Greece, Unfinished Buildings; Antiparochi; αντιπαροχή. Conservation Attempts

I'm surprised the photographer Patrick van Dam finds these unfinished, abandoned buildings and concrete skeletons beautiful or spectacular (CNN World).

I'm equally surprised to read that he considers it a recent phenonemon related to the financial crisis of the last few years. Many structures have been standing there, scarring the countryside for a decade or three. Sadly the number has increased very significantly.

Thanks to June Samaras for the link.

It was back in the early eighties that the consequences of  another Greek phenomenon, the Antiparochi system, began to be felt all over the country, as lovely old  traditional or Neo-Classical houses were demolished and blocks of flats rose in their place:

Antiparochi: an arrangement with a builder or developer- in exchange for your house or  building plot the developer builds a block of flats and you, as the original landowner, are given one or two flats in the block as compensation, instead of payment for the plot of land*

Nowadays there are plenty of unfinished antiparochi blocks left standing as concrete skeletons. Others are facing problems of heating, as tenants cannot agree about contributing to heating oil costs.

As bank loans, low interest credit and regional development funds became available after Greece joined the EU, more and more people became their own small-scale developers, speculative builders and project managers, often building large new houses or blocks very slowly as they accumulated the funds (once they had obtained building permission and started laying the foundations or progressing as far as a flat concrete roof). That's how many remained, for all sorts of personal family reasons, as well as legal and financial problems.

Alexis Lykiard writes about unfinished buildings in his poem "By Souda Bay", from Skeleton Keys, 2003.

From "By Souda Bay":

"Unfinished business, blocks of concrete
offering, bunched at corners,
their inevitable iron
bouquets. It seems these

rusty sprigs are ruins-in-progress,
eyesores passers-by may read
now as 'Notice of Intent',
with every spikey missive

meant to send a certain
signal for the future.
Villas, eventually, await
rubble-free floor or ultimate flat roof,

homes not yet prepared to rise
to their projected heights...Tomorrow,
avrio. Some hope..."


I scribbled down the following angry protest poem on antiparochi back at the beginning of the 1980s, in Thessaloniki (it was only a little exaggerated):

"They're knocking down another house,
They're cutting down another tree;
They clear the forest in the night,
Then jerry-build, without a right,
Do as they please, without a fight.
They're offering their village plots
In exchange for flats in concrete blocks.
They encroach on conservation zones,
Bulldoze graveyards and grandparents' bones.
They're ready with fencing to claim newly-cleared land;
The agrofilakas knows; he too lends a hand.
They steal a strema of woodland when nobody looks,
And nobody looks when pockets are filled,
And nobody questions, or audits the books,
And laws are not drafted, or they're never enforced..."


We did our best to draw attention to the need for Conservation and Rehabilitation of Traditional Buildings, as in this International Scientific Symposium in 1981 (a losing battle in many parts of Greece):