Rural and urban schools: Northern Greece in the interwar period

Abstract

Modernism—as cultural and artistic expression of modern core values—is often associated with urban and industrial contexts, in stark contrast to a “backward countryside”. Focusing on modernist reinventions of the rural landscape, MODSCAPES (funded under HERA JRP III call “Uses of the Past”, Oct. 2016–2019) specifically questions these preconceived ideas. In different political and ideological contexts agricultural development schemes carried out in Europe during the twentieth century were pivotal experiments in nation-building policies. In addition, they provided a common testing ground for the ideas, and tools, of environmental and social scientists, architects and engineers, planners and landscape architects, as well as artists. This contribution presents the case study of Northern Greece, focusing on rural and urban schools as a key architectural theme, called upon to express the founding values of a collective identity. The dialectic between tradition and innovation, eclecticism and modernism, uncovers its meaning case by case.