An interesting new fashion is appearing in Athens connected with the luxury way of life or simply the desire for a spacious apartment in a crowded city building. Architect Nefeli Papadimitriou* tells about the entering of the Manhattan apartment style or how it is to live in a loft apartment in an interview with Marina Nikolova.

How did the idea of the loft apartment come along?

The idea of the loft apartments starts from cities, which during the 60’s were centers for artists – mainly in New York. The idea was born in the artists circles. Mainly we are talking about the change in the use of industrial buildings where artists can satisfy their need for a home and a studio simultaneously.

The younger ones need a room to live in, and a room used for a studio where they can show their works. Ideally, this types of apartments had to have low rent and the necessary natural lighting for the artists’ work and for the showing of the art.

Parallel to this, due to different social, finance, and technological changes, the factories, which were in the city center, closed and moved to the suburbs or even abroad – because of the cheaper labor and lower rents.

This way, the buildings, which were built to house the old producing shops remain empty. These dwellings did not cover the required prerequisites, which were given by the housing authorities and at the same time the search for producing shops ended. As a result the neighborhoods started to decay and the rents went down significantly.

The artists used this fact and started to move to those apartments. They created communities in the previously abandoned regions and this way they gave them life.

Soon this becomes fashionable and creates a constant search for loft-apartments. Of course, the rents of the apartments go up as well as the prices of the different regions. In some cities this trend is used for the rising of the living standard in the abandoned neighborhoods. Many buildings, which were build for workshops, stores, schools, offices, storage rooms, hospitals, etc were abandoned and later on reconstructed into apartment buildings. Later on new apartment buildings are being built, which remind of the characteristics of the loft-apartments.

But the real lofts are in old industrial buildings and what distinguishes them from the other apartments is: the huge common space with minimal or no separating walls, ceilings higher than 4 meters, the industrial type of building, and the big windows.

There are many different sub types of loft apartments, which were made later on:

• Hard loft – one big room and a bathroom

• Raw loft – one big room with almost unfinished outlook, which usually does not have a bathroom or a sink.

• Soft loft – has walls, which do not reach the ceiling – they take up to ¾ of the height of the room and divide the room/s and the bathroom.

• Moderate loft – has a kitchen and a bathroom.

• Upscale loft – has a luxury bathroom and kitchen.

Let me note that there are cases where apartments are represented as lofts. They might have more “united” rooms, their height can be of a two-story building, and they can represent an industrial look but they are not lofts. The main reason is that they did not appear as a consequence of second hand use of an industrial building and they do not have unnecessary space.

Who introduces the loft-style in Athens?

It cannot be said exactly who brought the style in Athens and when. The loft became fashionable gradually and not too long ago. Despite this, the outlook for creating these types of apartments in Athens started to show through with the “development” and the policy for increasing the quality of life in neighborhoods like Psiri, Ghazi, Petralona and others, in which old factories, storage rooms, and workshops exist. The contractors and constructions companies there, realized the opportunity for creating the new type of apartments in the old buildings, as well as the opportunity for reproducing the esthetics of the lofts when building new buildings.

Is there something new, which Greek architects add? Or is there something, which is characteristic for Greek lofts and does not appear elsewhere…

Lofts in Athens are too new and not too many in order to have some characteristic elements, which distinguish them from lofts in other countries. Despite this, due to the climate and the Greek way of life there is a trend for building open spaces in forms of balconies, terraces, or half-opened rooms, even when we talk about reconstructing industrial buildings where opportunities are limited.

What is difference between lofts in Athens and the modern luxury apartments with high ceilings?

Not too many but until now companies have built soft upscale lofts, which differ in the esthetics and the quality of materials. Sometimes the industrial character of the building is being brought up and other times a luxurious new building is being built without pointing out its past.

Loft apartments in Greece are luxury themselves, because they offer excess space in a crowded city environment. Due to this fact they target a niche clientele, which can handle the price and on the other hand are interested in living in the center with fewer rooms but bigger space.

Loft apartments differ from the apartments with high ceilings because: they appear as a result of reconstructing industrial or trade dwellings; instead of having many rooms, like in most apartments, they have huge combined rooms with less walls; they have another opening morphology because the primary construction was not intended for a home; the premises, which are used by the people living in the building like entrance, hallways, etc differ with the lofts, especially when they are made in buildings where other rooms are still used for storage, workshops, etc.

How does the city environment influence the idea creation of a loft?

Two things must be taken into consideration: how does the environment affect the architect when designing lofts and how is the region influenced by lofts creation.

First of all, I will define apartments as lofts, which were reconstructed from old industrial buildings. So now, when it comes to the first part of the question I would like to say that the surrounding environment influences less than the building itself, which is being renovated. This gives direction when designing and building – the framework, openings, dimensions, style, etc. For sure, the orientation and vicinity are taken into consideration as well in order for the inner rooms to be organized best, when most times the inner characteristics and morphology are set.

When it comes to how the region is affected, I would say that the influence is significant. Most of all, the region becomes alive because empty buildings revive and the region does not die out after a certain hour, just like it happens with premises used only with professional goals. Also, the prices of real estate are going up. Gradually, the use of buildings for trading or producing will turn into using them for lofts.

In Athens there are many regions where there used to be industrial buildings like in Petralona, Ghazi, Votanikos for example. In those cases the increase of the land prices can lead to the change of old buildings with new ones, for example like the superficia system.

According to you, do you think that the loft way of life signifies the deindustrialization and if you agree, isn’t Athens a bit too late in taking advantage of this way of life?

I wouldn’t say that it signifies the deindustrialization but it definitely marks change – the change in the city character, in the different ways of producing and also economical, social and other changes. In all countries – USA, France, England, where lofting has started and is developing, small producing workshops in the city centers have closed but have transferred and developed into bigger ones in the periphery. Parallel to this the producing procedure is developing technologically, the staff changes and the size of human resources. What is left developing in the city is the customer services field.

As I said, abroad the building of lofts come out “naturally,” because the artists’ needs for shelter was satisfied by the cheap dwellings, which were formerly used for professional purposes. In Greece, lofts are coming as a trend, which passed through the States and Europe.

A famous Greek writer – Soti Triandafilidou, writes about people who choose to live in lofts that: “If the apartment in a conventional building corresponds to the way of life “I work, get married, take a loan and make kids,” the loft corresponds to the denial of the upper mentioned.” What type of people would choose to live in those apartments in Greece?

I do not agree with such an extreme distinction. In Greece many things are unsettled – different social groups live together in many of the outer regions of Greek cities, with different incomes, levels of education, heritage. There aren’t strict “borders” like in other cities abroad.

Respectively people do not live the way of live, which corresponds to “I work, get married, take a loan and make kids,” and then at the same time buy or make a loft. I believe that the ones who would buy or construct their own loft instead of an apartment, will be able to deal with the value increase, which corresponds to the area increase – one comfortable conventional one bedroom apartment is around 50 sq. m. and a similar loft will come up to 80-100 sq. m. Also, people’s way of live should be consistent with the freer division of space, which lofts have and with the fact that lofts are in the center of the city.

*The last two articles of architect Nefeli Papadimitriou about the Athens lofts could be found in “Ellinikes kataskeves” magazine (http://www.ellkat.gr/)