A Lesson in Continuity; What the Arhontika of Pelion Can Tell Us.

Who can argue against honouring and preserving traditional architecture? It speaks to us of a profound sense of fit. It resonates with the culture that formed it, it extends into the local environment, seems to grow out from it. Sometimes the buildings appear almost human. It is beauty in the world we have inherited and must pass on to our children. What we can argue about is the ugliness that is built around us now, something we are so blinded by that we dont acknowledge. Most of what we build is commercial product, repetitive boxes that sometimes offer a theatrical stage for the presentation of a life style. If we fell guilty about this we can disguise these built boxes with traditional features, design elements from the buildings we love, copied in new material and used as decoration to cover the emptiness. In turning beauty into a decorative feature something is lost in translation. We dont take that beauty seriously because the hubris and conceit of modernism, aided by the servant technology leads us to believe that the past has nothing to teach us. So we continue to build blind. With attached features.

I would like to offer the humble suggestion that we still have a lot to learn from traditional architecture. Not that we need to build authentic replicas for no matter how severe our nostalgia we cant go back to live in the past. What I suggest is that its not the built form we should look to, but to the way these buildings were conceived and designed. Here we may find a lesson in continuity. To help us move on from the ugly. Although I recognize they are only part of the extensive traditional settlements of Pelion, I would like to focus on the arhontika. As well as exhibiting an achievement of superb quality and refined detail, they are spectacular, major works of architecture on par with the worlds best. Due to circumstances of culture and location most other traditional architectures in Greece are less complex, less refined. The archontika are not isolated phenomena, particular to Pelion alone. On the contrary they are a local manifestation of historical Balkan building practices that go back many centuries. Byzantine as well as Ottoman influence can easily be read. What we find throughout all of the area from southern Albania, through Macedonia, Bulgaria, northern Greece and western Turkey is that while every house is different, every house shares similar features, or more precisely, qualities. Built over many centuries for different cultural pluralities, different ecumenical

communities, radically different settings, both for the rich and the less rich, over thousands of kilometres each building exhibits a profound sense of fit, and a family resemblance. Most noteworthy in Pelion are the buildings from the classical period, defined by G. Kizis as being from 1750 to 1850. Using as an example the Kiriakopoulos house in Visitsa built for the Papanastasiou family in 1790, we can bear witness to the marvel of these buildings: The massive stone walls with their intermittent wood reinforcement. The clever wooden structure for the upper floors. The cantilevers, their tips carved and relieved. The supporting brackets reaching out. Tiny openings on the lower floors. Wide windows above with multiple shuttering. Coloured glass fanlights above, each design different. A forty-ton roof, yet with eaves that come to a fine edge. Dressed stone doorways inscribed with dates, family names, or traditional symbols. Delicate rails and stairways. Raised areas to demark special places like the sachnisi. Wall cabinets, storage and multi-panelled doors each fitted together without nails. Filigree and lightly painted motifs around the walls. A shelf, like an inner horizon, that runs around the upper spaces. Let me restate; I am not saying this is what we should be building today, but to underline that it will be worth our efforts if we could discover how this beauty and

complexity was made. Can we lean something for our modern world that is fast become more diverse, more plural, yet more mired in ugliness? We do know that it was members of the builders guild, the isnaf, who created these buildings. Descending in the spring from builders villages like Zoupani (now Pentalofo), teams of about a dozen men would travel to Pelion and beyond to build throughout the summer months. Did they have drawings and plans? Did they have planning rules and regulations? Did they use models? It seems not, only a written contract listing the rooms, the number of fireplaces and specially constructed doors. Were looking at what came from a different kind of design process. How was this done, and not only in Pelion but throughout the whole region? Let me suggest that such quality such diversity could not have been created by a restrictive design process like what we have today, but only by using a generative design process. What does that mean? The master builder(s) when faced with a new project would have held in the minds eye a loose vision of what was a valid and authentic house. If he were to build something unique, something off the wall, such as a Zaha Hadid curved roof, this would be invalid. I call what he held in his minds eye an iconic house And how was this shaped in his mind? By the coming together of a number of central

qualities in a loose but generative way. These central qualities I suggest were not formal features, rather they were a collection of intentions with regard to built form reality. They were not about measured repetitions, nor were they geometric rules of adjacency, like the language of neo-classicism that came later. Let me summarize eight of the central qualities so you can get an idea of what the builders generative design process might have been like. 1. The Seasonal House People migrated within the house according to the seasons. There were winter rooms to retain the heat, open rooms for work and summer. People lived in these houses in harmony with nature and the seasons. Contrast this to modern houses where every day uses are the same throughout the year 2. Strong Back / Open Front Whether on a hillside or facing into a courtyard each house had a strong protected back and an open front? We must see this as anthropomorphic, a family totem. 3. Mass and Fine Detail The buildings exhibit extremes of mass as well as fine detail. This is more than structural necessity, details as fine as a fingernail co-exist beside massive stone lintels and wall thickness. It was about

pushing contrast, exhibiting the skill of the particular builder. 4. Ascending Lightness There is a defined vertical dimension to the light within each building. Beginning at the base in almost total darkness, one proceeds up through floors towards a lightness of the precariously bright upper rooms. One might speculate whether this ascent towards light has some spiritual significance. 5. Floating Roof The roof is made to float over the building, almost as if it is detached from the walls. The structure, holding what may well be forty tons, is made visible. Protection from the rain and snow, (from the gods?) An echo of a tent? A head? 6. Balanced Centre Avoiding symmetry, the life of the house comes from a careful balance not from fixed geometric rules. Memory of the central space travels with you as you ascend through the buildings; but its a loose balance, stairs to the side, doors at an angle, an abovedoor shelf running around the upper rooms tying the whole together. The tentative balance is felt, not seen. 7. Struggle to Square The irregularity seen in most house plans may lead one to doubt the ability of the

builders. I suspect they were more than able to make rectangular rooms in an exact manner. Rather they chose to allow the sloped wall, the slightly angled wall, the cantilevered bays to be a off square realizing this would set up a tension, impart more life to the rooms and building. Rectangularity was to be sought, but not made exact. This set up a dialogue. 8. Special Room The literal high points of each house were the special rooms, the Kalos Ondas and the Sachnisi. For guests and special family gatherings these were the head of the house. Other rooms from the lower entrance up through the body of the house all led to this crowning experience. Their location was half in, half outside - precarious. A distant echo of a Persian palace? Probably, for the word sachnisi descends from the Persian meaning the room of the Shah. A Sufi connection, half way between this world and another? Possibly. . If you have been envisioning these eight qualities one by one as Ive been describing them then you have probably built up in your minds eye a valid and authentic Pilioritiko arhontika. And if you were to draw it out, then compare it to that of the person sitting next to you it would be different, yes, but of the same family. This is what I mean by a generative design process. Is this the lesson these archontika

want to whisper to us? About a design process that could lead us both to coherency and diversity - and away from ugliness?