Greece will participate for the 10th time in one of the most important architectural exhibitions globally, the Architecture Biennale in Venice. The Greek participation this year is directed and curated by Yannis Aesopos, an architect and professor at the University of Patras under the title “Tourism Landscapes: Remaking Greece”. It explores the role of tourism as a vehicle of modernization of the country through the emergence of constructed tourism landscapes, hotels and resorts, organized beaches, archaeological sites and museums, public space designs and infrastructure facilities. It also focuses on the concurrent (re)shaping of Greek national identity.

The exhibition “Tourism Landscapes: Remaking Greece” consists of two parts:

The Archival part presents the architectural production of tourism landscapes in Greece in the last 100 years. It is presented as a continuous surface of images placed on the surrounding walls of the Greek Pavilion’s interior. It is made of 3 sub-parts: photos of landscapes are placed on the lower part of the walls’ surfaces; they are topped with photos and drawings of tourism architecture and punctured by photos of ‘identity elements’ which introduce the anthropological dimension.
The New Projects part is placed in the center of the Pavilion and presents through models on identical stands of various heights that create an interior geometric ‘island landscape’ the proposals of 15 Greek and foreign architects for a tourism inhabitation in a Greek sea-side landscape. These projects were produced specifically for the Biennale exhibition. The time frame is the end-of-crisis era that is characterized by limited resources, asks for the reassessment of priorities and the reestablishment of values, the reconsideration of human imposition on nature, and, through  spiritual restructuring, the reappraisal of less. The coexistence of Greek and foreign architects refers to the interaction between local and foreign that tourism presupposes.

National Commissioner – Curator: Yannis Aesopos

Yannis Aesopos is principal of Yannis Aesopos Architecture, Athens. He studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (Diploma of Architecture with Honors, 1989) and the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (Master in Architecture, 1991). He is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture, University of Patras, Greece where he served as Chair from 2011 to 2013.
Aesopos worked for Bernard Tschumi Architects in New York from 1992 to 1995 and Santiago Calatrava in Paris, 1991. He was a Teaching Fellow in the Master of Architecture in Urban Design program, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (2012-13). In the spring of 2009 he was a Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University working on his research in the post-Olympic urban transformations in Athens. In 1994 he taught as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York.
He was co-curator of the exhibition Landscapes of Modernisation: Greek Architecture 1960s and 1990s (Rotterdam, 1999, Barcelona, 1999, Helsinki, 1999, Thessaloniki, 2000, Belgrade, 2000 & 2002, Pescara, 2001, Chania, Crete, 2002, Athens, 2005) and co-editor of the book with the same title (Athens, 1999), co-editor of The Contemporary (Greek) City (Athens, 2001) and Landscapes of the Intimate (Athens, 1996).
His work was presented at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition Venice Biennale 2012.