acts Prologue I. Polikatoikia & The Machine II. The Anti-Polikatoikia & The Palace III. The Fire & The Ruin IV. The Flood & The Shed V. The Aftermath & The Network VI. The Bloom & The Garden Epilogue
act prologue
Macbeth(f.) : Perhaps, we were always in this duality. Maybe repetition and difference were always separated from each other. The mountain and the polykatoikia.
Macbeth(f.) : Does time move independently or is it immersing us? Is our environment stable? Is everything just a repetition? How can I know that reality surrounds me? Or that reality even exists?
Macbeth(f.) : Maybe, each time I repeat that, I can live through another time (and if repetition includes difference in itself, it doesn’t matter where I have been since the beginning. Even if I’m in the land of repetition. Maybe, each time I repeat that, I can live through another time (and if repetition includes difference in itself, it doesn’t matter where I have been since the beginning.
*Music playing*
KYRIAKOS PANAYOTAKOS(“The Blue Polykatoikia”, 1932) is dead.
(2 months earlier, where the story begins)
We see THREE WITCHES(m.) in the land of mountains, discussing. The land of mountain is the reverse of Athens, a land where there are only non-built landscapes. The mountain is important in terms of the site is chosen in Athens. From the beginning, the site which had been chosen, the Strefi Hill in Athens had been important due to its dual nature, where there had been a disruption of a —what seems to be infinite— fabric of polikatoikias. It had been showing that such a duality can bring up many potentials in this typology. A hope for possibilities. And the land of mountains is precisely where the decision of Macbeth is taking place, too. The beginning of a series of probabilities which are centered around, and for, polikatoikia.
They are making a plan of destroying MACBETH. The way to do that is to play with MACBETH’s core psychological characteristics. Three prophecies to announce him as such, which is to let him know that he will be the authority of Athens. THREE WITCHES(M.) (All at once) She will be “the author”.
MACDUFF is not another hero that will save Athens by himself. Athens from MACBETH’s future invasions. He is an urban planner and an activist. A spokesman of Athens is in the context of the city, because he sees this is howt things need being done there at that moment. No state has forgotten the needs of the city and inhabitants, and so he is a believer of informal and faster interventions. No leader is needed, the collectives handle Athens on their own informally, and this is the way of a new possibility in Athens in the future. With these values that he has, we see MACDUFF drawing at his desk.
MACDUFF is looking over to an open courtyard with typical polikatoikia elements which are in the view. The setbacks, the balconies, the tents‌
Suddenly some of them start to disappear. This gives a clue of the next acts. There will be an intervention made to each element of the typology of polikatoikias, and the method to do that will be through abstracting some parts of the typology as a whole...
And by making the smaller components visible... Some of them will become invisible.
(6 months later)
Back to today where the witches are telling Macbeth what is going to happen, the prophecies. MACBETH(f.) learns that she will become the authority.
MACBETH(f.) is fierce now.
MACBETH(f.) wants to have the authority right away, but she doesn’t know yet how. To show her power, she wants her own “palace”. She hates the polikatoikia and its repetition. That day she decides to go the a party.
MACBETH sees the first architect of the Blue Polikatoikia—Kyriakos Panayotakos in the party. Suddenly she has a plan. They talk at the party. She invites him to her polykatoikia. As they leave the party, MACBETH starts to mention her plan to the architect.
She wants him to design an anti-polykatoikia. She explains that this will be her “palace�. Her power, control and authority will scare people when she has that. By that, the architect understands why she tried to get close all the time. He refuses because he believes that polykatoikia resulted as a very homogeneous social machine for Athens so far. MACBETH(f.) gets furious to be rejected.
She picks up a knife and murders KYRIAKOS PANAYOTAKOS.
Came back to where it all started. This time, the table is there too. We realize that the MACBETHs decided to do this by themselves. They’re drawing their anti-polikatoikia. The dream. “The palace”. The prophecy comes true.
actI polikatoikia & the Machine
MACBETH, with frustration, decides to walk around.She realizes an apartment she had seen before but didn’t notice. This is the party venue. But this time she sees it, there is something about it that bothers her. She does not yet know it had been designed by the collective of MACDUFF. As she was looking at the set-back floors, she started to think how metropolises came to happen. She realized that control in the metropolis and the state was realized through attention to the issue of improvement, so that all aspects of their operations and functions would perform to expectations.
She enters through the free ground pilotis. She continues to think. For the metropolis and its requirements, development of building types came to life: whose object was to process their users, whose organization and spaces were instrumental in achieving certain patterns of behavior in them, handling them and shaping activities to achieve predictable effects.
She saw that at the end she could reach the small inner courtyard. The more MACBETH thought about it, the more she felt the desire, for something she couldn’t name. This building made her think about the things she couldn’t identify. Her frustration grew and she returned to her polykatoikia.
MACBETH came back home, and thought for a moment that what she cannot stand in polykatoikia could be the sense of copy in them. She found reasons; like feels no time, or as if she’s floating in space. But these were just thoughts. They were leading to a conclusion, perhaps too quickly. Her immidiate, and poisonous conclusion was to get rid of informality and to be the author of time. Therefore, she had other ideas than merely the anti-polikatoikia. She wanted the whole surrounding to change as well. She walked out from her apartment, opens the fire door and climbs the spiral fire stairs—in which she is not aware of the form— towards the roof.
MACBETH(f.) is on top of the roof, a common space, and looks over to the city of repetition — not copy, but she doesn’t know that.
The view that she sees is not composed of faรงades, they are empty Maison Domino models.
At that moment, ‘Maison Domino’s start to fall from the sky. The three events that is going to happen appear in between them.
act II the antipolykatoikia & the palace
She created a blog and posted her manifesto that she had been working on for a long time, about her ‘palace-anti-poliaktoikia’.
MACBETHs shake hands with a new developer and they will pay, which is different than the ‘antiparochi’ system. She is determined to make an anti-process too. As MACBETH(f.) sits in front of her computer, she opens her blog and posts her manifesto that she had been working on for a long time, about her ‘palace-anti-poliaktoikia’. The paid constructers finish “the palace”. Macduff follows with a loss of hope. When he sees the post on the website, he decides to join. However he is not aware of the fact that this will become much bigger, because Macbeth is not satisfied with the surrounding. Her plan is rather a master-plan.
(Day of Opening at Macbeth’s ‘Palace’) MACBETH(f.) Welcome everyone! Well, thanks for following my blog. I put a lot of effort on it, you know... And thank you for joining. I have promised you the fun. I will serve you the best of it. This is the happiest day of Athens. Here we go! She lights a match and starts to burn her own polikatoikia. Everybody is in panic. MACBETH(f.) Now let’s move to my new place!
Infront of it, RAGNAR KJARTANSSON stands with a microphone and a band behind, singing “Sorrow Conquers Happiness” repetitively for hours while the city’s in flames.
act III the &
the
fire ruin
The final spreads everywhere in the site. Yes, the mountain, too. People are watching as the mountain partially burns. But this is the last drop makes the cup run over. Something strong will come after that.
Macduff is about to starting up a collective. Their aim is building a watertank over the area—the site, and putting out the fire. A group of people prepare banners and go to the streets.
(1 week later) On the table, we see the book from LE CORBUSIER.
MACDUFF
MACDUFF
COLLECTIVE
Today, I am going to introduce you Athens, yes. You think you know it. But you must re-learn it. Here, you see “Vers Une Architecture(1927)” by Le CORBUSIER. It is his ode to the machine’s purity. He declared here that a house was a ‘machine for living’.
Corbusier achieved the self-help process as informal dwelling, it can also be built by low skilled worker. Therefore be built by self-help methods.
(Murmuring with approvals. Somebody stands up)
COLLECTIVE (Gasps) MACDUFF CONTINUES And his enthusiasm for aerial machines and their capacities for ennoblement of the human spirit and surveillance of the urban condition was representative of an aesthetic of the machine. COLLECTIVE What does it mean? MACDUFF CONTINUES Maison Domino is a complicated concept. It is very flexible and has a lot of possibility of changing space radically, but also the possibility to mass customize or mass produce. It has a self-help process of building becomes actually an issue. And that issue is, I think this is what MACBETH cannot stand. COLLECTIVE What is the issue?
This dwelling has this informal bottom-up appearence, but it had actually been forcefully promoted by the state in order to fragment as much as possible, the labour force of the city; so that the construction could be the heading force of the economy and the country, right after the civil war. So that Greece could not be turned into a communist country. So, fragmenting the labour force as much as possible, was the way. This big concentration on the workers, but also to develop the building industry as a fundamental economy of the city, where each inhabitant becomes an owner, and who can rent the place. And through that process, all these individuals who would be strongly into the possibilities of the market created by the state economy. But you see, the informalities are the consequence, and what we should be focused by now, but MACBETH is blinded by the fact that had been fundamentally planned top-down by the state. An authority besides herself. Her real problem is with the state that decided the planning of today. But what I’m saying is they fragmented any possibility of the social cohesion and wanted to operate through singular architectural elements. Yet, there was not the aspect of individuals or collectives back then. And this singular elements are now in favor of us. There is no need to push them away. Polykatoikia is our possibility.
So for Le Corbusier, it was not a masterplan, but after Civil War , in Athens, they used it as a tool of control. And MACBETHs problem is to be the only author and control mechanism. And that’s why she came up with the anti-polykatoikia? MACDUFF Indeed. For Le Corbusier, Domino was a continuously unfolding space, whose interior was always an exterior, was at once also reminiscent of LE CORBUSIER’s Dom-ino House system (1914) and that prototype’s anticipation of and thousand-fold reiteration in half-constructed Mediterranean villas, whose scarcely half-made-up-ness also suggested states of half ruin, frameworks on which myriad futures could be projected, or upon which could be imagined myriad pasts. I think this is where we need to focus. As polykatoikia having its origins on Domino House, and as an ode to the state of being a half ruin, what we need to do is to take it further and create a complete-ruin. It aims to de-functionalise the structure and the state of a machine for living. COLLECTIVE What can be a possibility of a complete-ruin?
There will be extra columns that go through the roof, floors and walls for a secondary structure above for the shed, however, the Domino Structure is integrated to that as a system of backup walls. The purpose is to degrade the description “machine for living�.The people who agreed upon the construction of the columns agree with that, and accept their house walls will be backup walls.
It is a spatially flexible building which tries to find alternatives to the unavoiadable monotony related to standardization and industrial production. To be a solution to those he had offered two proposals; one being movable frames positioned on a grid in order to arrange the space flexibility. the other being a system of sliding transparent panels responded to the inhabitants’ different needs and changing atmospheric conditions, and always produced different facades. Today, the panels have been removed. As a tribute to the initial intentials of this building, the complete-ruin would be an answer to these possibilities to be met by the flexibility.
The shed is filled up with water by the collective. They manage to stop the fire.
act IV the & the
flood shed
Macbeth is furious because they managed to stop the fire. MACBETH(f.)’s plan, then is again to reverse it all around with the tool that they’ve created. MACBETHs build walls around the site building walls. This is the next step to gain the authority of MACBETHS’ back. Their new plan is to fill the shed up with water and flood the site. The shed is still pouring the water, and she is watching everybody run away in her anti-polykatoikia, while sipping her drink as everybody leaves the site in panic.
We see the MACBETHS on a boat in the site.
MACBETHs party in the boat all day, swimming over the reminiscence of the polykatoikias.
MACDUFF is not going to take this. He finds his way out by using the collective. They have a plan.
MACDUFF wears a swimming costume and an oxygen mask, dives to the other side.
The plan is that the collective sets up by replacing themselves on the right spots, then they open gaps in the walls and add pipes; they give the water back to the Attica sea.
The site outpours. And the site walls are torn down by the collective.
MACBETH(F.) wakes up and sees her nightmare in real life. Her beautiful dream and plan, and perhaps, masterpiece is destroyed by the collective. MACBETH(f.)
Since in the aftermath, the structure of the shed had been left, MACBETH in her crane breaks that.
The collective realized that this war between them will keep going unless they find a well-performing solution to finish this. However, Macbeth added stairs of panopticons to the inner yards to watch them. The only hide-out where they wouldn’t be visible was under the panopticon. However, usually the courtyards have no acccess, so they need one which is large and accessible enough. They find the block which has the parking building(which is free ground floor), carry out the abandoned Domino Structure that was in the site to the interior of the space and cover it with a perforated roof. For de-centralizing the stair and the authority, they use repetition as a tool. They use the spaces below these panopticon-stairs as to create the shed, a democratic space. It is another intervention where the floors disappears and the space becomes, once again, a place for possibilities.
MACDUFF
MACDUFF
Here is our last piece. We will break the boundary between the private and the city. It will be a place between inside and outside, between city and house. To do that, we will use a gradient space rather than black and white space. The definite description of inside and outside will blur.
You see, the city and building are syncronized in time. There in an inverse perspective from the city to the building, and from the building to the city, happening simultaneously. This is through typology, and makes a fruitful transition easier.
COLLECTIVE
COLLECTIVE
Why do we do that?
So, what’s our next move?
MACDUFF We will create the gradient space, through the gradient box. There are three elements to it. One is the courtyard, second is the arcade, and third is a frame which follows the offset limits of the balconies. The third box is making explicit that the polykatoikia in itself already has the potential of this gradience, a complementary one to the already existing two. Like this, the small scale building becomes a network, and that’s where it breaks MACBETHs system down, because similar to the synchronization from the building to the city and vice versa, the inverse perspective will enhance a new network derived from and inclusive of polykatoikia.
COLLECTIVE (Whispers and approvals. Someone gets up and speaks with excitement.) A network is what is going to end MACBETH... And that’s the synchronization of building and city, with a new intervention which only makes explicit the qualities of polykatoikia!
act V the aftermath& the network
The network, as the final built intervetion searches for ways to break the boundary between the private and the city by both using the existing gradient qualities of polykatoikia, and adding more in order to make it explicit.
They target at the definite description of inside and outside and want to blur that. A network space between the house and the city, it is a space where the definite description of inside-outside is blurring with such interventions. So it is a gradient space between private space and the public space.
In a way, this gradient space is, indeed very similar to the description of how informal space; they are both a mixture of collective and individual production, randomness is allowed to take place, change is welcomed and possibilities are endless.
A musical clef shows the flow of the time in music, and by that, time is flowing before the music because it is there rather the notes are on it or not; and time is flowing behind the world. By using the notes, the music is created over time. So, here time is like a ‘universal’. This overall musical score system represents the modern architecture, especially by using the illustration of Maison Domino by Le Corbusier. He follows up by saying in modern architecture, the grid system and the space is spreading behind the world, too. And so, this too is ‘universal’ space. We can add things on this ‘universal’ to produce functionality. So, the clef is representing the grid system of the modern architecture. If we erase the clef from the background and leave the notes as it is, there would be no time flowing behind the world, no grids spreading. But instead, in such a clef-less case, different kinds of time would start to flow. Time itself is the relation itself between these notes. So, in the universal system, time flows no matter what, without any relation with the notes. But here, in a clef-less position, time flows in another system, that is dependent on the networking local relationships between the notes. And in such a position, the new network makes new local relationships, which work different than before.
act VI the the
bloom & garden
The network brings down Macbeth, as the collective had foreseen.The garden is a united status where the fundamental need for public infrastructure in Athens had been finally cured and it had made the interconnectedness of the relationships with the authority -namely Macbeths- or the lack of authority had provided a garden.
The fictional coexistence of the interventions shown on blocks may show that time flows in another system, that is dependent on the networking local relationships between same floors, pillars, stairs, with new possibilities. And in such a position, time, space, informality and repetition merges as one through the typology; polykatoikia.
epilogue
As Macbeths went away, Macduff realizes once again their real intention, and in fact, their plan. It was to leave a difference in repetition. Their goal was not the anti-polykatoikia but the difference itself—the mountain itself.
Macduff couldn’t tell if they really achieved the difference, but they have surely achieved many events, in a time-based repetition.