Tsimboukis apartment building

Mavromichali & Navarinou Sts, Athens, 1936

Architect
Vassilios Douras (1904-1981)



This middle-class apartment block in downtown Athens is among the clearest expressions of interwar modernism in Greece. It is a work by architect Vassilios Douras, who began his studies in Munich and finished them at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris in 1930.
The structure was incorporated into the row building system and has six levels: ground floor, four upper floors and retiré. It contains nine apartments: two on the ground floor, first and second floors and one apartment each on the third and fourth floors and retiré.
The organisation of the ground plan and the articulation of the elevations are both governed by the compositional and morphological principles of the central European Modern Movement. The treatment of the façades is plain and the openings are strongly horizontal. The arrangement of the windows and semi-roofed balconies is symmetrical on the narrow side facing Navarinou St, and asymmetrical on the longer side of Mavromichali St. On the edge where these two faces meet, are the characteristic corner windows.
The materials used in shaping the façades are artificial cement, metal railings on the balconies and wooden doors and window frames with rolling shutters. Likewise spare and modern is the metal front door.

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