I first met artist, designer and furniture maker, Ioannis Zachariadis at a cafe near Psiri. A friend of mine insisted I meet him. “You will get on with him, you’ll see,” she kept saying. I was on holidays and had no appetite for work, but I did not want to disappoint her.
Ioannis Zachariadis had designed apartments in the centre of Athens, behind the old stadium, that had “to be seen to be believed” according to her. But I was in no mood for shifting with my wife and nine year-old son, especially as we had already settled in nice apartments. Nor was I in the mood for more art talk. Nevertheless, “What harm can a coffee do?” I thought.
As soon as I met Ioannis, I was disarmed. He is a slender, elegant man that has the enviable gift of a full set of hair, youthfulness and good looks. His English is exceptional and before I knew it, we were talking about life, art, politics, the economy, love, children (he’s a father as well), Greece and so on. With little hesitation, I jumped on his motorbike and after a small heart attack while holding on to him for dear life while he sped through the congested streets of Athens, we made it to his Green Apartments. They were startling.
Right in the heart of the Athens, merely 100 metres from hectic Amalias Avenue, these apartments are like an oasis in the joyous pandemonium that is Athens. The apartments are set in a late 1940s low-rise apartment building, and they share a common green yard in the back, a luxury for central Athens. The front looks out to the pine forest of the Panathenaic stadium. Inside, the decor is a clean aesthetic reminiscent of a genteel middle class inner Athens of the 1940s. The tables are made by Ioannis, and the fittings are all bespoke.
The apartments are a seamless juxtaposition between period and modernity. “The apartments were my grandfather’s, this is where he had his surgery,” said Ioannis, as we sat in the sunken courtyard under a huge lemon tree, and drank gin and tonics. “It was in the 1940s, my grandfather was a gynaecologist and he would give poorer women lemons from his tree for vitamin C. He also had a goat for fresh milk, for the mother’s calcium or babies if the mother could not produce milk,” he added.
I was becoming gently inebriated on the gin and tonics as the shade of the lemon tree cooled us in the Athens summer. Outside the city must have roared as it usually does, yet inside Ioannis’ courtyard we could have been in a town or village far away from Athens.
Yet, we were walking distance from Zeus’ Columns, and the Botanical Gardens and a step away from some of Athens’ best taverns and bars. Importantly, the tables that grace Ioannis’ Green Apartments are sublime pieces. Ioannis melds marble, rose wood and steel creating exceptional art which references antiques but is wholly contemporary.
“There are always two or three elements that I bring together to make one. Marble is cold, wood is warm, the sharper the contrast the more sensational the outcome,” explains Ioannis. I asked, “Why do you focus on these incredible sculptured tables and not sculpture?” “There is something important about tables, they are a canvas for me,” he said. “A table is the heart of the house, it is where people eat, fall in love, meet, break up, work, discuss matters of importance,” he added. “Tables are also centre of any institution be it a bank, an office, even a church,”
For Ioannis tables are “holy” – “all human things occur around tables”. To create his temples of life, he mixes veneered wood with marble. “Look at this,” he said pointing to one of his tables. “Naxos marble is like snow, with its crystalline essence, and veneered dark wood is like wet soil, when they are together it is like a snowy mountain peak, it is so alive!” Ioannis trained in the UK and lived in London for over 10 years, “I studied in Guildhall where a group of 16 people were taken in to look at restoration techniques.”
The British system provided him with the discipline he needed. It is there that he learned to distinguish between authentic and fake antiques. “I was restoring antiques for years and when I began creating new works, I initially had great problems with people using my work,” said Ioannis. He overcame his “retentiveness” when he realised that “tables have no meaning without use”. “Now I allow them to be used naturally – to have life, to age beautifully. Marble and wood age beautifully they change hues, they take on a new life, as years go by they become repositories of meaning,” he said. “Look at the Parthenon, which is all marble,” he said becoming animated.
“When it was first created 2500 years ago it was snow white, now look at it – it has a golden glow – over 2000 years and it looks as beautiful.”
Ioannis’ parents were also creative people, his father an architect who wrote a definitive academic book on Greek architecture and his mother is an artist. His work, like the apartments he has designed, has a sense of Hellenic aesthetic, a sense of proportion and balance. He loves natural materials: “I am an authentic Hellene and marble is my authenticity, yet in Greece we have demeaned it, we have created pavements and sinks from a precious stone.”
Ioannis uses a lot of Cycladic marble, “the best marble in the world” and when he chooses marble it is difficult to know what he is getting. “You buy it as a great big stone and once you cut it you realise what secrets it has in it, the crystals, or the fine grey lines.” Like the stones that Ioannis buys, I had no idea what delightful secrets Green Apartments held for us when my family and I decided to stay there.
Under that majestic lemon tree, we watched our son playing with Ioannis’ external elevator that leads to his workshop while Ioannis grilled snapper on his small BBQ, while filling our glasses with drinks. At one point my wife turned to me and said: “He’s the Willy Wonka of Athens and his Green Apartments are like the Chocolate Factory… only instead of chocolates, Ioannis creates beauty… the danger is you may never leave.” Sitting in the damp cold of Melbourne, angst riddled over work, I long to go back to Green Apartments and sit with Ioannis to talk about life, love and beauty.
For information on Green Apartments go to www.athensgreen.gr