Takis Zenetos. A radical singularity in Greece.

Image: Furniture for 2000 | kathimerini.gr

Takis Zenetos used to live very close to where I live. In addition, Takis Zenetos was an architect like me. However, what generates, in my imaginary, an interface between us is, mostly, his -unorthodox for many but highly functional for others- time schedule. He worked very late at night and slept during the day, communicating through his notebooks with his coworkers and family -an organisation tactic on which I actively try to build my life around. At this point, as they say, our similarities end since Takis Zenetos was one of the most progressive visionary architects of the 20th century.

Takis Zenetos | architectuul.com

Zenetos was born in Athens, in 1926 and in 1945 he leaves Greece to study in Paris with an architectural scholarship at Ecole des Beaux-Arts, finishing his degree in 1952. He then proceeds to design about 120 completed works. Notably, the FIX factories (the most popular being the one on Syngrou Avenue, now hosting -though clearly restricted on many levels- the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens), the dynamic residence on 21 Xanthou street in Glyfada, the residence on 32 Derechani street in Kavouri and the apartment block on the corner of Amalias Avenue and Daidalou Street with the sliding panels on its facade that later, falsely, became a model for many architectural arbitrarities.

FIX Building | mdpi.com

Of his more public works, the colourful, round Lycabettus theatre stands apart as well as his innovative 1962 'Electronic Urbanism', a study that is now validated by current affairs and rekindles our interest to review it anew, because of the Greek participation in this year’s Biennale, titled Oedipus in search of Colonus, that includes reproductions of a furniture piece that he designed concerning his urbanistic and spatial inquiries. 

Electronic Urbanism | mdpi.com

With Electronic Urbanism, Zenetos more or less predicted, 60 years before it became a mass reality, the rule of working remotely “imposed” on us by the consequences of the pandemic. He called it “tele-accomplishing” (Greek: τηλε-διεκπεραίωση) and he predicted digital nomads before they became cool. Having studied and observed with particular acuity the latest inventions in the technological and scientific journals of his time and based on these conditions, he creates their design counterpart, at the scale of the human body and residence, titled Furniture for 2000 and at the same time, solves urban planning problems such as traffic congestion, residential dormitory-areas and the unstoppable sprawling of the urban landscape at the expense of the natural with the cloud colonies.

Electronic Urbanism | teetkm.gr

These were suspended structures that would practically float above ground level and house all the functions of a city using up less acreage than the conventional city that spans mostly in two dimensions. Zenetos, with excellent technical expertise, also makes structural calculations of the applicability of his idea that resembles a floating whale and relies on the technological achievements of his time in order to bring these hanging cities to fruition. As for the administrative needs of these cities, he comes up with the automated "Processing Services", as he calls them, which would be located in an area far from the city and with great ease he brings to mind the large data centres of Google, Facebook, etc. that have exactly their infrastructure in the middle of Nevada or another similar area.

Furniture for 2000 | mdpi.com

Furniture for 2000 | tomorrows.sgt.gr

On the scale of the body, he thinks of the alliance with the machine long before Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (1985). He designs Furniture for 2000, an anthropomorphic multipurpose piece of furniture designed as an anatomical armchair/bed. It is the central remote control not only of audio-visual contacts but also of the operation of the residence in Telepolis, making the body and the interface essentially a single organism. It captures all the movements of the body in an articulated structure that navigates freely in the urban landscape of the future, as if in motion in space or in the amniotic fluid of the city. Not only remote work but all human needs could be met through the digital, from this magical piece of furniture.

Spinal Body and Carrier | Personal archives of Zenetos Family, img.journal

This undying optimism and the practicality of their application, still make them look fresh 60 years after they were published. The architect strikes a chord with his precision of design and faith in the limits of architectural and design conception as well as with his inexhaustible hope for a more humane future. This work reveals the genius of Takis Zenetou, who was a truly radical singularity.

Takis Zenetos committs suicide in 1977 in Athens, at the age of 51.