Paradigmata: Aristide Antonas, Hariklia Hari, Philippos Oraiopoulos, and Zafos Xagoraris

Greece participated in the 9th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition entitled Paradigmata. The installation presents the results of a series of workshops organized during the summer of 2004 in Greece by a team of architects and artists: Aristide Antonas, Hariklia Hari, Philippos Oraiopoulos, and Zafos Xagoraris. The exhibition is on view at the Greek Pavilion in the Giardini, through November 7, 2004. Paradigmata introduces in a free presentation the results of a series of four workshops held throughout July and August 2004 in Athens, Cyprus, Nicosia and other locations throughout Greece. The group of workshop participants included architects, artists, professors, curators, anthropologists, and other specialists, who engaged in theoretical discussion as well as presented architectural and art research and projects. This ongoing discourse took place at various sites (many of which holding cultural and historical significance), including a refugee¹s settlement, a mosque, an artificial lake, the Nicosia Airport, and an observation tower in Cyprus.

The project team for Paradigmata have adopted the modern and ancient meanings of the word Œparadigm¹ to illustrate the thematic gathering, comparison, and distribution of people, data, hypotheses, interpretations, texts, plans and strategies leading up to and taking place during the 9th International Architecture Exhibition. In an attempt to provide an oral aspect of architecture, the paradigms embody transitional spaces of contemporary architectural thought and practice, diffusing the written into the verbal, the built into the unbuilt. These paradigms will culminate at the Greek Pavilion in Venice where they will be distributed freely in printed form, and presented alongside other more tangible forms of theoretical discourse.