What is Actually "Architectural Mediation"?

In the second year of my studies, around 2000, I visited for the first time the house of Aris Konstantinidis in Anavyssos, a coastal suburb outside Athens.

For architects, it is a well-known landmark of Greek postwar architecture — one that, however, never really got the chance to live as its creator intended. For years now, it has been used as a residence for the gardeners of the neighboring villa.

Despite its condition, I was thrilled to finally see it up close. The friends with me, and the gardeners themselves, watched with curiosity, trying to figure out what I could possibly find in “this thing.”

Its condition did not exactly help me make my case. But in that moment I understood something simple: what architects consider obviously important is not obvious at all to most people. There is a gap between architecture and the way society understands it.

This gap is something I keep coming back to in my work. When we talk about restoring a building, what do we actually mean? Is it the walls, the materials, the physical shell? Or does it also mean understanding the context in which it was built — the historical moment, the social and political conditions that shaped it?

The answer lies in what we call mediation — Vermittlung in German.

Mediation is not about presenting a building. It is about contextualizing it. It means shifting the focus from the building as an isolated object — usually judged on aesthetic terms alone — to its relationship with the historical, social, and political world it came out of.

When that understanding takes hold, architecture stops being “a strange thing” and becomes shared cultural ground. And ideally, society itself begins to care about preserving it.

One of the most important institutions in Europe working seriously on this is the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation in Dessau, Germany. In recent years, the Foundation has moved well beyond preserving its historic buildings. It has built a strategy around connecting the Bauhaus legacy to the challenges society faces today.

I collaborate with the Foundation as a freelance associate, designing and leading thematic tours that attempt exactly this shift — from the building as object to architecture as a living relationship with its time. Through tours, workshops, and public events, questions about the Bauhaus legacy, the paths of its key figures, and the broader social and political currents of the era become entry points for a wider conversation about why modern architecture still matters.

These ideas — along with specific examples from my work with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and earlier projects in Greece — I had the chance to present and discuss at the 9th DOCOMOMO Greece conference entitled “Modern Architecture in Greece: Contemporary Directions.”

The conference took place last weekend in Ioannina, a historic city in northwestern Greece. I contributed both through my paper and by moderating a panel on the same theme.

The conversation that followed made one thing clear: the shift — from architecture as object to architecture as context — is emerging as wider shared ground. This is the space I have been working in for years — and where I intend to keep pushing.