Competitions and moving houses

Lately besides work I have been moon-lighting for an architectural competition declared by the municipality of Mihaniona

(near the city of Thessalonki in Greece) for the design of a light movable kiosk to be used as a sea-side seating area for the seafront cafeterias and restaurants.

I teamed up with a friend from university and we came up with a cute idea of a repeatable module that could be moved on tracks. Unfortunately our model turned out so-so (we used plexiglass which wasn’t such a great choice in the end) and what’s worse my team-mate lost her designs last minute and hadn’t got round to printing them all out. We sent what we could before the deadline, but the chances are great we’ll be disqualified for missing out a set of designs…

At this rate I will never win an architectural competion. My team was also disqualified for a ridiculous technicality from the architectural competition we took part in last year (the design of a Town Hall complex in a small town in Crete).

To top up the bad luck we didn’t move as planned. Ever since we finished our studies, my sister and I have returned to out hometown of Athens and have moved home to our parents’ place. It’s stifling and we’re desperately looking for a place of our own to rent.

Only thing is we’re fed up of student apartments and want something nice for a chance. And it’s hard! Landlords in Athens are out of this world. The rents are too high for the wages.

Let me just say that many people (us included), even with university degrees, only earn 800 euros a month, whereas most three-room apartments (70 to 80 square metres) built in the 60s in an average neighbourhood in the centre of the city have a rent of about 450 to 600 euros. Something new is out of the question. A studio apartment will cost 200 to 400 euros depending.

And not to forget that very often the houses are in bad repair, the kitchens and bathrooms the originals and the walls unpainted.

They area we are set on in living is one of the hardest to find a place because the locals are notorious for not moving out. At least two of the places we’ve seen the previous tenant was an old lady that died there. The furniture had not even been moved out yet! And the state of the places was un-believable. One of them was completely surreal, complete with antique television set, psychedelic green-veined black marble in the hall and dizzying flowered tiling in the kitchen and bathroom. We beat a hasty retreat!

Now we’ve found two prospective places. One is a bit small and has weird landlords that live way out in the suburbs on the complete different side of Athens than us where buses barely reach and they expect us to go to their house to talk about renting the flat! The other is nearly perfect, only a stone throw away from the ancient Herodio theatre, but the landlady, as usual, is asking far more than it’s worth.

And so the hunt continues…