Take Care: Healing Springs & Baths in Greece: Book launch and talk

On Thursday, November 19th, 7:30p.m. Hyper Hypo invites you to the Athens launch of the recently released book Take Care: Healing Springs and Baths in Greece (Park Books – Zurich, 2026) by Lydia Xynogala, with a conversation between the author and architect and professor Thanasis Manis.

The presentation will be held in English.

A few words about the book:

Since the early 19th century, Greece’s numerous thermal springs have been not only places of well-being and healing, but also venues where the newly independent state has pursued its aspirations for prosperity, modernization, and integration into institutional Europe. For modern Greece, thermal water is more than just a natural resource. It has evolved from a public good and remedy into a versatile instrument of national identity, scientific research, and the pursuit of political and business interests.

Take Care: Healing Springs and Baths in Greece explores the history and political transformation of the country’s mineral baths—and of a therapeutic culture that has evolved since the late nineteenth century. Lydia Xynogala tells the story of scientific, social, and political forces driving this development, linking the nineteenth-century Paris World’s Fairs with Greek hospitals, factories, research institutions, hygiene exhibitions, and healing baths. She also examines the fate of public resources in the turmoil of Greece’s public debt crisis in 2010–15 and the wave of privatizations sparked by it.

Xynogala’s book combines an interpretation of archival sources with field research findings, oral history, and ethnographic records. Illustrated with historical and newly taken photographs and documents, her narrative follows the intersections of environmental science, natural philosophy, and the history of public health and architecture.

Lydia Xynogala (Dr.sc ETH Zurich) is an architect and writer working between Athens and Zurich. She currently teaches at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture and The Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Her research on Greek mineral springs was nominated for the ETH Medal and forms the basis of her new book, Take Care, published by Park Books. Her architectural practice, ALOS has won numerous awards, and in 2026 earned a nomination for the European Prize for Urban Public Space. Her essays and projects appear in e-flux architecture, Log, Future Anterior, Domus, and MIT Thresholds among others. She previously taught at Columbia GSAPP, Princeton, and The Cooper Union in New York. Lydia also serves as a writer and editor for Kyklada Press and founded and directs the association Friends of the 750 Mineral Springs of Greece, advocating for the maintenance and revitalization of these healing environments.

Thanassis Manis is an architect and Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture of the University of Patras, where he teaches architectural and urban design studios. His Athens-based architectural practice, manisoffice, engages with the relationship between architecture, place and everyday life, drawing on the qualities of the existing environment. He collaborates as an editor and curator with DOMa, an independent institution for contemporary architecture, on publications, archives, exhibitions, conferences and educational programmes. Since 2020, he has directed the international magazine DOMa, which approaches the architectural project as an open archive that reveals aspects of contemporary culture. He also co-curates the DOMa Summer School architecture workshops, which bring together students, architects and educators from around the world.