Visiting Scholar David Leatherbarrow presents his research on the Greek post-war architect Aris Konstantinidis.

A basic premise of this part of my research is that sites are not given to immediate or transparent understanding, but require a sort of appropriation that deciphers or discovers within them previously neglected potentials. An associated premise is that the building’s “site” is not co-terminus with the outer edge of the building, nor with the outer perimeter of owned land; but is more like a horizon or stretch of topography, across which would “flow” local materials, customary patterns of dwelling, and indigenous conditions of climate, all of which were thought to have decisive effects on both the interior and exterior of buildings. In current discourse this expanded field has come to be called “region;” in my research I have introduced the term “topography,” in order to signify both physical terrain and cultural pattern, both sedimented historically but given to adaptation.

David Leatherbarrow was a Visiting Scholar at the CCA in 1997-1998.