2017 / D E S I G N R E P O RT /
H E L L I N I K O N A I R P O RT, AT H E N S
ADAM KELLY
S Y R I A N PA R L I A M E N T I N E X I L E
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N O M E N C L AT U R E artifice
The purpose of an object, usually cunningly or artfully rendered.
extraterritoriality
To be beyond/ above/ immune to jurisdictions, as if separated legally from the terrain.
operations
The state of being operative, performed by an architecture that can ‘act’.
salvage
To find unfulfilled capacity in a material, object or even history itself.
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OO
S I T U AT E
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S TA D I U M
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SCREEN
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PROJECTOR
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OFFICE
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HOUSING
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SURFACE
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
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S I T U AT E This design report should be considered as a companion text to the large architectural model that was the principal output for the final semester of this course. As such, each chapter of this document is thematised in relation to each component of the architectural model before you: surface, stadium, screen, projector and office. In other words, the programmatic purpose of each component in the model (and project) is reflected in the thematic content of each chapter within this document.
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S I T U AT E /
model in gallery space
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stadium
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screen
projector
office
surface
plan of model
S I T U AT E
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Athens, Attica
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section of projector with offices behind
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Marc Augé, Non-Places, 1st edn (London: Verso, 2006).
This project explores the future possibilities of the former airport of Hellinikon as a liminal zone of extraterritoriality. Revealing and exploiting this condition, the process of salvaging this ‘constructed ground’ character establishes a Syrian Parliament in Exile at Hellinikon. The site has been identified as existing from three principle historic layers: the permanent (the airfield), the temporary (the failed Olympic complex), and the indefinite (the current refugee camp). In itself this categorisation identifies different levels of obsolescence on the site prompting a response on what ‘Salvaging Urbanism’ may mean in contemporary Athens. Therefore the project is founded upon and within the airfield layer of extraterritoriality, using it as a thematic and material base for the creation of a Syrian Parliament in Exile, whilst retaining the temporary Olympic layer above when it offers some form of programmatic capacity. Like the
airfield, the parliament is a similar ‘constructed ground,’ using the subterranean airfield as its foundation and re-constructing the surface of the site where necessary. It is the airfield that thematically enables a Syrian Parliament in Exile to exist on the site, it is a “non-place”1 already ingrained with a sense of extraterritoriality.
achieved. In the meantime, the project also addresses the issue of housing the refugees involved in perpetual transition through a contingent housing prototype that can be adapted to house a varied demographic of dweller. This unlocks Hellinikon’s potential as a permanent district within the city.
Thousands of refugees currently occupy Hellinikon in a ‘temporary’ camp. The Syrian Parliament in Exile intends to capitalise upon the airport’s extraterritorial condition whilst proposing a response to the site’s current occupants. It’s existence is predominated by a yearning for an alternative future, it is a parliament in waiting, aiming to propose a solution to a problem that has no immediately foreseeable end.
Perhaps, one day, it could all be folded away and transported, the project is assembled from a series furniture like objects that are deployed upon the surface of the airstrip. The parliament programme is assembled along one of the edges of the airstrip, in direct ‘conversation’ with the existing baseball arena, which becomes the public gallery of the debating chamber. A screen, a projector and a series of offices operate in relationship with each other across the site to create a new form of governing, one concerned with openness and incorporating a scalar approach to involvement: from large conventions to small scale meetings.
Like the traveller without a passport, the Syrian Parliament in Exile will remain in Hellinikon, between jurisdictions, until it’s legitimacy is
S I T U AT E
SYNOPSIS
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O1
S TA D I U M Extraterritoriality and The Exile
The stadium, here represented in abstraction, is a relic of Athen’s 2004 Olympics. This chapter will be concerned with the complex, layered nature of the site. It will delineate the historical liminality of the territory, as an airfield, Olympic complex and finally refugee camp, drawing out the themes that went on to influence the project.
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airport / 2000 /
S TA D I U M
2004 refugee camp /
The site now presents itself as place of stark abandoment. Airport terminals lie empty whilst Olympic stadia have degenerated and rusted. UN tents have since been strewn across the site as indefinite homes for refugees.
2017
The site of Hellinikon exhibits a complex, layered history. Beginning in 1938, it has accommodated an airport, Olympic complex and most recently a refugee camp.
olympics [baseball stadium]
HELLINIKON
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SSTTAADDIIU UM M
/ hockey stadium
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S TA D I U M
/ softball stadium + baseball stadium
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THE AIRPORT AS AN E X T R AT E R R I T O R I A L Z O N E
This anomoly has in the past been exploited to resolve diplomatic issues, including in the case of the Lockerbie bomber trial. In that example a sect of land within Schiphol airport was assigned to Scottish judicial authority for the duration of the trial. This concept of extraterritoriality is considered within the context of Hellinikon Airport, inspiring the founding of a Syrian Parliament in Exile. Extraterritoriality is essential to the possibility that a parliament for a foreign land may be conceived within Athens.
/ scottish court in the netherlands, 2001
S TA D I U M
International airports often exhibit the characteristics of extraterritorial zones. Custom and immigration controls, airside and landside delineations and duty-free retail are symptoms of a region that exists somewhere between legislations, places of exception where one is neither inside nor outside a country.
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THE EXILE
Over 1500 refugees are currently sheltered at Hellinikon. A former airport makes for a peculiar place to house refugees. The camp and the airport are similarly places of exception or difference: “If freedom of movement is, as Arendt (1978) claims, one of the most elemental of freedoms, then the camp provides the ultimate backdrop to the sublime feelings of placelessness that many experience as they wander through the airport. The camp, like the airport, is built for transit. Yet in the camp, no one moves. Both airport and camp constitute zones of exception, each are framed by a rhetoric of emergency, each are limit concepts of the other. One facilitates movement and the other denies it, yet both are zones of perpetual transit and futuristic promise.”2
As Arendt describes, the refugee camp is a temporary location of permanent transition, whilst the airport is precisely the opposite, a permanent location of temporary transition.
remain exiled in Hellinikon, between jurisdictions, until it’s legitimacy is achieved.
The Syrian refugee’s transition is indefinite, there is no knowing when or if they will be able to return home. This prompted the proposal of a programme on the site that might affect this future, that may build pressure for change in the country. The Syrian Parliament in Exile’s existence is predominated by a yearning for an alternative future, it is a parliament in waiting, a semipermanent solution to a problem that has no immediately foreseeable end. Like the traveler without a passport, this proto-parliament will 2
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Gillian Fuller, “Life In Transit: Between Airport and Camp”, Borderlands, 2.1 (2003).
S TA D I U M
/ Refugees occupying a terminal building
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L A N D S C A P E O F C A PA C I T I E S
This premise prompted a the analytical drawing opposite. Hellinikon has been read as a Landscape of Capacities, a place in which there exists a series of high to low tech structures, zones, and boundaries that have the potential to be reclaimed. This has incited a process of recoding the site according to different material or programmatic conditions which have the potential to be reappropriated.
S TA D I U M
In a time of crisis the future capacity of the preexisting can be uncovered and reprogrammed, whilst that which is extraneous can be discarded or morphed into something more productive. Obsolescence can be salvaged.
The closure of the abandoned site necessitated this study proceeded from a plan view point. 29
source
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softscape
seating
Covered
Stairs
Hydrological
runway
infrastructure
Barrier
trenches
S TA D I U M
Lighting
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O2
SCREEN tracings
In the project the screen acts as a communication device, a medium that has information projected on to it from a distance (both from the adjacent projector as well as at a technological distance from Syria through streams or newsreels). Correspondingly, this section of the document records the way that the project relates to the historical layers of the site, and how elements of these layers have been projected into the geometries of the new ‘parliament’ layer which acts as a curation of the palimpsest that is Hellinikon.
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A C O N T E M P O R A R Y PA L I M P S E S T
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airport
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olympic
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overlap + mapping
SCREEN
Hellinikon is the result of a layered tracing process, in which each surface bears a formal relation to the previous. The practice of tracing is not new to Hellinikon. Overlapped aerial photographs from different periods reveal a geometric similarity between the airport and Olympic layer, indicating a salvaging process is already ingrained in the site’s fabric.
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Parliament
housing
THE THICK AND THE THIN
refugee camp
The site’s palimpsest nature initiated a new material reading of the site. What if the site were to be considered as a thin, temporary olympic layer which was superficially applied to the thick, permanent airstrip layer, composed of two metre thick concrete?
olympic
airport
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SCREEN
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PROJECTOR instruments
The projector takes a figurative quality whilst acting as a central piece of apparatus that orchestrates the documentation of parliament proceedings as well as performing its function in its purest form, like an architectural instrument. Accordingly, this chapter will illustrate the way in which the project functions as a series of instruments, each operating to create a series of differently scaled gathering spaces for political discussion.
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A RT I F I C E The project intends to illustrate a clear approach to architectural formation. The architecture of the project acts as a set of instruments, that interact with site conditions to be productive in some way. instead of hiding their instrumental nature, this is expressed clearly. The architecture is illustrative of its purpose rather than concealing it behind a generated form.
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/ model surface layered on marked gallery floor
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PROJECTOR
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SITTING, SLIDING, CLAMPED
The thick airfield surface (represented in the model by extruded grey plinths) can be used as a foundation, and therefore certain elements of the project are deployed upon this surface, resting upon it like furniture sits (and is moved around) upon a floor. Elsewhere, the concrete mass is clamped on to, supporting cantilevered structures.
THE AIRSTRIP EDGE WAS USED AS A DEVICE
PROJECTOR
TO POSITION AND ORIENT THE PROJECT
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POSITIONING
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ministers offices
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projector
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agora
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politicians platform
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lobby
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public square
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restaurant
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official report / translation offices
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committee room
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tv control room
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administration
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service entrance
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kitchen
PROJECTOR
The project sits in relation to the abandoned baseball stadium, and uses it to act as seating for parliamentary presentations.
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G AT H E R I N G O P E R AT I O N S
Sharply contrasting with the dictator government in Damascus, the Parliament in Exile is reinvented as a place of conversation and communication, accommodating a series of differently scaled gathering spaces. A Syrian Interim Government functions as a technocratic government consisting of 12 ministers and 1 president. The platform on which the ministers stand during debates has two sides, and it’s rear wall (the screen) can be folded upwards to reveal an alternative smaller assembly space to the rear, for more intimate gatherings. This wall can also be used as a screen upon which footage pertaining to Syria can be projected.
1: meeting
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3 : c on f e r e n ce
PROJECTOR
2 : de b at e
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PROJECTOR
A camera transects the complex to ensure proceedings are captured, recorded and broadcast. This is stored in a protective cage in the projector, when not in use. The projectors function is to throw footage on to the screen, transforming the debate space into an outdoor auditorium. Finally, the ministers wing takes form as a series of modules, each of which operates to provide for small scale meeting spaces. In this way the project is a series of ever evolving gathering operations.
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O P E R AT I O N 1 MINISTERS OFFICE
Each ministers office contains a study, a reception, and, on the ground floor, a small raked seating stack (recovered from the abandoned stadium). Like a cabinet, the module can slide and hinge open to address the exposure or enclosure to the public space adjacent to it. This acts to increase or decrease the scale of gathering in the space. In this manner each module can be visually ‘read’ by the public: the more ‘opened-up’ a module is, the greater the interest in the matter under discussion.
minister’s study reception meeting space
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The model illustrates the rolling mechanism. The raked seating can be uncoupled from its base and create new programmatic adjacencies, for example as tiered seating for the outdoor screening space.
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ope ne d
hin g ed
i nt ermedi at e
un foldin g
new adj ac enc i es
PROJECTOR
se aled
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O P E R AT I O N 2 SCREEN
The screen is composed of a large transluscent sheet, held by a trussed structure and tensile wire. This is linked to a support structure via a steel rod allowing it to pivot into a large roof, to protect the adjacent politicians platform from the elements.
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PROJECTOR
The screen is purposefully non-immersive, demonstrating its operative properties through its machinic structure. As Wes Jones describes, “technology is a way of revealing.”3
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Marc Augé, Non-Places, 1st end (London: Verso, 2006).
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screen
roof
PROJECTOR
intermediate
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O P E R AT I O N 3 PROJECTOR
This structure houses a projector system that casts broadcasts, recordings and live streams from Syria onto the screen. A camera travels on a tensile cable to and from the stadium, transecting the site and recording proceedings. When not in use the camera is docked into a protective cage.
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speaker hood
projector flap
cage
camera
‘footed’ legs
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PROJECTOR
Routinely, the projector flap opens.
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Ultimately the project becomes a series of systems and moving parts that operate in relation to the gathering process. This produces a temporal plan of political choreography.
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OFFICE documentation
This part of the model represents one of the minister office modules. It is the location within the project where ministers would study documents and prepare information for dissemination to the public. As a result this chapter contains a more technical documentation of the project, including a series of diagrams that focus on the office in particular for the purpose of an environmental, tectonic and legal study. This begins with a demonstration of the future development of the project, including the incremental accretion of housing development on the urban scale, where issues of cost and feasibility are narrated.
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OFFICE /
view from stadium seating, with indication of housing development
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housing
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stadium
screen
projector
office
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OFFICE /
the parliament becomes an anchor for future urban development
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In contradiction to the presently proposed, and unrealistic, wholesale urban development of the site, the proposal is more attuned to the current political and economical situation of Athens. Urban development is prompted by central nodes of activity, around which infrastructure lays out an indicative layout. Housing can infill this in an incremental way, reaching critical mass before moving outwards. When it reaches the fringes of the site it can become a connected district of the site.
OFFICE
A C C U M U L AT I V E U R B A N I S M
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C I R C U L AT I O N ACCESS / ESCAPE / SAFETY
As previously described, the project is concerned with the gathering and dispersal of crowds. Landscaping walls are a key device used in the project to direct circulation around the Parliament and to delineate different entry and exit points to patrons. Cylindrical architectural elements act as ‘breakers’ intended to create dispersion amongst moving crowds to avoid stampeding, a popular tactic in crowd control. The primary roads principally follow the existing network of the airport runways, a pre-existing network.
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walls
breakers
primary roads
OFFICE
pedestrian paths
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C O O R D I N AT I O N C O N S I D E R AT I O N S
The process of model construction revealed an insight into plausible logistical issues involved in such a project. Translation from drawing to physical form gave a keen insight into the bespoke nature of the design, although it contains a number of repeated elements (office module, screen truss etc.) A management building contract may be able to offer the flexibility necessary to achieve such a project, relying upon craftman know-how as much as designer experience. During the scale model making process it became increasingly obvious that material systems that can be easily drawn or digitally modelled may prove uneccesarily complex or structurally unstable. Management contracting would allow for the adaptation of future designs based upon this knowledge. It assumed that in the project costs would be managed by the Greek governement, UN or other large organisation that had an interest in the development of the site and the welfare of the refugees. In either case funding would be very limited, a complication that has heavily influenced the salavaging approach undertaken during the project. 80
As previously described, the Parliament itself is envisioned as an urban institution, and would involve an initial investment of funds and energies. However the following housing is envisioned as a partially population initiated process, wherein each dweller is involved in the location and construction of their home, creating an expanding network of homes.
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OFFICE
O P E R AT I V E S T R U C T U R E S
The ministers office is here developed as an operative device through a study of its possible structure, environmental design and legal obligations.
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OFFICE
The skin of the bulding acts as the fundamental way in which the building ‘opens up’ to accommodate different scales of gathering. This created particular tectonic challenges. Here, the skin joins at an angle via a sliding mechanism. Therefore a rubber seal has been constructed between the two elements to form some form of seal when they are aligned. A weatherproof layer is provided on the inside of this outer skin. The metal skin is also lined with insulation to mediate temperature differences.
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OFFICE
An architectural language of ‘perching’ or ‘resting’ has developed, and has been developed through into the tectonics of the module’s structure. The frame sits on a series of feet which are bolted to the ground for rigidity and to stop slippage. Furthermore, the steel deck floor plates ‘rest’ on the angle beams to give the impression that the floors are being cradled on the runways surface.
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Structure
access patterns
The ministry wing consists of 13 self supporting, distinct modules. The structural make up of each module is a lightweight steel frame, topped by a steel truss. Importantly, the object rests on a series of feet that are bolted down to the runway to secure the module in place, using the runway as a foundation. The modules rest adjacent to a service and access platform. This is a rudimentary structure created by a precast concrete retaining wall and landscaping. The wall is secured to the runway by a steel dowel.
For ministers and staff the module is accessed from the platform, at first floor level. Stairs provide circulation between floors whilst access to the ministers private office is monitored by the secretary at entry level. For the public, the building can be accessed when it is ‘deployed’ for a meeting, via a counter-weighted metal access hatch at the front. Steps provide access to the seating.
heat pump (chiller)
6°C 12°C 35°C 23°C fan coil unit
to sea temp. - 21°C
Escape routes are similarly positioned to access patterns, however the public access point can act as an emergency exist for ministers and staff if locally located.
cooling Each module benefits from a fan coil cooling solution which is, in part, powered by a heat exchange mechanism that draws cool water from the sea. Importantly, the possibility of rust within the system is mediated by the use of a closed loop. Cold salt water is used to cool the water within this loop on a pier within the sea before it then, in turn, exchanges temperatures with the water used to circulate to each module. This heat pump is located in a a plant room shared between three modules. The fan coil cooling system is housed within the first level of the module. The adjacent concrete retaining wall and the existing runway provide a modicum of thermal mass which could be ventilated at night for cooling lag.
OFFICE
escape
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heat pump (heater)
12°C 24°C 7°C 19°C fan coil unit
to sea temp. - 17°C
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heating
ventilation
The heating provision for the module is essentially the same as the cooling system but in reverse. In winter, Athens doesn’t benefit from as great a differential between sea temperature and air temperature but solar gain could be achieved through the south facing glazing.
The module is normally mechanically ventilated, however if desired some of the various facade openings could be left ‘ajar’ so that fresh air could travel through the structure and exit at the large window to the rear.
Natural lighting is predominately provided through the rear, north facing roof light. Light can travel down through the stair column and penetrate into the lower floors. In winter the south facing shutters can be opened for additional light and solar gain. As a work space the artificial lighting provision would be task based and low level.
OFFICE
lighting
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HOUSING contingent
The proposal for a contingent housing prototype began with a consideration upon how to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Athens due to the influx of refugees. However Athens has a history of refugee arrival, it is in essence a city of former refugee districts. This proposal follows the same course, establishing a housing type that is adaptable to future demographics in the area, intending to expand into surrounding neighbourhoods and sew Hellinikon into the city.
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CONTINGENT HOUSING
The housing deploys a raise services infrastructure that traverses the site, entering the ground tactically, in between the thick airstrip surface. The housing also operates to create communal spaces within each group of dwellings, accommodating for the non-nuclear family structure which is common amongst the refugees currently occupying the site.
commu nal k i t ch e n
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Beneath the infrastructure which passes through each grouping are shared service, kitchen and eating spaces. Each unit can open or close acces to this shared space through a large pivoting door. There is also a large sliding panel that can separate adjacent courtyard spaces.
com m un a l court y ard
service infrastructure
c ommu nal di ni ng
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HOUSING
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it as a foundation and following its forms to produce an urban network.
HOUSING
The housing bears a close relationship to the pre-existing runway, utilising
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REFERENCES
Augé, Marc, Non-Places, 1st edn (London: Verso, 2006) Fuller, Gillian, “Life In Transit: Between Airport And Camp”, Borderlands, 2 (2003) Jones, Wes, Instrumental Form, 1st edn (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998)
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EPILOGUE This project is considered as one posible response to the urban situation of Hellinikon. It is a trajectory for a possible alternative political future with regards to the refugee crisis as well as a commentary on the notion of salvaging in the urban realm. The project proposes an architecture that operates rather than represent, and an urbanism that anticipates rather than legislate. It is founded upon a belief that architecture ‘does things’: that architecture can actuate alternative futures.
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