Refugee blocks of flats

What I can see

The 8 blocks of flats for refugees on Alexandras Avenue consist of a ground floor and two upper floors, have a total area of ​​12,000 sq.m., accommodate 288 apartments, and have large open spaces between them. This is one of the most obvious examples of abandonment. The buildings are developed alongside Alexandras Avenue and consist of coated stoneworks and slabs of reinforced concrete. Their basic characteristics are their small balconies, full parapets, dense housing in a few square metres, and their functionality, which show a clear modernist tendency to Bauhaus and the Central European folk housing. Even the holes from December 1944’s bullets (Greek Civil War) are obvious.

What I can't see

The Greek refugees of Asia Minor lived here in 1936. Previously, refugee residences were tents, some of which had evolved into small houses with courtyards and many plants. However, at the time of the interwar period, approximately 5,000 refugee houses were built per year in various areas of the city and later in other cities in Greece. The enormous number of refugees in the country (over one million) in a very short time and in a hostile environment, had made the need for “quantity” in housing imperative. For this reason, the “standardization” of buildings and their functional “economy” was intended to serve as many as possible in a critical period of refugee flows. Each building has 4 or 5 sections and a stairway at the centre. Due to the fact that the apartments are quite small, the refugees closed the balconies and built new spaces to gain space. To date, there is a continuing threat of demolition and their retention is precarious, despite frequent announcements of regeneration, which will include green restoration as well.

Info

• Address: 165-169 Alexandras Av.

Bibliography