Takis Zenetos: A Modern Greek Architect, part II - The Circular School

The second most famous work of Takis Zenetos in Greece is this secondary school building in Agios Dimitrios, in Athens. It was built between 1970 - 1976, which means that it had to overcome the military junta conservatism.

This building constitutes an experimental but utopian creation . The users'€™ (Greek Ministry of Education) failure to take advantage of the building'€™s  potential (using it as if it was the typical box school building so commonly found throughout Greece), has made it a symbol of the chasm between the reality of the large state school buildings in Greece and the better future for them envisioned by the architect when he designed it.
Zenetos'€™s building houses a junior high school for 1500 pupils in an innovative circular structure. It has three floors. The plan of each floor includes three  standardised modules of 160 pupils each, with four classrooms per module. All of them could be converted into a single huge hall. These modules were placed around a central core where audio-visual aids would be situated. Directly in contact with the core were the teacher's facilities.

This unusual configuration (and extremely advanced for Greece even in this day and age) was selected by Zenetos for reasons of economy in the building and flexibility in its future use.
The succession of louvred roofs surrounding the southern semi-circle of the three floors is stylistically decisive, with a width that fluctuates according to the orientation, thus providing effective protection to the interior without wasting material. The mainly used materials here are concrete and metal.

         

Fortunately for all, the renovation of the building started by the Greek Organisation for School Buildings in 2000, undertaken by the architectural office Archsign. It aimed at the re-establishment of the role that the building should have as the architect designed it. The electronic library, Zenetos had designed and was not constructed, is added. Let us hope that the few surviving Zenetos' buildings will have the same luck.

Comments

[Dr. George Kostopoulos]

I need to contact Mr. Takis Zanetos regarding the design of a School.

Please ask him to send me an email at george@kostopoulos.us

Thank you.

Dr. George Kostopoulos

[Zaharias]

Man...Your post made me smile even if I read it a year later.Thanks for posting Zenetos' work.This means our minds are more wide opened than it used to be.Architects please stop jerking and start STUDYING you fools...I'm talking about the greek-post modern-narrow minded ones.Bye-bye kiss./R.I.P Taki.

[S. Pantazopoulos]

to Dr. Kostopoulos: I'm afraid you will wait a long time for an email from Mr. Zenetos as he passed away over 30 years ago...

[Zaharias Kowalski]

WAKE-UP.

Finally I visited the school after the renovation-reconstruction...
Unfortunately it's not even close to what it should have been!From the inside it's a TOTAL WRECK and the kids seem to don't care about the building,writing silly comments all over the building and destroying every single piece of it...
The school stuff doesn't give a damn about thε situation.It's very sad to realize that even today we still are not capable of doing important things to improve our history in modern architecture.
Taki,this country is still not ready for a mind like yours.

[Stratos Bacalis]

Dear Mr. Kowalski

First of all bear in mind that Mr. Zenetos is not with us anymore, he passed away decades ago. And yes, unfortunately, the general state of school buildings in Greece is not what it should be.

Take care

Stratos