Freddie Phillipson on Dimitris Pikionis

Born in Athens to Greek and British parents, Freddie Phillipson was educated at Cambridge and MIT. As Associate Director of Witherford Watson Mann Architects in London, Freddie was project architect for Astley Castle, winner of the 2013 Stirling Prize. Freddie’s own practice, based in the U.K. and founded in 2018, was selected as one of the Architects’ Journal’s 40 under 40 in 2020 and his work has been published in the Architecture Foundation’s survey of new practices founded in the last ten years, New Architects 4. Alongside practice, Freddie has taught and lectured widely and is currently a Design Fellow at the University of Cambridge. His published articles explore the relations between architectural drawing, design, and topographic thinking – the subject of his forthcoming book on architecture and the city through the work of James Joyce, a project which was exhibited at the Irish Architectural Archive in 2022.

Dimitris Pikionis (1887–1968) remains Greece’s most prominent modern architect, but little known internationally beyond his landscape project for the archaeological site in the heart of Athens, around the ancient Acropolis: a network of paths made of reclaimed and found fragments. Over seven years, across an area of eighty thousand square metres, Pikionis positioned each and every stone. The design has inspired both awe and confusion since its completion more than sixty years ago – indeed, in the century since the completion of his first building, Pikionis has been variously a mythic and a divisive figure whose work unsettles familiar definitions of architectural practice. The so-called weaknesses in Pikionis’s work may have now become its strength: a decentred, dispersed, low-tech architecture of largely unprocessed materials, delicately integrated into each site. Part drawn and part improvised, each of Pikionis’s projects is an experiment in what constitutes a place: how, and how much, can you ever make this?

The lecture will be in English. Wine and snacks from 17:30, lecture starts at 18:00. The event is free of charge, and there is no advance booking of seats.

Time: April 25 at 17:30.
Place: Konstakademien, Fredsgatan 12.

Organizer Stockholms Arkitektförening through Elizabeth B Hatz.