Greek architect builds haven for adult skaters in wake of financial crisis

Zachos Varfis wanted a haven for skaters in downtown Athens – so he built one

The Latraac skate bowl in Athens (Zachos Varfis)

In the wake of Brexit, the refugee crisis, and the election of Donald Trump, the Greek financial meltdown and the prospect of Grexit seem like a distant memory for those outside the country. Now, as Greece rebuilds itself from economic collapse, its creatives are quietly helping their country with clever design.

Among them is Zachos Varfis, an architect who designed and helped build the Latraac skate bowl and social space in Kerameikos, downtown Athens. The urban garden and plywood basin, used for transition skating, sits on a 300sq metre piece of land framed with heavy stone walls and marble slab flooring from demolished 19th century buildings. Entrance is free, and skaters are catered to by a small café.

The 38-year-old Athenian doesn’t mince words when describing the location of the skate bowl which was finished in the autumn of 2016 and will open this year. “Kerameikos is generally considered rubbish real estate and a ghetto, rife with the lawless vices associated with urban degradation.”

Since the financial crisis, Varfis has watched a steady erosion of support in the public and private sector in Greece. After years of negotiations, in August 2015 Greece and its creditors agreed on a €86bn bailout to avoid leaving the EU and bankruptcy.

“Lives are wasted and lost. It is heart-breaking to witness and to experience,” he says.

As such, Latraac acts as an oasis of life and vibrant creativity in the Greek capital. An anomalous spot that Varfis calls an “irrational dreamshot that was in no way a sequential expression of the cultural landscape where it is being realised.

“To relate to these conditions directly would have set a pretty low cap on our imaginations considering the state of things in Greece at the moment,” he argues.

However lofty it may sound, the project was partly a way for Varfis to avoid squabbling with children and parents at playground skate parks, and to give the committed adults of Athens’ skating scene a place to call their own. In the wake of the crash, Varfis snapped up the post-industrial space on which to build a haven for his community.

Varfis drew inspiration from the Free Basin by the US-based Simparch artist collective, Milan’s Bastard Bowl, and the Prinzessinnengarten community garden in Berlin.

Using €3,380 gathered by crowdfunding – which was backed by skating legend Tony Hawk – and a local grant, the bowl was pieced together using 52 sheets of plywood and was finished in September 2016.

But the skate bowl is more than just a place to hang out with his friends. Varfis regards architecture as a vessel for social change – mirrored in the reactions of the American Institute of Architects who tweeted #NotMyAIA after its CEO Robert Ivy wrote letter declaring the profession was “committed” to working with president-elect Donald Trump. Such designers see it as their duty to spark progression.

Watch a video of Latraac under construction below

With little more than wheels and a thin piece of wood separating them from their surroundings – whether they are in a specially-designed bowl or a flight of stairs in a block of flats – location has a huge impact on a skater’s experience. This is more important still in a country trying to recover from economic devastation, and Varfis hopes the bowl will help citizens reconnect with their city.

Paraphrasing Iain Borden, a historian, urban commentator and Vice-Dean of Education at The Bartlett School of Architecture, Varfis argues: “skateboarding is a fusion of mind-body and terrain generating a super-architectural space.”

“On the one hand it will be a garden space with a world class location for transition skateboarding right in the heart of historical Athens, which speaks for itself. On the other, it is an alternate proposal for ways to occupy and relate to derelict inner city space by creating a meaningful connection between the traditional and contemporary, providing an inclusive and positive identity template.”

But despite the spike in creativity, in the end, Varfis would rather not have had a crisis to react positively to. “The crisis definitely shakes things up and this is good for challenging corrupt systems, but the human cost is high.”