Architecture

Athens seems dominated by the apartment block.  These are 4-7 stories high and what you see is usually the balconies that seem to circle the buildings.  The bottom floor is normally obscured at street level through either a fence or thick foliage.  It is a weird contradiction:  you can hear all conversations, since normally in summer people more-or-less live on the balcony, but you can't see even the front yard.  So people are living in public and literally on top of each other, and they don't mind being heard, but don't want to be seen.  In some places there are yards, often with fruit trees, but they are very hidden enclosures.  In other places the ground is used for parking.  People don't seem to like living on the ground floor (probably the breezes are better higher up, it is less noisy, and safer since people leave windows open). 

Wrap around balconies

 Interestingly, there ARE some one or two story private homes in my neighborhood, with gardens or perhaps a deck in place of the balcony.  To me, an outsider, it looks like people are recreating the village life, with a garden for every house, but in the city they have instead a balcony in which they recreate the garden living.  It also seems to have echoes of the idea of propriety from the Turkish era, when women were able to see out a second story screened window, but they were unable to be seen from the street.

A Turkish era formal meeting room in Kozani, up in the north where wood was still plentiful.  Low couches and cushions for sitting, lots of rugs, and windows to peek out of.

The balconies may have been less common in mainland Greece, but with all the Asia Minor refugees in the 1920s, maybe it made cultural sense.

Most of what you see is balcony, and the yard is fenced.

The hedge obscures the street level, and the balconies often are so full of foliage they are hidden from view as well.

Not at all a welcoming entrance.

Don't park here, but don't come in, either.

Often no one lives on the ground floor.  It is used for parking.

Or it is just empty.

Single family house.  A deck, but no balconies.

Another one, this has a garden, but no balconies.

A friend told me that the single family houses are probably post-war and through the 60s, and that the tall apartment blocks were likely from the 1970s.  In my neighborhood, I see 1-2 single family houses per block, with many apartment blocks in between.

Inside, there are some differences as well.  I went apartment-hunting with a friend last year and saw a few houses, all of which had built in cupboards and drawers like my apartment has.

This is the wall of my bedroom which is entirely lined floor to ceiling with a variety of hanging spaces, drawers and shelves.  There is no closet, but this it is the functional equivalent of "California Closets" or other organizational methods.  Most of the houses I saw with my friend had something like this.  It is very efficient in several ways.  It uses space more efficiently and neatly than any combination of wardrobe/closet/bureau would and it isn't furniture so it never has to be moved.  Seeing these so prevalent I first began to wonder why this architectural feature was so common in Greece.  Why don't they use furniture, like we do?  I thought that perhaps because Greeks move less often, and a family often builds a house (or adds a floor) for their adult children, people build their houses exactly as they like and don't intend to move, so why not use built-ins instead of furniture? I thought also that because buildings are in 4-5 story apartments, it is perhaps too hard to use the tiny (6-8 person) elevators to move furniture and that many stairs is too much.  I also thought about traditional Greek houses (through the 1960s, according to the first ethnography of Greece, Vasilika) which had very little furniture, but used ledges and niches to hold items.

My third summer here, in this same apartment, I realized that it is actually more sensible than our use of furniture, so I turned the question around... why do we NOT build in storage to our houses?  We do in kitchens, but not in any other room. Why?  No idea.  I thought perhaps because we don't plan to live in one house, we don't invest as much in what we can't take with us.  Perhaps that is it, though it sure is nice to move into a house and NOT have to fit furniture bought for another house into the new one.  And the multiple bureaus and wardrobes I have in my bedroom are a pretty inefficient use of space.  They take up parts of every wall and provide less space than this neat arrangement.  I think we are the crazy ones in this comparison.

For the record, here are some other pictures of our lovely, light- and air- filled, space-efficient apartment.

Hallway between the bedrooms.  The light is coming from the door to the front balcony.  Air can move through both bedrooms from the balcony in the kids' room to the big window in our room. The two doors on the right are the two bathrooms.

The living room. It looks dark because o the light coming from the front balcony.  I love the tile floors which are easy to clean and cooling in summer.

The kitchen.  Small but it works.  The door leads to the small back balcony between the bedroom and the kitchen. Phil loves to have his coffee out there watching the view over the Olympic Stadium and the city in the early mornings.

This is my fridge.  Very small for 5 people, but not if you shop daily, which also means fresher food and less waste.