farasi.zine
issue 04 / Winter 2025
Guest editor: Michaeljohn Raftopoulos
Drawings, text and graphic design: Michaeljohn Raftopoulos
farasi.zine #4 is part of the author's ongoing research into improvised building practices in Greece. What criteria can we use to evaluate the built environment and its living conditions in the absence of eponymous architecture? What can architects gain from looking at the residential environment that is produced in such settings? In the current issue, titled, "Salamina Itinerary", these questions come into play by means of peripatetic observation, text and drawings, which function not only as descriptive tools but as means to "perform" a method of understanding.
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Michaeljohn Raftopoulos(Athens, 1978) is an architect, with a Bachelor degree in the History of Art from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He is co-founder of the architecture office AREA (Architecture Research Athens), together with Styliani Daouti and Giorgos Mitroulias. His built work in Greece is supplemented by numerous awards in Greek and international competitions, such as the AthensX4 Competition in 2010 (1st Prize) and the European urban design competition Europan in 2013, in Germany, and 2015, in Portugal. His research has featured in international exhibitions, such as “Made in Athens” at the Greek Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2012), “Adhocracy Athens” (2015), and “Tomorrows: Urban Fictions for Possible Futures” in Nantes (2019). AREA’s architectural projects were among the Greek nominations for the Europan Mies van der Rohe Awards of 2017 and 2021. In 2022, AREA was shortlisted for the Architectural Review Emerging Awards (UK), among 16 creative offices worldwide, and AREA has also received the Record Houses Award (USA), the AR House Award (UK) and DOMa awards (GR). M. Raftopoulos has taught architectural design in undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of Thessaly, the University of Patras and the University of Thessaloniki Departments of Architecture, and at the CEU Cardenal Herrera University in Valencia (ES).