Publicação
An American ‘Parthenon’. Walter Gropius’s Athens US Embassy Building between Regionalism, International Style and National Identities
| dc.contributor.author | PEGIOUDIS, Nikos | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2018-10-30T11:02:54Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2018-10-30T11:02:54Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-10-25 | |
| dc.description | I wish to thank Prof. Emeritus Eleni Fessa-Emmanouil for letting me consult the part of Pericles Sakellarios’s archive that she has conserved. | pt_PT |
| dc.description.abstract | In 1954 the United States, embarked on an embassy-building program that sought to represent its expansive foreign policy by means of a bold embrace of modernist architecture. For this purpose, the Foreign Buildings Office issued a set of new guidelines asking architects to present designs for buildings that would be modern, open to the local traditions of the host country and American at the same time. Walter Gropius’s The Architects Collaborative was among the architectural firms that managed to obtain such a commission for the US embassy in Athens, Greece. The designs were officially presented in 1957 (the building was inaugurated in 1961) and were supposed to achieve a balance between a regionalist sensitivity, a dedication to the principles of Modern architecture and the United States’ national claims. Gropius predictably underlined Parthenon as the source of his inspiration and resorted to an extensive use of ‘classical’ Greek marble which was combined with standard modernist techniques and materials. But how could an International Style stand at the same time as national and open to regionalist loans from the Greek classical and vernacular tradition? This paper examines the Athens embassy building as a watered-down intersection between regionalism and modern architecture, a kind of populist modernism which prefigured or were typical of a crisis of both regionalism and modernism. The regionalist/classical connotations of the building are framed in a postcolonial context which casts a new light on this controversial attempt towards a new type of International Style. | pt_PT |
| dc.description.version | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion | pt_PT |
| dc.identifier.citation | PEGIOUDIS, Nikos – An American ‘Parthenon’. Walter Gropius’s Athens US Embassy Building between Regionalism, International Style and National Identities in REGIONALISM, NATIONALISM & MODERN ARCHITECTURE. Proceedings. Porto: CEAA, 2018, p. 317-329 | pt_PT |
| dc.identifier.isbn | 978-972-8784-82-9 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/24598 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | pt_PT |
| dc.peerreviewed | yes | pt_PT |
| dc.publisher | CEAA/ESAP-CESAP | pt_PT |
| dc.relation.publisherversion | http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/24574 | pt_PT |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Gropius | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | International Style | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Modernism | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Regionalism | pt_PT |
| dc.subject | Colonialism | pt_PT |
| dc.title | An American ‘Parthenon’. Walter Gropius’s Athens US Embassy Building between Regionalism, International Style and National Identities | pt_PT |
| dc.type | conference object | |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication | |
| oaire.citation.conferencePlace | Porto | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.endPage | 329 | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.issue | 1 | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.startPage | 317 | pt_PT |
| oaire.citation.title | REGIONALISM, NATIONALISM & MODERN ARCHITECTURE | pt_PT |
| rcaap.rights | openAccess | pt_PT |
| rcaap.type | conferenceObject | pt_PT |