Loft apartments differ from the apartments with high ceilings because: they appear as a result of reconstructing industrial or trade dwellings; instead of having many rooms, like in most apartments, they have huge combined rooms with less walls; they have another opening morphology because the primary construction was not intended for a home; the premises, which are used by the people living in the building like entrance, hallways, etc differ with the lofts, especially when they are made in buildings where other rooms are still used for storage, workshops, etc.

How does the city environment influence the idea creation of a loft?

Two things must be taken into consideration: how does the environment affect the architect when designing lofts and how is the region influenced by lofts creation.

First of all, I will define apartments as lofts, which were reconstructed from old industrial buildings. So now, when it comes to the first part of the question I would like to say that the surrounding environment influences less than the building itself, which is being renovated. This gives direction when designing and building – the framework, openings, dimensions, style, etc. For sure, the orientation and vicinity are taken into consideration as well in order for the inner rooms to be organized best, when most times the inner characteristics and morphology are set.

When it comes to how the region is affected, I would say that the influence is significant. Most of all, the region becomes alive because empty buildings revive and the region does not die out after a certain hour, just like it happens with premises used only with professional goals. Also, the prices of real estate are going up. Gradually, the use of buildings for trading or producing will turn into using them for lofts.

In Athens there are many regions where there used to be industrial buildings like in Petralona, Ghazi, Votanikos for example. In those cases the increase of the land prices can lead to the change of old buildings with new ones, for example like the superficia system.

According to you, do you think that the loft way of life signifies the deindustrialization and if you agree, isn’t Athens a bit too late in taking advantage of this way of life?

I wouldn’t say that it signifies the deindustrialization but it definitely marks change – the change in the city character, in the different ways of producing and also economical, social and other changes. In all countries – USA, France, England, where lofting has started and is developing, small producing workshops in the city centers have closed but have transferred and developed into bigger ones in the periphery. Parallel to this the producing procedure is developing technologically, the staff changes and the size of human resources. What is left developing in the city is the customer services field.

As I said, abroad the building of lofts come out “naturally,” because the artists’ needs for shelter was satisfied by the cheap dwellings, which were formerly used for professional purposes. In Greece, lofts are coming as a trend, which passed through the States and Europe.

A famous Greek writer – Soti Triandafilidou, writes about people who choose to live in lofts that: “If the apartment in a conventional building corresponds to the way of life “I work, get married, take a loan and make kids,” the loft corresponds to the denial of the upper mentioned.” What type of people would choose to live in those apartments in Greece?

I do not agree with such an extreme distinction. In Greece many things are unsettled – different social groups live together in many of the outer regions of Greek cities, with different incomes, levels of education, heritage. There aren’t strict “borders” like in other cities abroad.

Respectively people do not live the way of live, which corresponds to “I work, get married, take a loan and make kids,” and then at the same time buy or make a loft. I believe that the ones who would buy or construct their own loft instead of an apartment, will be able to deal with the value increase, which corresponds to the area increase – one comfortable conventional one bedroom apartment is around 50 sq. m. and a similar loft will come up to 80-100 sq. m. Also, people’s way of live should be consistent with the freer division of space, which lofts have and with the fact that lofts are in the center of the city.

*The last two articles of architect Nefeli Papadimitriou about the Athens lofts could be found in “Ellinikes kataskeves” magazine (http://www.ellkat.gr/)