Open    Access



Xenia Hotels in Greece: A Holistic Approach to Modern Cultural Heritage



Author(s)

Zoe Georgiadou, Dionisia Frangou and Dimitris Marnellos

Full-Text PDF XML     953 Views

DOI:10.17265/1934-7359/2015.02.002

In the early 1950s, the Greek National Tourism Organization made a nation-wide attempt to develop tourism in Greece. For a period of two decades, it developed the hotel buildings’ substructure, a project known as the “Xenia project”. During this period, Greek architects, devoted to modernism, designed and supervised 53 hotel compounds, which spread throughout the country. Today, the Xenia Hotels are internationally recognized as part of Greece’s modern cultural heritage, based on the simplicity, the definition of the form and the truth in materials use, besides the integration of the buildings in the natural environment, components which reveal themselves as a unique venture. This paper aims to reveal that, despite the efforts to retain the Xenia Hotels, these procedures remain incomplete. They rightly focus on architectural shells, morphological and functional standardization, proper utilization of the Greek environmental conditions, and the use of authentic local materials. However, the cultural evaluation of these settlements can only be completed by their holistic design, which also comprises their interior spaces, lightening and furniture design, all these detailed aspects that form an organic entirety and which are not included in these efforts. 

Xenia Hotels, modern cultural heritage, holistic design, architectural approach, interior design, furniture design