A: Greek in a European Context : Athens, the City - Capital in the 19Th Century

The aim of this course is to familiarize its students with the architectural culture of 19th-century Athens and its particularities through an account of its history with a special focus on a series of carefully selected and documented case-studies. Furthermore, its purpose is to cultivate student perception of 19th-century Athenian architecture as a field of contrasting forces, that is, on the one hand of sovereign state power drawn by nationalistic ideology and on the other hand of the constituents of place, site, climate, economics, and the acting agents of construction. The counter-example of western European architecture is taken into consideration and by way of comparison it informs a more critical perception of native phenomena and their innate antinomies.