Persistence of the vernacular: A minority shaping urban form

Abstract

This paper presents the emerging expression of architectural identity in Dekaokto, a refugee neighbourhood built by the Greek government in the northern Aegean port of Kavala. Ever since the refugees occupied Dekaokto in the mid‐1920s, houses and neighbourhood space have been gradually appropriated and modified to restore a way of life left behind in Asia Minor. Refugee culture was created and re‐created throughout decades despite official attempts to purge the new Greek state of its Turkish‐oriental influence. By examining the refugee experience, we witness the invention of a ‘high’, or national culture, through its inherent opposition to the ‘low’, or local culture. High culture is traced here through the neoclassicist national programme officially adopted and promoted by the Greek state in public architecture. Evidence of refugee ‘low‐culture’, on the other hand, is to be found in the living testimony of its domestic architecture.