Urban housing changes to suit new iconoclasts
A new type of home is appearing in the city, for the new breed of young city dweller whose life is continually on the move and every aspect of which is interlinked – work, play, romance, family, technology and sports. These new homes are lofts in what were formerly working-class districts of the inner city, where a large number of artists and other creative types are concentrated, but also old apartments in lower-middle-class apartment buildings where the room layout typical of a bygone age is being demolished and the apartments refurbished in line with the new urban ethos. Irrespective of one’s point of view as to this new style of living, it is an indication of a reality that reflects new social structures, which at the beginning of the 21st century make Western societies from just 20 years ago seem more like an urban stone age. New culture In Greece this new and international urban culture is beginning to assume a distinct character. It is more mobile and open to experimentation, more open and tolerant. It rejects the old class structures based on socioeconomic factors and has redrawn the dividing lines on the basis of independent creativity, work ethic and innovation. This new culture, which is growing every year, is directly linked to the open markets and is bringing daily life into a continuum that is fluid and flexible. Personal daily routines that are organized according to changing social relations, in which many single people are setting up house on their own (young people leaving the family home, the elderly living alone, the divorced or single), and creating a new social map. In these societies (for we can no longer talk about a single society that represents values common to all), the traditional family unit is losing ground, a phenomenon that has been observed in developing societies for years. Today’s society looks something like this: smaller families, mixed-race couples, iconoclastic lifestyles. And if they are not yet the rule in Athens or Thessaloniki, they are in nearly all the major cities in the West. Sooner or later, Greece will be seeing these silent revolutions within its own borders. The new is always stronger than the old. All this mobility is beginning to demand, with growing clarity, representation in the urban landscape, in the way urban life is organized, in the way the city functions. The young city dwellers are nothing like the old bourgeois and no longer believe that they are the backbone of the nation as their predecessors did; they cannot predict where they will be 10 years from now. They are the moving force not only for new social trends but for the economy. Their prosperity is feeding an environment based on technology, talent and social tolerance. It is an environment where the interpretive tools used by the generation immediately preceding them seem like children’s toys. The question is how this new lifestyle is to be accommodated in the old apartments of Greek cities. Hundreds of thousands of apartments were built during the second half of the 20th century, but a typical apartment from the 1960s has a hall, a living room, a dining room, usually just one bathroom, a kitchen looking on to a dark «light well,» and bedrooms where the power outlets are placed with no regard for the needs of today’s teenagers. Verandas provide no real privacy and common areas are grubby and gloomy. If these apartments are to continue to be viable, they have to change. For the new city dwellers to feel as if they are a part of their city, they have to be able to find a home for the life they want to live. Already thousands of new owners of these apartments are knocking down walls. A young couple cannot fit their modern furniture into a 100-square-meter space divided up into small rooms, nor organize technological equipment in a space that discourages innovation. Many new homes in developed countries are left empty of interior walls, leaving an empty outer shell and basic facilities in the interior, according to architect Panos Dragonas. «The user determines the interior layout using lightweight elements that will be easy to move in future,» he explained. It is that fluidity, the right to organize one’s daily life at will, which is largely determined by the social climate and the market. The work ethic is linked to the way the family is organized, and the hunt for talent does not care about a person’s race or sexual orientation. These days Athens still gives the impression of a city where the past prevails. Large sectors of the population understandably still live in the past century, where they feel safe and satisfied. However, it is only a matter of time before the new urban class emerges, one that is already moving behind the walls of the city’s older buildings. «A very different society is secretly organizing, perhaps without realizing it, a continually changing interior habitat behind unchanging facades,» said architect Nikolas Travasaros. «Our image is beginning to be changed by the sum of those many interiors that correspond to different life stories, fears, inspirations and concerns. Still, this change is not easily recognizable from the outside.» The new distribution of roles in society, the family, at work, the rejection of old structures and an inflexible hierarchy appear to be opening the way to greater extroversion. The new century has already conquered the city.
