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Modern Architecture as Anachronism
Tradition and Modernity in the work of Dimitris Pikionis
Yorgos Tzirtzilakis
Dimitris Pikionis with Caresse Grosby in Delphi
"Anachronism is necessary; it is fertile"
Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps. Histoire de l'art et anachronisme des images
The impression most people have retained of Dimitris Pikionis is that of a solitary man who spoke in a gentle, mumbling voice ("like a soft drill", N. Hadjikyriakos-Ghika used to say) and spent a quiet life designing and teaching at the Technical University. In his writings, his paintings, his few buildings and the outdoor layouts he designed one can find a melancholy world with bursts of physiolatry and geocentric mysticism. In effect, however, he was an even more complex personality: an architect-thinker (he knew long excerpts from ancient Greek texts by heart) who gave precedence to painting. It seems strange that the best-known Greek architect of the twentieth century never missed an opportunity to say that "Architecture was never among my central inclinations".
Today we know that Pikionis tried an ascetic approach to attaining 'authenticity', and was enough of a mysticist to believe that what we call tradition could help us express a timeless and life-giving essence. The catch in this attitude is easy to discern: it is the difficulty in conceiving tradition not as a contemporary thing but as a changeable and diffused relation to reality. Indeed, in his notes for a speech at the Athens Academy, Pikionis himself would go on to generalise and speak of a "single tradition on the planet" which spreads "between East and West, North and South".
Dimitris Pikionis, Resting place at the church of Aghios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris, Landscaping of the archeological area surrounding the Acropolis, 1954-1957
So the time is ripe for a 'misreading', a revision of stereotypes. First of all, let us touch on a taboo subject: The most enduring elements of his work are the watersheds, the vertigo of mixtures and the cultural redefinition of bricolage. Although his relationship with handmade decoration and handicraft more generally is known, it has never been examined in the cultural, anthropological and conceptual context of the culture of bricolage. Pikionis moved around the crisis of the 'engineering' paradigm and the transition to that of the 'bricoleur' – the one who makes creative use of any material and object, working with disparate leftovers, scraps and combinations to renew or enrich his stock.
If the model of the 'engineer' was the uncontested symbol of modernism, the 'bricoleur' liberates the process of design from the dominance of industrial self-reference. The bricoleur, as described by Claude Lévi-Strauss, works with unexpected combinations and conversions, re-evaluating handicraft and the repressed dynamic of popular material culture. What matters most here is the process, not just
the form. In every historical fragment, every material relic or leftover, we can recognise the units for creating another – and this is why the process of bricolage is always partial and never finished. The intellectual equivalent of this type of strategic correlation with the past is the mythical or magical thought, that is, the kind of practical constructional process and learning which, according to Lévi-Strauss, is a trait of "primitive" societies.
Dimitris Pikionis during landscaping of the archeological site around Acropolis
It is this attitude that invests the work of Pikionis with a contemporary character. The "authentic" is combined with the handmade and the personal. This is evident throughout his work, from which I select indicatively the home-studio of sculptor Frosso Efthymiadi-Menegaki in Ano Patissia (1949). It is a 'landscape building' which promotes an impression of Secrecy. Indeed, more than an impression it seems to be a key goal, since there is no habitation without Secrecy. If "nature loves to hide", as Heraclitus said, this is even more true of habitation. And Pikionis was well aware of this, even when he said that "children learn by hearing the secret voices within them."
Walter Benjamin was one of the thinkers who persistently explored this special aspect of habitation and the changes brought about by the advent of modernity: the quintessence of architecture is its ability to hide, to protect from both the elements and prying eyes. "Glass is generally the enemy of secrets", he wrote in 1933 about Paul Scheerbart's Glasarchitektur; "This has now been achieved by Scheerbart, with his glass, and by the Bauhaus, with its steel. They have created rooms in which it is hard to leave traces". Now see how Pikionis added "the problem of the form" in 1946: "the great incongruous contrasts between [large] openings and walls divests the building of the half-lights which, as Rodin put it, are the life of a sculptural work". The half-light is also what can make "'plaster' look like 'human skin' and turn architecture into painting, into a 'sculptural work' in itself".
In the Menegaki home-studio – and in a more luxurious version in the Potamianos residence (1954) – the 'half-lights' of tradition unexpectedly coexist with some modern elements which belie the architect's accepted idiosyncrasy. Indeed, it appears that Pikionis did not summarily reject changes in house equipment, the new sanitary norms and the reorganisation of home life within the house.
Dimitris Pikionis, the Andiron on Philopappou Hill, Landscaping of the archeological area surrounding the Acropolis, 1954-1957
Visitors to the Menegaki residence will note the hidden atmospheres, the architect's handmade fantasies and the sculptor's luminous studio; Menegaki used to say that during construction Pikionis would go there at night with a candle, and next day he would change the staircase because he didn't like its shadows. This is more than an anecdotal testimony. In one of his poems, "Love", from the 1918 collection Poems in Prose, the architect himself says: "With divine light it clothed the oil lamp's feeble glow. Its presence makes the earthen walls, the humble threshold radiate. A light pierces the darkness of the night, and the winds hum in its glory".
It is worth noting here the affinity of the drawing that adorns and accompanies the poem with a specific kind of illustration which emerged in the early twentieth century and aimed at the ideal of primitivism, idealising man's 'pure' relationship with nature. Pikionis thus remains firmly focused on the Secret, not on the modern 'transparency' but on the incorporeal, the intangible or the pure. In other words, he concentrates on the relation of (rough) matter with light.
Dimitris Pikionis, Home-studio of sculptor Frosso Efthymiadi-Menegaki, Athens, 1949, side view
His projects and designs bring to mind an architecture which is modern and local in an unorthodox way. The same feeling is triggered by his famous archaeological landscaping projects around the Acropolis and Philopappou, the church of Aghios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris and the tourist pavilion (1951-1957), or the Playground of Filothei (1961-1964). What seems to stand out in all these places is a narrative perception of architecture and the physical experience from following certain routes. As we walk there again today, we realise that what matters most is not the way in which they assimilate the forms of tradition but the slow and quiet life they suggest: a sluggish time of emotions which makes us see differently, legitimising the delicate decorations and the rough details; a serene architecture that politely shares out moments of waiting, a sweet languor and images to discover. The model of slow living in these spaces attempts to exorcise the spectres of the capitalist metropolis and encourage you to savour the pleasure of innerness: a perception of time that approaches the "nostalgia of Adam's bliss", which we could also describe as "the bliss of tardiness —this would be the fitting name for the best part of this feeling of happiness".
Paolo Virno quotes in Grammar of the Multitude an excerpt from the novel La vita agra which can help us understand the anthropological paradigm derived from such an attitude: "The peasant moves slowly because the work is so related to the seasons; the peasant cannot sow in July and harvest in February. Workers move quickly, but if they are on the assembly line… One produces something from nothing; the other transforms one thing into another."
So more than an ostentatious relationship with tradition, this architecture expresses towards tradition a loving and ennobling awkwardness. It is in this spirit that we must look at the architect's well known obsession with the geophysical surroundings. I shall not repeat here the many things that have been written on this. I shall only stop at one way of putting it: "The architecture of Pikionis comes straight from the earth – as does the architect." This is the most apt observation made by Zissimos Lorentzatos: the earthly origin of architecture from the "primordial matter of mystery" (C. G. Jung) and its encounter with an almost pagan secretiveness.
Dimitris Pikionis, Primary School in Pefkakia, Lycabettus, 1932
The architect as ethnographer
In his Autobiographical Notes (1958) Pikionis condenses in two paragraphs much of the subsequent endless debate around his work: "When I became familiar with the Modern Movement, I felt instinctively close to it. If the more perceptive minds among us accepted and embraced the Modern Movement at that time, it was for the following reasons: it promised to become the embodiment of organic truth; it was austere, and fundamentally simple; it was governed by a geometry that conveyed a universal design capable of symbolising our age.
The Lycabettus School was built in 1933, but as soon as it was completed, I found it did not satisfy me. It occurred to me then that the universal spirit had to be coupled with the spirit of nationhood; and this led me to make buildings like the Experimental School in Thessaloniki (1935), the apartment block on Heyden Street, Athens (1938) —for which Mitsakis produced the floor plan— and the house for the sculptror Frosso Efthimiadi (1949)."
This distinction had a number of side-effects, to the point of drawing a dividing line between a first 'modern' period and a second one in 'the spirit of nationhood'. This may have been Pikionis's way of acquiescing to the views on 'Greekness' so prevalent in the 1930s Generation, to which he is known to have made a decisive contribution; however, it also promoted a great misunderstanding which prevents us from discerning the cohesive element that permeates his entire work: the constant preservation of the enigma within the difference.
In the same text Pikionis quotes the phrase that de Chirico had written on one of his portraits: "Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est…" The preservation of the enigma plays a binding role in the work of Pikionis and the distinctions between the 'contemporary' or 'universal spirit' and 'the spirit of nationhood' can easily tumble, simply because they coexist and make inroads into each other. Besides, Pikionis himself in "The Spirit of Tradition" spoke about the "deeper affinity of principle between the cubic shapes of Aegean architecture and those of New Art."
Nevertheless, Pikionis is the best-known but also the most misunderstood of Greek architects. The architect who is widely recognised internationally through exhibitions, tributes and publications is thought of by most as a venerable amateur of tradition who exalted the Greek landscape: in short, an exile from the reality we live in and a sterile rejector of everything new. Historiography and his 'followers' have been promoting his work in the wrong way, as a depressing cartoon of pietism. And it is truly strange how the false traps of schematisation are still reproduced.
On the contrary, Pikionis secured for Greek architecture a kind of modernism which (hoarsely) proclaimed as its motto the phrase: "Let us look like what we really are". To avoid misunderstandings I must say that if architecture today is postmodern, it is not necessarily so in the manner of Pikionis. The serene "return to Earth" advocated by Pikionis can be better seen today through (rather than against) the contradictions of modernism. We know now that one part of modernism came out of a strange return to myths and a renewed engagement with the 'spirit of cottage industry', bricolage, manual work and the traditional crafts and was fed by the rise of nationalisms in the inter-war years. Thus his true contribution is not a sterile rejection of the modern but the anthropological enrichment and its "metaphysical" priorities. This may be the source of the "emotional" (a word he often used) and melancholy strain of his work, which highlights the "loving" function of architecture.
Consider his much-debated references to Cubism, the novel and sometimes weird 'implants' of concrete in his shapes or his close relations with a staunchly modernist urban planner like Constantinos Doxiadis. And all this while he writes about the "absolute unity" of the "nation's roots". Characteristically, he is at once "attracted to and repulsed by" German idealism (whose "metaphysical mood", however, made it "particularly capable of approaching the mystical content of Greek civilisation") and modern painting, both of which he got to know during his studies.
The best things we have lie at these disturbed watersheds. So it would be no exaggeration to claim that one of the most interesting sides of Pikionis is that he realised the vertigo of these mixtures. I believe we should re-evaluate this aspect more carefully. Indeed, once he described the varied elements in these contradictory zones as alien, unequal and of different minds (diha-froneonta) – or what in contemporary terms we might call schizoid. It is an attitude with the traits of a cultural neurosis, in that
it contains a series of symbolic expressions of clashes and multiple fusions between desires and defences. In any case, such situations produce meanings, have an active and retroactive character, primary and deferred (Nachträglichkeit) fantasies which combine in peculiar ways the before and the after, temporality and anachronism, origin and repetition. In this sense, the elevation of anachronism into a dominant practice questions the established historical views and activates the modern approach of the montage – the constant layering of different times which coexist.
If not from folklore studies, Nikos Politis and Georgios Megas, it was certainly from poets like Gatsos or Elytis and writers like Nikos Gavriil-Pentzikis that we got to know of a folk imaginary which attempted to decode nature, giving a measure of balance even in areas of human activity that lie in the dark or the 'half-light'. Today we know that at some point this kind of strategy intersected with surrealism, and its impact has yet to be fully evaluated.
Yet if the architecture represented by the Rodakis House (1880)—an archetype for the architecture of Pikionis—had a collective, folk character, in Pikionis it becomes personal. What we perceive in this architecture today is not the frenzy of details but certain atmospheres; certain psychological conditions which have a special way of promoting the symbolic function, the hermetism, the attraction of 'opposite worlds', the juxtaposition of materials, and so on. Under such a perspective the writer, the artist (or the architect) is not a 'producer', as per the title of one of Benjamin's essays, but an 'ethnographer', according to the change introduced by Hal Forster.
Dimitris Pikionis, Settlement of Aixoni 1951-1955, residence preliminary plan
Architecture and melancholia: the libido of the unattainable
In recent years many of us suffocate under the inflated philology with which certain 'fans' and 'followers' have burdened the oeuvre of Pikionis. Yet his work itself reminds us today in an almost scandalous way how much we had been 'fooled': What was it that we missed? That his architecture laid claim to an area of discretion and to certain melancholy atmospheres (we must insist on the concept of atmosphere) in which Pikionis found a profundity, a scepticism, perhaps a disappointment, a spleen, but above all a kind of surprising self-sufficiency.
How we would define the relation of architecture with the melancholy mood (Stimmung), with these "ruins in the sphere of things" (as Walter Benjamin calls them)? Do not expect any linear corroboration of the familiar imagery, such as pictures reminiscent of the morose angel with
the discarded scientific instruments at his feet (Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia I, 1514), the seated woman who stares at her expressionless face in the mirror (Arnold Böcklin,Melancholia, 1900), or the dark and gloomy figures that haunt the uninhabited cityscapes of Giorgio de Chirico, with whom Pikionis had become close friends as students: "we had endless discussions about painting and our future plans under the arcades of the Technical University".
I think it is more of an atmosphere, a Stimmung, which Pikionis shapes as an idealisation of certain myths and as a state of alertness over the vanishing pre-capitalist (rural) tradition in all its versions and aspects: pagan, classical, Byzantine, popular.
Pikionis himself turns to depictions of Ariadne for many of his drawings, while he refers to Melancholia in the Autobiographical Notes as he links certain of these works with the sculptures of Scopas: "I must note here that my adoration of Greek antiquity had led me to produce a number of figures drawn in charcoal on Ingres paper, which, upon being placed near a flame, became suffused with the delicate tinge of ancient marble. I had also drawn some heads in red chalk in an attempt to capture some of the melancholy quality of Scopas's work– that 'powerful breath of inner life, but also pathos', as the architectural historian Tsoundas once described it. These drawings depicted venerable, bearded figures, with serene and austere brows furrowed by deep thought. While they had no great value as works of art, they showed the beloved idols which peopled my imagination."
It is worth going closer to the core of the concept. In 1915 Sigmund Freud, "clarifying certain theoretical precepts of psychoanalysis", links melancholia to mourning, pointing out that they are both reactions to loss. However, unlike the mourning process where what is lost is replaced by something else, in melancholia the emotional investment may be of a more ideal kind or unknown to conscience, extending into a part of the ego equated with what is lost. Under these terms we can say that in the case of Pikionis we have the faint outline of an architecture which encountered the notions of wear and poverty (Verarmung); the "shades" and "half-lights", not darkness; the inner rather than the visible nature of things.
In this peculiar encounter lies the meaning of his work. In a strange way we can assume today that by processing this loss his architecture gained in terms of live inwardness and mystery ("a breath of inner life and empathy"). The obsession with allegories, the practices of bricolage and the earth themes – that "primordial matter of mystery" we saw earlier – is inevitable: throughout medieval cosmology the connection between earth and melancholia is inseparable.
We do not need much more to suspect that we are before a revival of the romantic spirit, which is in any case a fundamental precept of the modern. This hypothesis
is confirmed by the paradoxical 'folk combinations', the 'half-lights', the neo-Platonic hints, the preference for the handmade and the irregular, the love for the picturesque and the fragment (what we usually describe politely as attention to detail) and the melancholy atmospheres. The difference is that Pikionis (like Cezanne) never resorted to the romantics' corrosive irony. Rather, he sought to familiarise us with certain practices of tradition at the very moment of their foretold eclipse – as if this would save "the last crumbs on which the Shape survives", or at least it would preserve their testimony.
We can discern a fetishist echo in this preservation attempt, which necessarily points to the lost Whole, the one 'we cannot have'. In short we have to do with a 'work of mourning' (Trauerarbeit), which enables the processing of the disjunctive contrasts between past and present, and above all the idea of reiteration as a form of "protection" against the shock of the new and as the "potentiality" of what used to be.
Dimitris Pikionis, collage from the "Documents of Folk Art" series Image from Agni Pikioni (ed.), Pikionis Paintings, Vol. B, Indiktos, Athens, 1997
Kosmas Politis once said that the Greeks are the most melancholy people on earth after the Jews. If this is true, it is easy to understand why Pikionis is seen as one of the greatest Greek architects of the twentieth century. His kind of attitude would be hard for others to continue, exactly because it touched on some truths that we still do not know how to handle.
Yet if today we set architecture at the core of a broader cultural approach, to a large extent we owe this to Pikionis. What really emerges is an architectural approach based on exchange, interaction and the appropriation of pre-existing forms, practices and tools, as well as an incomplete and contradictory cultural plan which in today's post-industrial age most people compare with contemporary creation.
It is through this prism that we must examine his relation to tradition. The dilemma in this case is the following: did Pikionis follow faithfully what Derrida has called "nostalgia for origins", identifying himself with all the entrenched illusions that see tradition as immutable, or did he recognise the changes that render tradition "open, so to speak, to the patterns of the avant-garde movement of New Art"? His attitude in this respect seems to have been equivocal: he often appears to favour the former direction while at the same time leaning towards the latter. It may be this very ambiguity that nurtures and enhances his work. "I coveted the unattainable" Pikionis once wrote, summarising his entire course in the primary motive of libidinal desire.


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B.C.'s homeless death toll: Why are so many people dying on our province's streets?
A makeshift memorial for Rick Hofs. Photo by Jackie Wong.
It was one of the bright, cold days in early January when Lenlen Castro met me in Marpole to show me the memorial displays she and her neighbours put together in memory of Rick Hofs. The 49-year-old man died December 27, 2012 behind the dollar store at 70th and Granville after spending the last five years of his life living on the streets of the south Vancouver neighbourhood.
On the morning of my appointment with Castro, yet another Extreme Weather Alert (EWA) had been issued for Vancouver, marking the second in as many weeks. The sub-zero temperatures that month had homeless advocates concerned that the winter weather would put homeless people in danger.
Under the 2009 Assistance to Shelter Act, a Vancouver community representative can call an EWA during periods of extreme winter weather that could threaten the health and safety of a person sleeping outside. The EWA program also opens additional temporary shelter space throughout the community and activates the Assistance to Shelter Act. The Act grants police the capacity to assist a homeless person to a shelter during extreme weather conditions. Once the person is in the shelter, the choice is his or hers to stay.
According to friends of the man who died only steps away from a Marpole extreme weather emergency shelter, Hofs was not likely to act on another person's urgings to find him a place to sleep indoors. He, like many who live on the streets for extended periods of time, refused to go inside.
As was apparent by the tremendous and emotional turnout at the Marpole memorial service for Hofs January 17, the man was widely loved. But many, including Castro, felt like they were at a loss for what they could do for him beyond offering their friendship and what personal resources they could.
Castro remembers Hofs' health declining over the last months she knew him. "The last time they released him from the hospital, he was definitely sick," she says. "The last time I saw him, he had just come out of the hospital. He reached into his bag and took out a gift for my daughter. I helped him with his blankets, laying them down for the night. I said, 'Don't worry, I'll be back.'"
She's still reeling from the loss of a person she considered a friend. And she wishes that she—and the community who cared about him—could have done more to keep him well. Hofs had struggled with alcohol addiction and related health concerns, like seizures.
"He had difficulties," Castro says. "But in his time of need, where were we? How he died was so sad, hearing how he was still in turmoil."
Police have determined that Hof's death was not suspicious. The BC Coroners Service is still investigating how he died.
The leading means of death among homeless individuals is poisoning related to alcohol or drugs, according to the Coroner. Alcohol and drug-related deaths count for 29.8 per cent of deaths among homeless people, followed by the hard-to-pinpoint "natural disease" (22 per cent), and then, by a wide margin, "motor vehicle incident" (sic), at 7.7 per cent. This information is supplied in the BC Coroners Service fall 2012 report on deaths among homeless individuals between the years 2007 and 2010. It's the only publicly available information that tracks homeless deaths over time and looks at how people died, where they died, their demographic information and average age.
But homeless advocates say the report doesn't fully represent the homeless population, nor does it consider the more fluid, nuanced nature of the homeless experience.
Bernie Pauly is a registered nurse and a scientist who teaches in the University of Victoria's School of Nursing and works as a scientist and researcher for the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C. (CARSBC). Her research frequently sees her collaborating with community organizations that work with homeless populations.
"When you're doing work in homelessness, you're constantly bumping into the fact that the people you know and encounter in your research are dying," she says. On the Coroner's report on homeless deaths, "it just doesn't show the scope of the problem and the reasons," she says. "It doesn't capture, in my mind, many people who would have been homeless maybe off and on through their life, or who have died because of the consequences of living in such extreme poverty for longer periods of time."
Pauly adds the Coroner's reporting on homeless deaths is a reflection of a subset of the homeless population, not the whole. The BC Coroners Service uses a definition of homelessness that captures people living on the street (what the report describes as the "street homeless"), and those who are staying in emergency shelters or another short-term housing situation, such as staying with friends, family, or in a safe house for youth or families (what the report refers to as "sheltered homeless.") It also retrieves cases from the BC Coroners Service database if "no fixed address" or the word "homeless" is provided.
To Pauly, this method of counting homeless deaths does not adequately capture the whole homeless population. "It doesn't reflect the scope of the problem," she says, adding that many homeless people will use a friend's address or the address of a drop-in agency to avoid the stigma around homelessness.
"In the Canadian Definition of Homelessness and those at risk of homelessness, one of the things we know is even when someone's housed, if they've been homeless most of their life, they're at the same kind of risk of death. So there are many, many people who would never get into this definition that the coroner uses."
The Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN) released the new Canadian Definition of Homelessness in September 2012. The CHRN defines homelessness as a spectrum representative of a variety of vulnerable housing experiences.
The CHRN definition includes people who are unsheltered, in emergency shelters, provisionally housed and at risk of homelessness. The BC Coroners Service captures only two of those four categories in its report. However, the report does include a note stating, "this report represents all cases identified via this method but may not be an all-inclusive list."
The real cause of death
Despite its limitations, the Coroner's numbers reflect some realities of people living on the streets. In the years counted on the report, 85.1 per cent of all homeless people who died and were captured in the Coroner's report were male; 62.5 per cent of all who died were living on the street; and 91 per cent died between the ages of 20 and 59, earlier than the general population.
Vancouver was the site of the largest number of homeless deaths between 2007 and 2010, with 45 deaths reported. Victoria, a much smaller city, followed Vancouver, with 25 deaths. And Surrey, larger than Victoria by more than 100,000, had 15 reported deaths.
"This year has been a particularly bad year for Victoria," says Andrew Wynn-Williams, executive director of the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness. "Something like over 30 people have died who either were homeless or have been recently homeless. And there's been no one particular reason for it. There've been suicides, there've been accidents, there has been a fire, some people have died because of drug issues. Some people have died because of violence issues. Some people have died because of health issues. There's no one particular cause."
The 2012 surge in Victoria homeless deaths—three times the usual rate, at about 30 homeless fatalities for the year—was not captured in the Coroner's report, which includes data up to the year 2010. But searching for causes fails to get at the root of the problem, Wynn-Williams says.
"It could be kind of comforting to say, 'Oh, it's a run of bad drugs that are kind of killing these people.' It would be kind of an excuse for us to put the blame somewhere other than on ourselves as a society," he says. "These people are dying because being homeless is a very, very difficult life."
The solution, he adds, is not to look at the Coroner's report and identify gaps in services. "The solution is to end homelessness. Homelessness is caused by lack of affordable housing and low incomes; it's when someone's personal circumstances interact with the economic situation overall."
Victoria, like Vancouver, is an expensive place to live. "We have quite an expensive city and people with lower incomes really can't afford to live here," Wynn-Williams says, echoing a familiar local refrain on Vancouver's lack of affordable housing. "The greatest challenge we face is two things: one is the lack of affordable housing that's just plain housing that people with low incomes can live in. And the other is lack of supportive housing."
Vancouver's most-talked-about homeless deaths have involved individuals who died in the winter or summer months, sharpening public calls for increased services to keep people safe in extreme weather.
Mayor Gregor Robertson built much of his successful first 2008 mayoral campaign around the death of Darrell Mikasko, a homeless man who burned to death trying to keep warm after being turned away from a Kitsilano shelter. Later that year, after Robertson was elected mayor, the first Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT) shelters opened on the heels of the December death of a woman known as Tracey. She had settled down for the night near Hornby and Davie streets as the temperature dropped to -8 C. The wind chill had it feeling more like -13 C. Tracey was sitting in her shopping cart when she became engulfed in flames after lighting a candle to try to stay warm. The following year, in July 2009, Curtis Brick died in Grandview Park near Commercial Drive on one of the hottest days of the year. And then there was the recent death of Rick Hofs. His last days coincided with a cold stretch of weather in Vancouver.
All four incidents, while highly publicized, are flashpoints of a much larger problem. The 2012 Coroner's report on homeless deaths shows that 33.3 per cent of the total homeless deaths between 2007 and 2010 occurred in the winter months of November, December, January and February. In the summer months of May, June, July and August, 27.9 per cent of the deaths occurred. The month with the single highest number of homeless deaths over the years counted in the report is October. That month alone accounted for 15.5 per cent of all homeless deaths through the calendar year. The next-largest number of deaths in a single month is April and May, where 10.1 per cent of homeless deaths occurred in both months.
So while emergency winter shelters do provide a critical service, the Coroner's report does not indicate that shelters fully prevent winter-weather deaths, especially among those who, for a host of reasons, choose not to go indoors. Also, the report shows that poisoning related to alcohol or drugs, natural disease, car accidents and falls are the leading causes of death, not exposure to heat or cold. In fact, exposure to the cold accounted for just three per cent of homeless deaths in the Coroner's report on homeless deaths between 2007 and 2010. And 1.2 per cent of deaths were caused by exposure to the heat.
The BC Coroners Service has previously reported that a homeless person dies every 12 days in this province, and figure that doesn't capture the population who have been homeless at one point or another, but are housed when they pass away.
"Being exposed to the cold makes you more vulnerable to other things. Your health decreases quite significantly when you're homeless. You're much more vulnerable to all kinds of things," says Wynn-Williams. "Looking at the chart [on the Coroner's report], you might say, 'Oh yeah, that guy died of exposure,' whereas if somebody is on the street one night and catches pneumonia and died, that's probably exposure, too. But it would be listed as an illness."
Despite campaign promises from Mayor Robertson to end street homelessness by the year 2015, it's clear that Vancouver is a long way from solving the problem. A January 13 press release from the mayor's office showed the City of Vancouver's four temporary winter shelters had to turn people away 893 times since they opened in early December.
Since 2005, the total number of homeless people counted in Vancouver's annual homeless count—widely understood as an undercount—has grown faster than Vancouver's general population.
According to the latest 2012 homeless count, 1,602 homeless people were counted. Unsheltered homeless jumped to 306 from 154 in the 2011 count. And the 2012 count indicated Vancouver's homeless are in poorer health today than in any previous year.
Back in Marpole, Castro looks to the spot where Hofs used to spend his days. Their friendship changed her; she is now volunteering with homelessness awareness groups in Vancouver and is eager to learn more about how to work with the homeless population.
She remembers Hofs feeling self-conscious about his addiction, wanting to get out of it, but unsure how to proceed. "I knew he didn't want to go to a downtown shelter because of the drugs there," she says.
"What's touching to me now is how many people hoped he would be okay out there. I can't help but ask myself, 'Should I have done this? Should I have done that? Should I have done everything I could?' There is a real moral question. What are we conditioning ourselves to believe about ourselves and each other that prevents us from helping people?"

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Griffith University has one of Australia's largest and most highly recognised aviation teaching programs. Over the past 25 years teaching in this field, we have built an international reputation for graduates who are industry ready. Our aviation staff have strong industry connections and some are world leaders in aviation research.
The Bachelor of Aviation is a two-year, accelerated degree allowing students to progress more quickly into an aviation career or flying training.
You will be introduced to the sciences underpinning the theory and practice of aviation, including the basic principles associated with each of the different phases of ab initio flying exercises in our virtual reality flight simulators. You will also study courses in areas such as navigation, safety management systems and the human factors. Through the Bachelor of Aviation, you will develop the skills needed for lifelong learning in the evolving aviation environment.
The Bachelor of Aviation together with the Graduate Diploma of Flight Management will allow graduates to be ready to work in the aviation industry as a commercial pilot.
Entry into the program is either via Standard Entry or Professional Entry for those holding a Commercial Pilot Licence (MEIR) or higher. The Trimester 2 intake is only available to students completing a Professional Entry pathway.
The Bachelor of Aviation will prepare you for employment in the aviation industry in a variety of areas such as management, research safety and human factors roles. Our graduates have been successful in gaining a range of flying and management positions with organisations such as Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Etihad, Jetstar, Qantas, Regional Express and Virgin Australia as well as Airservices Australia and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
Together with the Graduate Diploma of Flight Management, you will be ready for work as a commercial pilot.
The Qantas Future Pilot Program (QFPP) is open to all Bachelor of Aviation students and provides students with mentoring from experienced pilots during their degree. Graduates of the QFPP may be selected to transition to employment with QantasLink.
On completion of both programs (Bachelor of Aviation and Graduate Diploma of Flight Management), you could find employment opportunities in charter work, regional airlines, flight instruction (theory and practical), aerial services (agricultural spraying, aerial surveying and photography), airline and airport management, research, human resources in government organisations such as CASA and the Australian Defence Force (in first officer positions).
ATAR/RANK: 65.00
The Griffith University's Undergraduate Programs Admission Policy will apply.
VET studies
VET qualification, Certificate III
The Professional Entry pathway has two entry points catering for basic and advanced levels of qualifications and experience.
To be eligible for admission with 80 credit points of advanced standing, a student must have the following:
Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL)
Multi-Engine Command Instrument Rating (MECIR)
Upon acceptance, students will be granted 80 credit points of advanced standing on the basis of their qualifications and experience.
To be eligible for admission with 160 credit points of advanced standing, a student must have the following:
Air Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) [granted in accordance with current CASR Pt 61 provisions or equivalent provisions]
Air Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) theory examinations passed (ATPL frozen) AND be currently cleared to line with an airline operating CASR 25 / FAR 25 aircraft type(s)
Upon acceptance, students will be granted 160 credit points of advanced standing on the basis of their qualifications and experience.
Applicants should upload a copy of their pilot licence with their application. If applicable, copies of authorised examination and assessment report/s and a letter from their employer which states that they are cleared to line and that the airline operates CASR 25 / FAR 25 aircraft types should be attached.
English Proficiency Requirements
English language requirements apply to International applicants and other applicants whose previous study was undertaken in a language other than English. The minimum English language requirements for such applicants for entry to this program are as follows:
A minimum overall band score of 6.5 on IELTS (Academic) with no sub-score of less than 6.0
OR a minimum score of 575 on TOEFL
OR an internet-based (iBT) TOEFL score of 79 (no sub-score less than 19)
OR no score less than 3+ in each skill of the ISLPR (conducted by ISLPR Language Services only)
OR a minimum overall score of 176 (no score less than 169) on C1 Advanced (formerly Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English) or C2 Proficiency (formerly Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English)
OR an overall score of 58 in the Pearson Test of English (Academic) with no score less than 50.
English test results must be no more than two years old.
Applicants should refer to the following University policy for further information:
Undergraduate Programs Admission Policy
International students who successfully complete the Direct Entry Program (DEP) will satisfy the English Language requirements for this Griffith degree.
The Direct Entry Program (DEP) is not available for Domestic students.
If you do not meet the University's specified English language requirements, you may wish to contact the Griffith English Language Institute to increase your eligibility for entering a Griffith University program. This Institute offers a number of English language and other courses at both its Brisbane and Gold Coast branches:
Griffith English Language Institute
Griffith University grants credit and recognition of prior learning which may relate to prior formal learning or prior informal and non-formal learning. For more information, please visit the following website:
For the award of Bachelor of Aviation (BAvn), you must successfully complete 240 credit points, made up of the core courses AND
10 credit points of Level 1 listed electives; 20 credit points of Level 2 or Level 3 listed electives.
For the award of Bachelor of Aviation (BAvn), a student admitted with 80 credit points of advanced standing must successfully complete 160 credit points, made up of the core courses AND
100 credit points of listed electives.
For the award of Bachelor of Aviation (BAvn), a student admitted with 160 credit points of advanced standing must successfully complete 80 credit points, made up of the core courses AND
50 credit points of listed electives.
This degree may be awarded with Distinction where a student achieves a minimum program GPA of 6.5 with no failed courses. The words 'This award was achieved with Distinction' will be recorded on the testamur.
Degree structure can be found here