An architect who no longer builds, Angelidakis says that he quit the profession to focus on architecture itself. Because of this he can defy its prohibitions. He lets the personal invade his work; he fosters ambivalence and uncertainty. “Maybe,” he says, “we just don’t need any more new buildings. Maybe reconfiguring existing ones is enough.” Angelidakis compares Diogenes living in a jar with his dog to circumstances today, where “we all sleep in our screens next to our dogs.” Did living in the jar make Diogenes who he was, or did his house turn into a vessel in reaction to who he was? Angelidakis has “always treated buildings and objects as characters, emotional beings,” he says. “As much as we design buildings, buildings and spaces design us.”
His work has become a meditation on the idea of ruin – both ancient and economic – and the potential of architecture as a site of of real-time social engagement. Angelidakis has been forced to adapt to the collapsing boundaries of physical space, transposing them to and from the confines of our LCD screens.
Works by Andreas Angelidakis are included in the collections The Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, the Nouveau Musee National de Monaco, at Schloß Freudenberg in Wiesbaden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Zabludowicz Collection in London and the Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens.