ARTIFICIEL, Chténi Cup

“Walking the streets of Athens, one will observe that most buildings constructed between 1950 and 1970 are dressed in surfaces of chased cement facing, a technique colloquially known as Artificiel. This “skin” of the city, at places well-preserved, but most often, visibly worn or poorly preserved, caught my attention since quite some time. The scale of application of this technique in Athenian buildings is so ubiquitous that, if there were one texture to stand as signature feature of the city, it would be the texture of those artificiel. If I had to choose one characteristic trait of Athens to incorporate in my design work, then I would clearly choose artificiel; which is what I did.” Yiannis Ghikas

Using photogrammetry, we scanned three basic types of artificiel (fine/chténi, medium/thrapína, coarse/koutaliá) on three urban buildings, in the districts of Kypseli and Kolonaki. We used the digital reliefs to build 3d models of the objects which, when printed, formed the base for the construction of the molds where porcelain is cast.