Santorini is one of those greek islands that have become so polular its actually scary. The whole island is built up in a totally random and uncaring way, full of buildings that are actually garbage. The view towards the volacano is of course fantastic blah blah blah, and funnily enough the most beautifull spot on the island is a garbage dump with a spactacular view. Part of the dump is used as a moto-cross training track and there seems to be an abandoned factory on the side. The slopes towards the dump look like giant earthwoks, sort of like Michael Heizers' Double Negative in Grand Canyon but with a fabulous view of the Aegean.
The vernacular architecture is a kind of tubular-dome thing which I think was originally derived from the excavated houses that were easy to build inside the lava.
Now they just copy the tubular dome in concrete, in a kind of pre-fabricated architecture that is cast in place but pre-designed. Some good examples of this exist in the National Bank complex in the main city,
a relic from the 60's when Greece invented it's own brand of vernacular modernism otherwise know as critical regionalism.
If I wasnt on vacation and in a crappy little internet cafe, I'd write tons more on this, but this funny photo of a too-thin-to-inhabit tubular domino will have to say the rest.
Cant' seem to be able to stop posting these days, probable because I'm finally at an internet connection and also seeing tons of beauty around. Everything seems to be about island architecture, and funny enough the Greek Pavilion at this years' Venice Biennale will be about the Aegean, and even though I'm not at all involved with that, it will be interesting to see what its all about. Right now we're in Paros staying with Eleni and Joanna, and on the way to the so-called gay beach Laggeri (more on this later) we passed by this amazing hotel.
Another cosmic coincidence: The Hotel was designed by their dad Makis Kostikas in 1967. It is a rare deviation from the vernacular modernism as established by Aris Konstandinidis, who designed most of the hotels of the period and reigned the island tourist landscape as head architect of the Ministry of Tourism.
The Hippocampus Hotel is a kind of Metabolist Greek Island thing, which hints at a possible direction the islands could have gone into: Treated as the supernatural lunar landscape that they really are, and given a heavy dose of Science Fiction Architecture. 
A Jules Verne monster on a hot white roof; 
A stair that leads to nowhere; 
A wannabe-muslim christian church poured right out of the ice-cream machine; 
a post-modern roofie gone a bit weird, 
and weirder, 
and a little white nightmare suffering from the recent trend of buildings spotted with stones (?)
The look is casino interiors combined with a strange machine aesthetic, they try to look like they're not on the water. Sometimes they're interesting, sometimes boring and sometimes they look better upside-down.
The main consensus is that everybody tries to recreate a kind of island/village architecture with very mixed results. It is most interesting in rich peoples' homes because they use rough materials like huge wodden boards au naturel but then to make it look expensive, everything is totally manicured and basically all varnished with a transparent coat of euros. The result is pure Disneyland, full of extremely artificial looking nature. The rest of the island is full of half finished concrete mini-dominos' that become boring when finished. 
Still the light and the sea is very pretty blah blah blah and also I got a cold and that's why I'm posting.
Erwin Wurms' amazing Fat House from an exhibition somewhere,
A poor christmas decoration
and an ominous looking light at a generic expo center in whateverville.
There were some hazy horizons after that, and a nice skylight this morning.
It looks much more interesting than these photos and it's so hot right now that I cannot think properly or say something interesting about it. But it looks like a good place to potentialy hang out or maybe get lost. 
and this is the typical athenian office building from the 60's, the facade full of airconditioners, which is interesting but not too much.
This tree really wanted to get in,
This is a maquette for a Radio-Announcer by Gustav Clucis, 1922, 
I'm equally obssesed by both
Here's some pics of the Philosophy Hut. It's smaller than I originally planned but I actually thik it works better at this scale,
its the perfect spot to relax in after you're been Baptised by August(In The Name of Neen, Miltos Manetas). 
Inside you can contemplate the light and shadow created by thg\e cut-out patterns or watch Angelo's walking face (TalkingAndWalking.com, Angelo Plessas).
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