Suzana Antonakaki: A ‘Peripheral’ Female Voice in Modern Architecture
A talk by Stelios Giamarelos
Thursday 14th November 2024, 1900hrs
At the Hellenic Centre, London W1U 5AS
Presented in collaboration with the Hellenic Centre, London
Re-centring overlooked women in the history of modern architecture has reinvigorated debates in the field. But most of these recent studies focus on female practitioners who worked in the Western European and North American ‘centres’ of modern architecture. As a result, women architects from the ‘peripheries’ seem to now be twice marginalised in the history of modern architecture.
This talk focuses on one of the alleged ‘peripheral’ women architects, Suzana Antonakaki (1935-2020). Similarly to several of her female peers worldwide, Antonakaki’s work developed in the context of the collaborative practice Atelier 66. When the projects of this practice were globally heralded as flagship projects of critical regionalism by Alexander Tzonis & Liane Lefaivre and Kenneth Frampton in the 1980s, they were customarily associated with the work of Dimitris Pikionis, Aris Konstantinidis, Le Corbusier and Aldo van Eyck. In this context, Antonakaki’s distinctive thinking around architecture, including her wide-ranging references to philosophy, poetry and literature, has been overshadowed. Through her public talks and lectures, Antonakaki’s sophisticated approach to modern architecture emerges as a unique female voice that contributes and further expands the discourse of critical regionalism in architecture.
Suzana Antonakaki (1935 – 2020) was a Greek architect. She studied at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens. She and her husband, Dimitris Antonakakis, along with Eleni Gousi-Desylla, founded Atelier 66, in 1965 in Athens, often associated with the architectural movement called “critical regionalism”. She was a member of the French Academy of Architecture (Academie d ‘Architecture) and the National Secretariat of the UIA. Antonakaki was invited by Herman Hertzberger to teach at the 1987 International Design Seminar of TU Delft’s School of Architecture and at the University of Split in 1988.
Dr. Stylianos (Stelios) Giamarelos is Associate Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture, with a decade-long career in architectural publishing and a multi-disciplinary background in architecture engineering, architectural history and theory, and history and philosophy of science and technology. He is the author of Resisting Postmodern Architecture: Critical Regionalism before Globalisation (London: UCL Press, 2022; A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books’ ‘Favourite Book of 2023’) and the editor of Suzana Antonakaki, Architectural Poetics: Texts 1959-2019 (Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2023; Hartis magazine ‘Essay Award 2023’). He currently serves as the ‘Architecture’ series editor for Crete University Press. In 2008, he co-curated ATHENS by SOUND, the National Participation of Greece in the 11th Biennale of Architecture in Venice.