Panagiotis Farantatos

Academic Interests

Modern architecture, historiography, history of proportional systems, domesticity, sexuality and architectural space, peripheral modernisms, Mediterranean studies

PhD Project

"The Modulor 1941-1948: Strategies and contradictions in Le Corbusier’s professional and aesthetic agenda after WWII"

Summary

The PhD research project discusses the Modulor, a measuring tool based upon an idealized human stature of 1,83 m and two series of Fibonacci numbers, launched by Le Corbusier after WWII, basically through two publications: Le Modulor (1950) and Modulor 2 (1955). The PhD research aims to deconstruct the mythopoetic narratives provided within the books written by Le Corbusier, and to present the several transformations of the system, since its first emergence during the Vichy years, until the writing of the first book in 1948. The project’s hypothesis is that the Modulor’s function as a standard or a proportional system is undermined by its idiosyncratic use as a controlling and corrective tool instead of an absolute canon. Furthermore, I propose that its interest does not lie in the integrity of the system but in the additive nature of the discourse around it: the visual symbolism, the historicist legitimization and the often delirious narrative which coincides with Le Corbusier’s strategic restaging as an ‘artist’ circa 1948.

Background

Architect and freelance designer, Athens, Greece, 2007-2016

Education

Postgraduate Specialization Master, "Design - Space – Culture", School of Architecture, NTU Athens, 2008-2010 MA Thesis: Versions of domesticity (Honors: 10/10)

Erasmus, Faculty of Architecture, CVUT, Prague, Czech Republic, 2005

Diploma in Architecture  School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, 2000 - 2007 

Teaching experience

Teaching Assistant, School of Architecture, NTUA, 2009-2010