construction, typology and morphology as well as their environmental conformity compose an architectural proposal with renewal elements in the frame of the existing urban environment. The awards are about realised projects in Greece, they are three and are awarded every four years for three different categories. One is about housing, one is about state or municipal projects and one about projects that do not fit either of the previous categories.

For the third presentation of the awards, the international committee (consisting of professors of Architecture Andreas Giakoumakos and Panos Dragonas together with the award winners of the 2004 nominations C. Deligiani, D. Diamantopoulou and D. Tsagaraki, plus at the final stage the president of the GIA Professor N. Kalogeras and Foulvio Irase, director of Trienalle in Milan) gave the following awards:

For the housing category, "House in Psychico" by Pantelis Nikolakopoulos, below and first photo of this post.

For the Public sector category, "Remodelling ofThessaloniki beach front" by Prodromos Nikiforidis, Bernard Cuomo, Atelier R.Castro, S. Denissof, below and second photo of this post.

For the category of projects not fitting in the above two categories, "The Breeder Gallery" by Office 405 - Aris Zambikos with Pulcheria Giova as collaborator, below and last photo of this post.

The exhibition will showcase all participations, so that one can view the trends developing in Greek Architecture in the last five years. The Hellenic Institute of Architecture believes that the basic purpose of an award is the recognition of the quality of the achievement, which means rewarding not only the result but also the effort of all the contributors to it. The show is curated by Nikos Kalogeras and Marianna Milioni.

Photos of the House at Psychico courtesy of the architect.
Photos of the New Thessaloniki Beech courtesy of Lucretius.
Photos of Breeder Gallery courtesy of Vivianna Athanassopoulou

Originally published by me at 2Modern Design Talk