Schinkel 'in Athens': Meta-Narratives of 19th-Century City Planning

Dimitris N. Karidis

• Publisher: Archaeopress Archaeology
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781803270692
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

Schinkel 'in Athens': Meta-Narratives of 19th-Century City Planning proposes a fresh appraisal of Karl Friedrich Schinkel's urban design legacy and his involvement in the design of modern Athens in the 1830s. From the 1830s onwards, the incompatibility between Schinkel's position as a civil servant and his vocation as a scholar inspired by Fichte led him along a transcendental path of life. Transcendentalism set its own terms and conditions under which Schinkel's project of a palace atop the Acropolis of Athens (1834) might be understood. The 'contextual analysis' of Schinkel's work in this book challenges the view of this proposal as a utopian scheme, detached from the realities of nineteenth-century Greece. On the other hand, the first plan of Athens, supposedly the work of two of his former Bauakademie students, ratified a year earlier, in 1833, proposed the location of the royal residence in the new town at a few hundred metres north of the Acropolis. But, though the two options for Otto's palace were topographically dissimilar they did retain a common strong, topological significance – which, along with other factors analysed in this book, provides ample evidence for re-thinking the authorship of the new plan of the capital city of Greece. Schinkel 'in Athens', by all means!

Table of contents

• Cover
• Ruins of Athens
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Quote
• Preface
• Introduction (A)
• Introduction - Interlude
• Introduction - Interlude
• Introduction (A)
• Introduction (B)
• Act One, Scene I
• Act One, Scene II
• Act Two, Scene I
• Act Two, Scene II
• Act Three, Scene I
• Act Three, Scene II
• Act Three, Scene III
• Act Three, Scene IV
• Act Four, Scene I
• Act Four, Scene II
• Act Four, Scene III
• Act Four, Scene IV
• Act Four, Scene V
• Act Four, Scene VI
• Illustration Credits
• Bibliography
• Index