From Doxiadis’ Theory to Pikionis’ Work

Tsiambaos, Kostas

doi:10.4324/9781315616483

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“…Personal notes from his readings at the time show that his primary influence were German location theories, and more importantly, the 1933 study on ' central places' by the geographer Walter Christaller, which prioritized geographic and economic factors in the spatial distribution and organization of settlements. Moreover, the social and cultural value of the small and medium-sized rural settlements were also dominant in inter-war Germany, both before and under the Nazi regime (Schenk and Bromley 2003), with which Doxiadis came in contact in 1936 while completing his doctoral thesis in Berlin (Tsiambaos 2017). Another complementary pool of sources included British regional planning ideas, such as those found in Patrick Abercrombie's Town and Country Planning of 1943, which reinforced his conviction of the necessity of shaping a centralized planning approach that advocated the control of urban growth and a balance between urban centres and the countryside.…”

Section: 'Underground' Ekisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Claiming the Countryside: Ekistics, Socio-Political Conflicts, and Emerging Cold-War Geopolitics During Greek Reconstruction

Phokaides

Samarinis

Triantis

et al. 2021

Architectural Histories

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This article investigates the complex ties between planning, socio-political conflicts, and emerging Cold War geopolitics during the post-war reconstruction period in Greece, by focusing on the years between 1944 and 1947. In these crucial transitional years, transnational flows of expertise, interwar legacies, and political, scientific, and ideological contestations gave rise to novel planning ideas and antagonistic visions for the country's reconstruction and its future development path. The article sheds light on how the architect-planner Constantinos Doxiadis formulated Ekistics as a spatial vision, a mode of central planning, and a technical guide, examining how Ekistics affected the shaping of reconstruction policies, particularly in the countryside. This analysis further exposes the way the Greek countryside became the locus of competing visions of spatial development, as well as contradictory state responses: from long-term housing policies and self-help practices all the way to ideological repression and population resettlement strategies, British interventionism, and Civil War conflicts that paved the ground to Greece's subsequent US-led recovery programs under the Truman Doctrine (1947) and the Marshal Plan (1948)(1949)(1950)(1951)(1952). By focusing on the paradigmatic case of Greece, this article advances an understanding of European reconstruction as an uneven, contested, and transitional process and highlights the implications of architecture and planning discourses and practices amid ideological, territorial, and geopolitical contestations.

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Section: 'Underground' Ekisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%