For the most part, my eight or so years of university education was spent in architecture school. Like every architecture student, I studied the buildings of the Acropolis in Athens (Ακρόπολη Αθηνών). It’s de rigueur. But from my vantage point in Oklahoma and Texas, the buildings were abstract. Facts and figures with line drawings of plans and elevations. Duly memorized and regurgitated but without the experience of feeling that only being there can provide. Almost two decades later, I finally have had the chance to close this particular circle by standing on the Acropolis for myself. The weather was overcast and not really what I would have wanted to make photographs, but I didn’t care. Not one bit. Simply being a student again was enough.
Plans and elevations I had studied decades ago came to life. The relationship between buildings and how they were sited snapped into focus and the parts were no longer simply discrete bits of knowledge, but a complete experience. Standing next to the Parthenon (Παρθενών) and looking over at the Erechtheion (Ἐρέχθειον) and the Propylaia (Προπύλαια), I remembered my professors’ lectures with a new sense of understanding what excited them about the place.
The most surprising moment to me came as I was standing on the edge of the Acropolis looking at the Acropolis Museum below. As I scanned the view, I noticed the ruins of a temple far off to the left where one column was on the ground. Gears spun in my head and I exclaimed: “Holy shit! That’s the Olympieion over there, isn’t it?” Entire chapters of study clicked together in an a-ha moment my professors probably hoped I’d have in a study abroad summer or the like. Delayed as it was, I’m glad it finally happened.
Posted by James Duncan Davidson.