Totems

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‘Totems’ consists of 3 vertical lists of things;

material samples that were used in the recently built Petralona House. Most of the elements were self-made, collected in markets or islands, donated or sponsored by shops and companies. This method provided the architecture with an alternative modus operandi that overcame the limitations of building during the financial crisis and informed the design.

The samples range from artificial and market-produced to natural and handmade; they are new or reclaimed, original or copies, Greek or imported, traditional or provocative, valuable or insignificant, designed or accidental, whole or modular, and are processed in ways both traditional and experimental. They make formally defined figures, treated as equal whether they are decorative or structural, interior or exterior and regardless of their scale or value; a marble statue is sitting across a plastic pot, together with a hose, a stone, poured concrete, antique tiles, a plug, a piece of graffiti, a bronze handrail.

Each of these abstracted objects corresponds to precise pieces of the world. The relationships between the elements and the design of the house are dense and systematic, uncanny but familiar. The three totems vaguely correspond to three areas; exterior, ground, top. Together they form an alternative representation of the house.