Architecture Students Explore Adaptability of Athenian Infrastructure

In fall 2025, School of Architecture Assistant Professor of Practice Kyriakos Kyriakou studio led students on a study abroad venture to Athens, Greece, to research “polykatoikia” — concrete housing developments so widespread that they’ve become emblematic of urban life in Athens. Offering compelling opportunities for readaptation, this post-WWII Athenian infrastructure holds great potential as a skeleton adaptable for future use.  

Peppered throughout the city, polykatoikia form a structural fabric across many blocks that is inseparable from the experience of the urban environment. With some now approaching 100 years old, the buildings  have proven themselves to be resilient, and despite their imperfections, they serve as an opportune landscape to inherit, considering Athens’ growth as a tourist destination.  

From the late 1930s until the 1950s, polykatoikias began to overshadow the many two-story neoclassical houses that stood as the city’s predominant form of residence. In the late 1950s, after World War II and the Greek Civil War, large parts of Greece’s population left the countryside to migrate to the country’s capital, and the need for housing in Athens grew exponentially. A new law allowed landowners to exchange their plots for ownership of some of the apartments in the new polykatoikia constructed on their land, resulting in the erection of countless polykatoikia buildings in record time. 

During the polykatoikia boom, which mostly took place in the 1950s and continued until the 1980s, most of these buildings were designed and cast in place by contractors, who would relentlessly copy the basic morphological features to produce many identical multi-housing units. The resulting effect was a sea of repetitive concrete blocks, often situated in areas without proper infrastructure.  

Kyriakou’s course, “Metabolizing the Athenian Polykatoikia,” began in Austin with forensic investigation, tasking students to complete a detailed digital survey and 3D model of their chosen polykatoikia and the block it sits in. This model was translated to axonometric drawings at two scales: one for the building and one for the block — an essential process to ensure students understand the relationship between part and whole.  

Professor Kyriakou viewed this digital survey as “an entry point to Athens and a seed for broader investigations on cultural, political, economic, and material characteristics of the city,” which then allowed the students to formulate a thesis question built upon their observations.  

A trip to Athens followed, bringing the students in-country to document their chosen buildings and its full city block. Conversations with local experts along with archaeological site visits wove a tapestry of context with contemporary, modern, and ancient histories. It was essential for students to fully grasp the political and structural settings that frame the concrete polykatoikia’s past and future.  

Equipped with new knowledge after their trip, students were challenged to identify an issue or opportunity with their chosen polykatoikia and draft a new policy that might allow new architectural proposals to materialize. Their research and experimentation breathed new life into this sometimes neglected yet monumental facet of the built landscape of Athens, grounding their architectural work in the realities of the historical and political scale of building at the city level.   

For more information, visit the Architizer blog and the School of Architecture site.