2 Greek utopias of the 70’s

The construction presented by the Errands group at the 2nd Athens Biennial exhibits special interest by revealing a side of the Greek architecture of the 70s that is connected to futurism. The dwelling with a shape resembling a flying disc, made with fiberglass, was designed by the architect Nikolaos Xasteros and was patented in September 1969 for ALTA company who he was in cooperation with, and later on in 1973 in his name. Xasteros who studied in Beaux Arts Architecture in Paris, came back to Greece and begun to design a version of prefabricated and modular houses, very light in weight, from a novel - at that time - material, that could be set anywhere in the rural, setting the grounds at the same time for an autonomous break beyond the boundaries of the city life.
Setting up a production unit on his own, Xasteros started the fiberglass house production in Komotini City, and following the widespread interest from prospective buyers, he prepared the opening of his first exhibition in 1978. The whole plan failed when, in the same morning as the opening, a law was voted that prevented the building of prefabricated houses in lots with area less than 4000 sq. m. The futurist dwellings that finally made it out of the factory were no more than ten. To this day, the Greek equivalent of Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Dymaxion House’ (USA) and Matti Suuronen’s ‘futuro’ (Finland) has its own story to tell through numerous fiberglass dwellings that are still standing in different spots in Greece.
Errands found one of Xasteros’ futurist houses in the area of Loutraki and started a research with the aim of revealing their history.
Almost the same period when Xasteros dreamed of an autonomous lifestyle in those dwellings, another utopist Vasilis Tsironis proclaimed his flat in the area of Flisvos as an autonomous free state. On July, 11, 1978 the police entered and destroyed the flat, thus overthrowing its autonomous character and forcing Tsironis to suicide.
Bringing together these two facts in Faliro, in the occasion of the Biennial, Errands transferred Xasteros’s futurist house from Loutraki to the seaside of Faliro and talked about Tsironis’s issue in the micro-conference that the group Ykon organised next to the house, on the subject of the ‘micronations’. In the conference where Ykon lectured about issues of previous micro-conferences, alongside Tsironis’s case, the NSK group presented the creation of their own envisioned free state which was created in 1992.



Proposal for the use of Xasteros fiberglass dwelling as a creative space

Errands hope to uncover the contributions of Xasteros’s fiberglass houses to a wider architectural genre connected to the development of technology, mobility and mass production along with Backmister Fuller and Matti Suuronen. Equally important aspects highlighted are the ideological leanings towards the worldwide construction of such dwellings, which are related to architectural positions towards resolving housing issues. Xasteros’s architectural construction, incorporating the futurist paradigm in Greek architecture, can also be considered a pioneering endeavor.
Errands, made up by architects, artists and sociologists, proposes the use of the fiberglass dwelling, now located in Faliro for the 2nd Athens Biennial by the group, as a creative space where various artistic and architectural projects, events, lectures, workshops could take place, in regular intervals.
The construction can be seen as a shell on which the invited artists, architects etc can make an intervention connected to it for a specified amount of time agreed by the artist and curators of the project. The aim of this proposal is to manage to preserve the futurist construction of the 70’s and develop new ideas around it.