ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Architecture and building as modes of self representation. It intends to provide the quiet voice of resistance, the challenge of a "high," or national, culture from the margins, by the "low," or local, culture, as found in the living testimony of the domestic and neighborhood space emerging from the compact social fabric of the urban refugees from Asia Minor. The chapter traces high culture through the neoclassic or classic revival—read European or western—national program officially adopted and promoted by the Greek state in public architecture and urbanism. Evidence of refugee "low culture" is to be found in the living testimony of the residential space of the refugee neighborhood of Dekaokto and in its adaptation to the regional urban space and building conventions. The construction of refugee housing itself was used as a vehicle for implementing the Greek nationalist program and as an opportunity to speed up the modernization of the Greek state.
