SHORT DESCRIPTION

Artificiel is the common name of the sculptural treatment of plaster, which was widespread in the Athenian apartment buildings of the 20th century. The technique, the result of painstaking work by the “pelekanos”, as the builders were called who worked on the exterior facades of apartment buildings, was gradually abandoned around the 1970s and today its material imprint is in danger of being lost forever: The new energy efficiency regulations for buildings will lead to the progressive removal of Artificiel surfaces and their replacement with thermal insulation. The loss to the image and feel of the city will be incalculable. Designer Yiannis Ghikas captured the facades of apartment buildings in the centre of Athens with 3D scanning and incorporated the characteristic designs of Artificiel into a new collection of porcelain tableware, produced by Myran – Scandinavian Design. Walking the streets of Athens, one will observe that most buildings constructed between 1930 and 1970 are dressed in surfaces of chased cement facing, a technique colloquially known as Artificiel. This “skin” of the city, at places well-preserved, but most often, visibly worn or poorly preserved, caught my attention since quite some time. The scale of application of this technique in Athenian buildings is so ubiquitous that, if there were one texture to stand as signature feature of the city, it would be the texture of those Artificiel. If I had to choose one characteristic trait of Athens to incorporate in my design work, then I would clearly choose artificiel; which is what I did.