Athens, Greece
Why “The Mysterious Language of Form” is the first exhibition of its kind in the country, and what it shows
Greece has a world-famous architectural heritage, but until now no single exhibition has told the whole story. Architecture in Greece | Η Μυστηριακή Γλώσσα του Σχήματος (The Mysterious Language of Form) is, as far as we know, the first show in the country to follow Greek architectural creation from prehistory to the present day.
It runs from 17 October 2026 to 17 January 2027 at the Tobacco Factory (Καπνεργοστάσιο) of the Hellenic Parliament in Athens. It is organised by Citylab and the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE), with the support of the Hellenic Parliament.
We visited on the opening day, 20 October.
An opening with institutional weight
The exhibition was inaugurated by the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Nikitas Kaklamanis. He called buildings “silent witnesses of our history” and active participants in it.
He also linked architecture to democracy, arguing that the way a society designs public space reflects its ideas about equality, inclusion, participation and accessibility. He floated the idea of a Greek Museum of Architecture and said Parliament would take part in any such effort.
Other speakers included Isidoros Kouvelos, president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, who spoke of how buildings from each era form part of a collective identity, with the Kallimarmaro as an example.
Manolis Korres, emeritus professor at NTUA, spoke about the Panathenaic Stadium. Antonis Kouris of the Technical Chamber stressed architecture’s role in turning needs into spaces for living, and argued for quality in the built environment for everyone, not as a luxury.
Curators Panagiotis Pangalos and Dimitris Filippidis also spoke. Filippidis praised the exhibition’s boldness, and Korres credited the work of the team behind it.
A recurring message was that architecture is not only the finished building. It is also the process, the tools, the techniques, the theory, the drawing and the later study and debate, and all of these have value.
The idea behind it
The starting point is a phrase from Dimitris Pikionis, the “mysterious language of form”, and his belief that form can converse with tradition and historical time.
The unifying thread is the Greek place itself, both natural and man-made. The curators are Stavros Aliphrangis, Manolis Korres, Panagiotis Pangalos and Dimitris Filippidis, and Anastasios Tantsis, associate professor of Byzantine archaeology and art at AUTh, signs the curation of part of the show.
About 37 groups of works are drawn from public and private archives: drawings, sketches, models, photographs, artworks, books, magazines and film excerpts.
The art rooms
The route begins with art. The first room is dedicated to Angelos Antonopoulos and is the most visual of the show. It uses the architectural shell itself for an artistic narrative, with a dark tonality, European references, geometry and a Gothic character.
Its subject is the architecture of power: why the state needs buildings, and why power needs a form of expression. It answers through painting, set design and construction.
Another space is dedicated to Vana Xenou and her cosa mentale. It treats art as something that makes the invisible visible, and draws on the philosophy of building, dwelling and thinking, a common ground between architecture and the visual arts.
It includes an installation by Maria Schina, whose weaving geometries play with optical illusions. As on a classical loom, the form reorganises itself depending on where the viewer stands.
Further works carry the show’s concerns into other territory. Michalis Manousakis looks at the small houses of the Greeks of Asia Minor. Tzimis Chytas contributes his “Chronocolumns”. Marios Spiliopoulos presents The Construction of a Nation.
The historical core
The central and most important room is a historical survey, organised into seven sections and 26 “flows”, with standalone exhibits between them.
It opens with the mysterious language of the modern: European classicism and post-war efforts at modernisation, then interwar modernism, urban regeneration, culture as a vehicle of modernisation, the modernity of office and shop buildings, and housing envisioned for city and nature.
The next section, tradition as forms of nature, turns to Greece’s long past. It covers conversations with prehistory, the allure of antiquity, the medieval and later periods, and the anonymous, vernacular architecture built after 1830.
From there the survey moves into the city, with urban palimpsests, planning, infrastructure and the temporary reoccupation of public space. Housing follows: the minimal dwelling, the apartment block and organised construction.
A section on new uses for existing shells looks at industrial buildings given new missions, and at additions and modernisations. The last sections follow architecture into the landscape, through the holiday home, the suburb and the hotel, and end with the mechanisms by which architectural narratives are produced.
The standalone exhibits fill in the longer timeline. The ancient world begins with Minoan Knossos and Akrotiri, Mycenaean tombs, the Doric and Ionic orders, and the sanctuaries, agoras and stoas of the classical city.
Among them are the drawings of Philon’s arsenal at Piraeus, taken from an early twentieth-century study. The Byzantine and later periods appear through the Rotunda of Thessaloniki, the medieval city of Rhodes and the Venetian fortifications of Chania.
The modern era is the most densely covered. Highlights include the Blue Apartment Building in Exarcheia, the three sanatoria of the interwar years, and Pikionis’s landscaping of the hills around the Acropolis.
There are also two Xenia hotels by Aris Konstantinidis, two private houses by Nikos Valsamakis and the mining company staff settlement by Suzana and Dimitris Antonakakis. Two university campuses, at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Cyprus, close the circle.
A show built by many hands
It is hard to miss how much work went into it. The material is dense and layered, and each decision was clearly weighed. The people named above are only a fraction of those involved.
Many more researchers, architects, archivists, designers and contributors worked on the exhibition, and their effort shows in every room. Yet it addresses specialists and the general public alike.
The longer-term goal is a Greek Museum of Architecture, a permanent home for research, documentation, preservation, education and international promotion. Whether or not that museum follows, this exhibition makes a strong case for it.
