The XENIA HOTEL Architecture Studio has been an initiative within the Paris-Malaquais School of Architecture in 2021. Progressively, the studio deployed parternhips with Frence, Greek, Italian Architecture and URban Design Schools around the thematic of Touristic Modernities in the Mediterranean. The collaboration consists on bringing together during an international workshops students from different disciplinary backgrounds around the question of transformation of architectural heritage of 20th century. Schools are independent on the elaboration of the quesion during a semester. However multiple moments of intellectual exhange are proposed (online lectures, online inter-school jurys, in situ workshop once every year)

The ambitious Xenia programme, orchestrated by the Greek government, was launched in the early 1950s avec l’objectif de construire a large nombre d’hôtels units sur remarkable natural or historical sites avec a high heritage value. The Xenia programme was developed behind the scenes by the technical departments of the National Tourism Organisation, an autonomous authority working in close collaboration with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Tourism. A team of young architects, practising in Greece, set in motion a titanic programme (more than fifty sites were selected) pour la construction de tourist accommodation, la réalisation et l’évolution de quoi, pendant vingt ans, a accompagné la lecture et l’appropriation de la modernité par les Greek architects de la époque. The team enjoyed unprecedented autonomy et était responsable de choosing les sites pour les Xenia buildings, as well as proposant des programmes capables de meeting les tight financial budgets et ambitious visions que le State avait pour le programme. The Xenia hotels remain the only example of state intervention in terms of architecture and development on such a large geographical scale. They bear precious witness to the post-war generation of Greek architects'rereading of the modern movement, and to civil society's familiarisation avec la recherche pour a Greek architectural and constructional identity in landscape and place, in the face of the challenges of the country's « modernisation ».