‘Europas neue DDR’ (the new GDR in Europe) was the name that German Stern magazine used to refer in 2011 to the wave of privatisations and asset sales going on in Greece, comparing it to post-1989 panorama. Among the ones that the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) is managing, we can find land development, real estate operations, infrastructure and corporations: lotteries, Postbank, Thessaloniki water company, Hellenic Motorways, Public Gas, Hellenic Telecommunications OTE, Piraeus and Thessaloniki ports…
As part of these desperate economic initiatives to raise 50 billion euros by 2015, the Ellinikon Airport site in the periphery of Athens, shut and abandoned in 2001, is currently undergoing a brutal top-down process of redevelopment. Eero Saarinen accomplished the terminal building in 1969. It still survives in a mixture of agonizing temporary use for commercial fairs and utter emptiness with wild flora reclaiming the landing tracks. The recent plans for a highend new city larger in size than Monaco, with marina, helipads and golf course, is regarded once again as the only alternative for ‘sustainability’. Rumours speculate that investment may come from Qatar or Chinese stakeholders. Is a new Las Vegas potentially being born?
I only doubt that circulation of capital within the same hands manages to exit the enclosed circuit of corruption, be it publicly or privately owned.
[all images> Ellinikon ghost airport by Saarinen 1969_Athens_Photos by deconcrete2012]
[...] Remporté par l’agence française Serero, le concours est rapidement enterré faute de fonds pour financer sa réalisation. Les jeux olympiques sont passés par là et les budgets grecs commencent à afficher des signes de faiblesse. Athènes se retrouve donc avec deux vastes sites abandonnés illustrant la gueule de bois post-olympique et l’absence de réflexions et d’interventions concernant le devenir de ces installations. Sans activité, délaissé par un pouvoir politique aux abois, l’Ellinikon devient une immense friche urbaine en même temps que la Grèce s’enfonce dans une crise socio-économique d’une ampleur inédite. L’Ellinikon aujourd’hui (photo : deconcrete) [...]
The Ellinikon airport is probably the last chance of Athens to a public space of metropolitan scale and to the redefinition of the long lost relation of the city and its seafront. It has been the subject of international architectural workshops and competitions, while the municipal stakeholders have commissioned the National University of Athens a thorough study for future development. Definitely one of the hot issues of economic development and a great offer to political speculation!