Description

"Galley proof" of Kastra: Architecture and Culture in the Aegean Archipelago. To be updated with a revised, published version in Fall/Winter 2017. The book at hand, “Kastra: Architecture and Culture in the Aegean Archipelago,” is a sequel to “The Aegean Crucible: Tracing Vernacular Architecture in Post-Byzantine Centuries,” published in 2004. “The Aegean Crucible” focused on the vernacular architecture of the Aegean archipelago, while “Kastra” focuses on the collective fortification, a building type vital to survival in the region, during the thirteenth-to- eighteenth-century period. “Kastra” was also written on the conviction that what we identify today as the vernacular architecture of the Aegean islands emerged from the building of Kastra, the medieval collective fortifications of the Aegean archipelago. “Kastra” is a book about architecture and culture, written by an architect and addressed to the general public rather than to specialists. Observations and “notes” in the form of color slides taken during repeated visits to the region form the basic skeleton of the book, which is also enriched by the helicopter-based photographs of Nikos Daniilidis. Includes bibliographical references, index and gazeteer. Contents: Doges, Knights, Pashas and Pirates. The Aegean Archipelago. The Vernacular Response: Collective Fortifications. The Formal response: Detached Fortification Walls. The Hybrid Response: Sharing Lessons.