Reflecting on Athens’ ‘unfinished’ buildings
The concrete frames of buildings punctuating the urban landscape of Athens is the focus of a year of research by artist and director Maria Lalou and the Danish architect Skafte Aymo-Boot that culminated in the Greek/English book “Unfinished” (Jap Sam Books).
With images, stories and essays, the book recounts the course of these concrete dinosaurs. It is essentially a photographic atlas of buildings that are at first sight abhorrent and unsightly, but which, when organized under an umbrella of cultural geography and anthropological sociology, turn into interesting fields of reflection.
“This book is the culmination of our effort to highlight the undervalued phenomenon of concrete skeletons observed in the Athenian urban landscape, instead of chronicling an unseen history of modern Athens,” say the two researchers.
Working methodically as archaeologists of the city, they mapped and photographed these buildings in all seven geographical districts of Athens to present a very large number of black-and-white photographs but also with a body of narratives illuminating some of the haunting stories of the concrete frames.
