A: Athens, Exarcheia, Tositsa 24, 10683
Article: Nikolaos Mitzalis
Giannis Giannoutsos’ participation in the 8th Biennial for Architecture: Asproklissia in Stratos, prefecture of Aitoloakarnania, Greece
“The necessity for architecture and therefore its very existence is not so much predicated on its material realization—i.e. in its mode of expression—as on the idea it encompasses and of which it becomes an agent. It is associated with architecture’s own idiom, or else, with what it has to say and offer to its recipients and the society for which (or rather, should be) destined. Architecture has always been the sum of a multitude of separate fields (visual, technical, structural, etc.). These have largely constituted temporal or preliminary stages leading to the final result and are not to be identified with architecture itself [...]
This note on Giannis Giannoutsos’ study, whose work I singled out from those of the rest of the participants in this year’s 8th Greek Biennial organised under the auspices of the Η.Ι.Α. (Hellenic Institute of Architecture) aspires to bolster this point of view and at the same time emphasize the fact that interesting architecture is not only to be found in the built structure but also on the sketching pages.
Irrespective of the occasional references to the work of others, Giannoutsos deals through his monistic approach, either consciously or unconsciously, with the singularity of the divine. He reconstitutes the divine through a kind of materiality which overcomes the dichotomy between subject and object, and becomes “pure experience” in Nishidanian terms.
Giannoutsos’ entry seems to perpetuate the architectural neo-rationalistic vocabulary by resynthesizing church building typology with a frash eye. I am in no position to say whether a possible realization of his proposal would validate the complete integration of the site’s “spirit” to the substance of the architecture. It would, nonetheless, allow in no uncertain terms to experience the sublime as a form of aniconic religious awe and architectural representation.
Read more in “ANAZITODAS TO YPSILO [In search of the Sublime, in Greek]”, N. Mitzalis – greekarchitects, N. Mitzalis 2015.