Case Study 1: Lycabettus Pan.Orama

​

1. You have a vast experience in architectural competitions both as a participant (and many times, as a prize winner) and as a jury member. How would you describe these two different roles?

​

They are very different roles. As a member of the jury you have to see what you are looking for, what the organizer is looking for. You eliminate and then you dive deeper and you go into more detail. When you design, it is totally different. You take a brief, you try to understand what the organizer wants but in reality you do what you feel you want. There is a kind of interpretation of the brief and of the site and of the problem and of what they want.  They are two totally different experiences.

​

   2. When designing a project or when evaluating a proposal, what are the qualities you personally opt for the most?

​

In both times I am looking for the same things. Either as a participant or as a jury member I am looking for coherence. I am looking for a concept, for a strong idea, that is coherent though, that it goes through all the faces of the project. And if this is to be constructed I am sensitive also about the constructability. If it is an ideas competition I focus on the strength of the idea.

​

   3. How would you describe the overall architectural work produced in the recent Greek competitions?

​

I can’t really say. I can’t judge. I find the whole issue of competitions to be very important. I think it is the best way to choose what you want. I also think that the success of a competition depends on the brief and the jury. The brief needs to be very clear and having a homogenous jury helps because there are not many different or conflicting ideas. Competitions are judged by people.

​

   4. How would you describe architectural competitions as an institution in Greece? Are you satisfied by how they have been systematized by the 2011 law? Would you like to see anything change in the future?

​

My primary concern is that a lot of competitions are never implemented; this is typical in our country and we don’t even have enough competitions. We do have a lot of ideas competitions that occur just for the sake of it. The second is that the 2011 law does not legally bind competition organizers to implement the project that wins first prize. There have also been occasions where the winners were never remunerated. Architects however, spend a huge amount of energy on competitions and bureaucracy sometimes fails to acknowledge that. I think that those who are responsible for drafting the laws about competitions should consult with people who participate in competitions and have related experience to take into account the reality of competitions. One idea would be to invite the first three prizes to do some alterations before the final selection.

​

  5. We've recently witnessed the undertaking of several public projects at city-scale without holding an architectural competition first. Would you care to share your thoughts on that? 

​

I don’t think that big gestures can solve the complexity of public space: the best jury, with the best architects and the best project are not enough. It's not just an architect’s job to decide what the future of the city centre will be like. We cannot simply impose our reality on city. The city belongs to its people, it touches the lives of everybody and public space is very sensitive and fragile. In such cases I would prefer a trial and error approach: starting with something that is temporary, making re-adjustments and seeing how it works so that we have the time to make amendments should any problem arise. If the trial and error process works then it would be great to have a competition. But we need to know what we want to do first: this would be more practical and would lead to very oriented work. We have to understand the reality first and then make the most fantastic designs.