Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens
Man contemplating the expansion of the twentieth-century city, Athens, 1957. © Benaki Museum, Costas Megalokonomou Archives
Author: Ioanna Theocharopoulou, architectural historian and assistant professor, Parsons New School of Design
Publisher: Artifice Books on Architecture
Year: 2017
Scope: Pitching, Editing, Project Management, Image Research
Buy: Amazon
We worked with the author to adapt her dissertation on the history of Modern Athens into an illustrated book manuscript that sheds new light on the sprawling city beneath the Acropolis.
While modern Athens is commonly viewed in negative terms—congested, ugly, and monotonous—we worked with the historian Ioanna Theocharopoulou to show that the city is much more complex than many assume. We composed the book proposal and a strategic plan to match Ioanna’s manuscript with Artifice Books on Architecture, a publisher that would do justice to her compelling analysis and accompanying photography. After adapting Ioanna’s dissertation into a manuscript that could reach an international audience and address the current political and social climate of Athens, we did intensive image research to showcase rare images that illustrate a turbulent time in Athens’ recent history.
Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens book cover, featuring photography by Panos Kokkinias. Available fall 2018.