Representing Greece: A story on marble

Abstract

In 1938, young architects Alexandra and Dimitris Moretis were commissioned by the Greek State to design and build the pavilion of
Greece in the New York World Fair of 1939. The Greek representation in the “World of Tomorrow” Expo was mainly a reminder of the
past: a pavilion with marble showcasing important ancient Greek sculptures (both in copies and originals). The link between ancient
Greek civilization and modernism was still at stake, and “Greekness” was the vehicle for modernism in interwar Greece. Twenty seven
years later, Greek-Canadian architect Ninos Chryssopoulos won the competition for the Greek pavilion for the Montreal 67 Expo, with
a proposal of perfectly aligned white cubes around a courtyard. Minimal in form, the pavilion was presented as an invocation of both
the Cycladic vernacular and the ancient courtyard prototypes; yet there were voices asking for more “Greekness.” What changed and
what stayed the same in the course of thirty years, in the architectural representation of the Greek State abroad