An architect’s thoughts
When something you design at the age of 28 doesn’t get built until you are 54, you think over what has happened in the intervening quarter of a century. In the field of regulations, Greece acquired a law for the protection of buildings from fire in 1988 and building construction regulations in 1989. But similar regulations were already in existence in developed countries, based on the same scientific data, and we had already applied them in the building’s architectural makeup. Technology for electrical and mechanical installations: These have undergone significant changes in the kind of services installed in buildings, with regard to computer systems and technology friendly to the environment and humans. But we designed this building according to the British loose-fit approach so that it could allow the unhindered installation of any kind of networks. Hence new electrical-mechanical installations could be incorporated into the building without further changes. With respect to design, we applied the principles of modernism that we had been taught at the National Technical University’s School of Architecture, from which we graduated in 1973. Then postmodernism was born and the worst version of it was used in Greece, where the humor was replaced by pomposity and its inferiority was apparent, since classical themes were placed right next to the real Parthenon. But the building refused to be born in the days of postmodernism and was a 309-month baby, now that postmodernism has gone down in the history of architecture as a passing movement that could not alter the natural evolution of modernism.
