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GREEK
ARCHITECTURAL
TALENT
MEGARON - THE ATHENS CONCERT HALLLAFARGEA PARTNERSHIP TO PROMOTE THE GREEK ARCHITECTURAL VISION
We readΗ ΚΑΘΗΜΕΡΙΝΗARCHISEARCH.GRARCHSTUDIES.GRΔΟΜΕΣΕΚΥΛΗ & ΚΤΙΡΙΟMETROPOLISUNIVERSITY PRESSCLICKATLIFE.GRCULTURENOW.GRMONOPOLI.GRREPORTER.GR


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PEPPER 96.6RED FM 96,3

20.5 - 9.6 2013
AT MEGARON ATHENS

THEIR FIRST
BUILDINGS
 

Diamantopoulou Ivi

Unapologetically fat: Voluptuous Architecture
2013
Postgraduate
Princeton School of Architecture, Princeton, NJ, USA
Professor(s): Liz Diller, Michael Meredith
Contemporary architecture can be bracketed within two pathogenic extremes: anorexia and obesity. Think of the all-glass, seemingly vacant, apple cube and our ‘relentless pursuit of excessive thinness’, our deep desire to make it disappear into immateriality. Now, think of Gehry’s Bilbao, as the ‘abnormal accumulation of fat’, or the over-materialization of form as a means to achieve iconicity. Architecture is inherently fat, though – Material; Massive; Voluminous.
Architecture must finally become unapologetically fat, Voluptuous. The term is itself charged with historical and cultural significance: It stands for a counter-aesthetic notion of resistance to the infinite quest for thinness. It refers to seeking beauty through imperfection.
Forming a proposal for architecture to become voluptuous, is about reimagining antiquated notions of kallos revolving around ideals of metrics and proportions, questioning ethics of reduction and hyper-articulation, liberating architecture from its longstanding battle with gravity and specificity.
That does not mean that the line is jettisoned, or the curve embraced. Rethink architecture as a bottom heavy construct -- barely escaping symmetry, succumbing to gravity and being legibly informed by its forces. Seeking an extremely balanced aesthetic condition, incessantly negotiating surface and massing, austerity and lavishness, the complex and the monolithic, the beautiful, the weird, and the grotesque.


* Some Great (non-Greek) Architectural Talent made the production of these models possible: Matthew Bertsch and Gabriel Fries Briggs (large scale office tower), Yshai Yudekovitz and Trudy Watt (dress), Debbie Chen (office tower iterations), and Antonia Weiss.

CV
Ivi Diamantopoulou was born in Athens in 1985. She studied Architecture in the University of Patras, Greece (Architect Engineer Diploma, 2008) and received her Masters as a fellow at the Princeton School of Architecture in the US (Post - Professional Masters in Architecture, 2013). She is currently practicing in Athens and New York."


Objects #1-6: studies on the voluptuous
Office Tower: Iterations on Skin
Office Tower: Iterations on Structure
prototype office tower: section, elevation, indicative plans
Office Tower: Images
voluptuous architecture: syntax
Object #7: Structure and skin detail
object #8: material experiments and syntax (catalogue)
object #9: dress
object #9: indicative installation
A PARTNERSHIP TO PROMOTE THE GREEK ARCHITECTURAL VISION ΜΕΓΑΡΟ ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗΣ ΑΘΗΝΩΝ  LAFARGE
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