Case Study 1: Lycabettus Pan.Orama

What was it that motivated you to participate in the Lycabettus competition?

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It was the site itself. The parking area of Lycabettus hill is an extremely important site for Athens as well as the theater of Takis Zenetos. Another reason was that the competition was developed by a semi-public organization (Athens Anaplasis SA), which at that time, was led by NTUA Professor Nikos Bellavilas. Athens Anaplasis  brought to light some very critical issues in both Athens and Piraeus and prepared and organised multiple competitions.  

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Your team has participated in landscape design and architectural competitions before. What are the risks of taking part in a competition?

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We are not only doing competitions of landscape design. We are also doing competitions about public or publicly owned or publicly funded buildings and concept designs that we consider essential for the life of the city and various neighborhoods. We have entered competitions for schools, public equipments and housing units, not just in Greece, but in places around  the world. What is important for us is that the brief addresses a relevant social problem or demand and could therefore have a positive impact. The risk is that you might not win. You work for weeks or months and eventually you don’t see your project being acknowledged or materialized. But that is a risk that we are happy to take.

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How many people worked on Lycabettus project and for how long?

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In its current form, Fatura Collaborative consists of five people, and we work in equal terms, with whoever is part of the cooperative itself at any given moment. A total of nine people were involved in this project and we worked for about two and a half months.

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Would you care to comment on the organization on Lycabettus Competition and the brief? Did the contents of the competition folder help you?

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We think the organization and the brief itself were exceptionally good and extremely well-made. The folder that was shared with all participants was an incredibly thorough piece of work, which was also easy to navigate as well. It consisted of dozens of layers of information and detailed documentation of the site -both in 2d and 3d- aerial photographs, drawings, images and other footage. It included all regulatory planning, guidelines and legal provisions for the design work. It also included the results of a recent academic research project led by the School of Architecture and the Planning & Environmental Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). This extensive research report acted as complementary to the brief and to the content of the competition itself.

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In your opinion, does the decision of the jury follow the requirements of the organizer?

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We think it’s inappropriate for us to comment on the jury decision.

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Were there delays in the whole procedure?

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Yes, but that was not the jury's fault. We should also acknowledge that the pandemic occurred just after we submitted our work (mid- December). However, the jury proceedings' files show that the jury had made its decision rather quickly, but the ETAD administration council, who was responsible for the competition took almost two months to confirm the jury final selection. There were also some objections to the results that needed to be addressed prior to officially announcing the winners. In any case, this process lasted about five months and we haven't been paid yet.

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In architectural competitions time is limited. In Lycabettus competition, was the time enough for you to prepare your proposal?

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We would say yes. We don’t think that the time allocated for this competition was more limited compared to other competitions, but managing time is something that you learn by doing and although our studio is relatively new, we have done more than ten competitions already and we are accustomed to working with strict deadlines. The fact that competitions are broadly communicated today and that we get to learn about a new competition very early in the process, gives us more time to organize. In this sense, we think that we had enough time.

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In your opinion, are there any problems in the existing legal framework of architectural competitions? How could they be rectified?

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What worries us is that public authorities at various levels of the state apparatus use loopholes in the existing legislation and make de-facto decisions to avoid competitions. There is a decades long history about these alternatives to the open design competitions (and the anonymous open detail design competitions); there is also a long history of big firms undermining the competition processes in order to get direct commissions. This is disastrous for young practices like ours. So the issue here is ensuring that the regulatory framework is succinct and applied with no exceptions.

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On the other hand, the submission requirements for those competitions that do take place  are now easier to cope with. Architectural competitions used to be time consuming, demanding and very expensive to sustain. Members of Fatura collaborative had participated in the Ioannina City Hall competition back in 2006 and weI  remember that we had to submit no less than ten (!) A0 panels and a model in scale 1/200 in vey limited amount of time. Considering the size and the volume of the work, one can imagine that it was extremely expensive to produce; the labour invested on these submissions could by no means be justified.  Moreover, to print and even to send all of our work by mail was also very expensive, if not prohibiting. Nowadays, only four or five panels are required, there is usually no model and the booklets are smaller. In this regard, the current framework is better; and we can further reduce the required elements in the future down to a few A3 panels, and of course, digital submissions. The question is how we can do better with less.  

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Is there anything that bothers you in the Greek competition culture?

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We are puzzled by the authorities' disregard to their obligation to see the first prize proposals through to their completion. We are also awed by the lack of public discussion; organizers have abandoned their obligation to present the competition results and celebrate the process.  Thus, the results are only published and criticized in blogs of individuals who belong to what we could call ‘the elderly aristocracy’ of our discipline. These are the same people who have access to power centers and who take an interest at influencing decision making. They undermine the competition results' implementation and the overall Greek competition culture as well as their colleagues.

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What is happening right now in downtown Athens is an example of these sad phenomena: despite the Rethink Athens competition, the research made back then by many important faculty members of NTUA and the fact that there was a winner  the project was halted. Then, Athens Anaplasis SA developed another competition, which followed similar research problematics. And now, a few years later, instead of commissioning the work to the first prize winners, authorities are still trying to exhaust all possible loopholes and to promote other alternatives. We believe that it is crucial that we learn to defend the first prize; we may not like it because we have designed something else or we might like it because we believe that someone else did it better than us. But if we do not defend it, what we will end up with are the toxic paints and processes of the Long Walk of Athens.