THE PAW2015 WORKSHOP full edition by Iordanis Stylidis

IORDANIS STYLIDIS

PAW2015 what else can we do? UNIVERSITY of THESSALYHELLAS, FREDERICK UNIVERSITYCYPRUS MSA UNIVERSITYEGYPT, DIA DESSAUGERMANY

29 06 2015 - 05 07 2015

6 days, 12 episodes, 5 projects

26 participants

full edition + 5 hypotheses (5 projects)

constantly introducing concepts

+ Journal of a meditative and communal initiative born from a related educational discipline developed in the premises of a mountain monastery at Argalasti / Pilion / Magnesia / Hellas. Searching of, debating for and designing possible and vital spatial gestures into an

ideal landscape.

a stasis to eutopia

photographs : Olya Gluschenko, Iordanis Stylidis HABITATS • LANDSCAPE • CULTURE • POSSIBILITIES a multi - discipline workshop about life

Photographs by :

OLYA GLUSCHENKO IORDANIS STYLIDIS

PAW2015

a stasis to eutopia

constantly introducing concepts

commons • diversity • ambient • proximity stochasmos • phenomena • as found • living disciplines

Photograph OLYA GLUSCHENKO

PAW2015 TERRITORY

http://www.arch.uth.gr/PAW2015/territory.php

MAGNESIA / mythos*, history*, geography*, UTh UNIVERSITY The Magnesia prefecture, situated at the center of the Hellenic geography (the Thessaly region), is one of the many places in Greece famous for the rich and exceptional bedrock of mythological narrations and historical facts. The name Magnesia is derived from the oldest habitats of the area called ‘’Magnites’’. It is the place according to a famous mythological narration from where Jason and the Argonauts sail to the Black Sea (the ‘’Ef-xenos Pontos’’ of the ancient Greek navigation referential system) and the city of Kolhida seeking for the Golden Fleece. The mountain Pilion occupying almost the entire surface of the peninsula was the habitat of the Centaurs. Mythical creatures, half men and half horses, wise and powerful. The most famous among them was Chiron, the son of the Cronus Titan and the Philyra nymph. Chiron was the teacher of Achilles. The Pilion mountain is fully covered with deep forests and cultivations of olive trees, chestnuts, apple trees and planes. The capital city of the Magnesia Prefecture is the city of Volos where the most of the faculties of the University of Thessaly are situated. Volos is a moderate city but a very important port connecting the Hellenic inland with the Sporades Islands, a famous summer destination for visitors mostly entering to the country by air through the near by international airport of Nea Anchialos. Close to the city of Volos there are the archaeological sites of Sesclo and Dimini, two very important Neolithic settlements. The PAW monastery (Congressional and cultural center of the holy monastery of st. Nikolas) is situated at the lower half part of the Pilion peninsula close to the village of Argalasti. The monastery is renovated by the University of Thessaly and it is now host and support small scale congresses, conferences and workshops. The altitude from the surface of the sea is 150m providing a perfect supervising position towards the Pagasitikos Gulf to the visitors and the participants of the events. The University of Thessaly was founded about 30 years ago. It is located mostly in the city of Volos with campuses in the cities of Larissa, Trikala and Karditsa. Despite its short history, it demonstrates a remarkable presence in the academic ranking of universities. Most of its Faculties, as well as the University as a whole, have been positively evaluated by international visiting Committees, based on the considerable research and scientific performance of the academic staff and the high quality teaching programs. The University of Thessaly is steadily attracting high status professors and personnel from Greece and abroad and continuously upgrading its services to update with the society, the central and the local government needs and the industry. mythos : • a traditional or recurrent narrative theme or plot structure. • a set of beliefs or assumptions about something • a fictitious or imaginary person or thing, from Greek mythologia, from mythos ‘myth’ history : • the study of past events, particularly in human affairs, from Greek historia ‘finding out, narrative, history,’ from histōr ‘learned, wise man,’ geography : • the study of the physical features of the earth and its atmosphere, and of human activity as it affects and is affected by these, including the distribution of populations and resources, land use, and industries, from Greek geōgraphia, from gē ‘earth’ + -graphia ‘writing.’

Photograph OLYA GLUSCHENKO

PAW2015 LOCUS

http://www.arch.uth.gr/PAW2015/territory.php

theECONOMY* THAT TRANSFORM THE TOPOGRAPHY* Economy* is a term originate from the Greek language containing a very well composed and demanding meaning. The word economy consists of two words. The word ‘’oikos’’– house, temple, city, and the word ‘’nemein’’-the management, the system of collective driving laws in order to live well together. Oikos in the ancient greek language means not only the actual house but the overall and familiar correlation grid of the city, the surrounding cultivated area, the near topography and landscape peculiarities, the road networks and the chain of political and merchant relationships with the near by communities. Seeing under this scope* the area (the municipality of Southern Pilion having the village of Argalasti as the administration and finance center) where the monastery of PAW is situated is a flourishing and thriving topography of well being within its natural limits and the scale of communities. The area is formed of smooth hills running down to the Pagasitikos gulf to the south and the Aegean sea to the east. It is an exceptional and ideal geography allowing multiple cultivations of olive trees, fig trees, grape vines and apple trees to thrive and multiply throughout deep history enabling the communities to a sustain and balanced economy. The coastal line presents a variety of small seaside plateaus usually used as recreational leaving well areas from the spring time on till early winter. The south lower part of the peninsula was and is fully and continually inhabited from the 1150 BC on. Through history the usual way of building a local economy network is to create a seaside post (a station) where the ships can harbor, bring, present and exchange goods with local products (olive oil, ceramics, fruits, wine). The main settlement or village was then situated up the hills for best protection and defense. Nowadays the area is presenting a moderate visiting and recreational profile reaching a peak during the summer time. theTECHNOLOGY* THAT TRANSFORM THE TOPOGRAPHY The aviation and naval networks together with the advance and fast adaptation of computing technologies and the internet are the crucial factors that sustain the living and economic standards of life in the area. Although the area has a valid network of prime and secondary roads together with the trekking paths left untouched from the time they were used for communication and transportation between villages and the main city of Volos (then, late 20th century forth, an industrial and economic center not only for the Pilion mountain peninsula but the overall plain of Thessaly) the visiting flood during the summer didn’t suppress the local identity. The huge numbers of summer visitors are direct mostly to the nearby famous Sporades islands (Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonissos) and the east side of northern Pilion facing the Aegean sea. Skiathos has also an international airport similar to the airport of Nea Anchialos (Volos) responding well to the immense air traffic during the summer. The new and fast expansion of the internet network is a crucial civilization factor driving young high educated workers and thinkers to live and work in the area strengthening the communities already well performing in keeping most of their inhabitants the length of the year.

Photograph OLYA GLUSCHENKO

economy : • the wealth and resources of a country or region, esp. in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services, from Greek oikonomia ‘household management,’ based on oikos ‘house’ + nemein ‘manage.’ scope : • the extent of the area or subject matter that something deals with or to which it is relevant from Greek skopos ‘target,’ from skeptesthai ‘look out.’ topography : • the arrangement of the natural and artificial physical features of an area, from Greek topographia, from topos ‘place’ + -graphia ‘writting’. technology : • the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, from Greek tekhnologia ‘systematic treatment,’ from tekhnē ‘art, craft’ + -logia speak about. stochastic : • randomly determined; having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely. from Greek stokhastikos, from stokhazesthai ‘aim at, guess,’ from stokhos ‘aim.’ philosophical : of or relating to the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, from Greek philosophia ‘love of wisdom.’

PAW2015 LOCUS

http://www.arch.uth.gr/PAW2015/territory.php

theIDEAS andPRACTICES THAT TRANSFORM THE TOPOGRAPHY 1. Christian Monasteries are and always were constituting and declare the content of a major field of ethos* within the heritage of Christianity through out its historical drifting and spread. They can be found in multiple scales, compositional and formal variations, well situated into a variety of landscape and urban environments, all over the European continent, Russia, the near and middle East, the central Asia and the Arabic peninsula. The monasteries were and still are crucial local, regional and international cultural centers structurally shaped by a mixture of self-oriented choices of behavior regarding the people constituting their community core seeing as a common (the monks) and publicly accepted and followed disciplines of living together (the visitors and believers). They are always situated either into a unique and exceptional landscape or, to the contrary, at a rough and out of reach topography in order to fortify the will and the spiritual strength of the believers-habitants. The spiritual devotion of the monks was and still is the only and unique power accelerating spatial transformation (buildings, cultures, handmade products, food and artifacts) and the everlasting preservation of the monasteries overall structure and rituals (schools, churches, hospitals, libraries, hosting units, common and unifying seasonal rituals). Usually, at the area where a monastery is first become situated and active it alters a variety of landscape and communal transformations. The near by communities are always welcome, accept and depend on its presence as a spiritual and cultural distinguish reference bedrock. The monastery is the best till today cultural reference of a common although it is, by choice, seek not any firm connection with the modern urban life patterns. 2. The summer patterns of living are also a driving and inspiring set of rituals rapidly transforming self to a transparent and receptive ‘’other’’. The length of the day, the early morning and the night breeze by the sea, the easy way of doing simple everyday acts, the long dialogues under a tree or a shadowy shelter during the day (imaging, narrating and exposing incidents of self behavior, criticizing the urban priorities suppressing self, explaining and proposing political and philosophical possibilities), the rest into the dark interiors during noon time, the thrifty and modest living manners (eating and producing food, offering, visiting and inviting), the sea and the fishing rituals (night long fishing rituals), the sailing and the swimming along the diversity of the seaside land formations, the long and demanding trekking disciplines on the mountain, crossing endless variations of cultures and pockets of houses scattered in between the distances, the tranquility of the afternoon hours till midnight (explaining and comprehending the identity of the day passed) and, finally, the most crucial and essential property of life in the open, the tiny scale of the habitats and the sparse of native and visiting human beings living and sharing a communal experience of life, confirm and verify a stochastic* and philosophical* practice of well being.

journal

PAW2015 THE HIGH LANDS OVER THE PAGASITIKOS GULF

journalPAW2015 IORDANIS STYLIDIS

1 OG

epiphany* The day is now hosting our temporary ideal pocket of gestures and behavior possibilities. We are all invited to participate to this unique time, space and relations phenomenon. To form and fortify the primary formal territory of a written catalog including our names and our origin, our springing extraordinary capabilities in arranging the way we are beginning to explore reality. Experiencing us engaging to short reconnaissance dialogues, to heroic explorations of a long desired and now emerging meaning. To the primary attempts to create the first chapter of the overall experience we are now navigate ourselves in. The natural plateau in front of us becomes the ideal bedrock to unfold our research in finding how and if we can add a structure, a gesture, a poetical or stochastic textual leftover. This powerful natural plateau engulfing and protecting all we are about to create, to situate and record as to preserve the core elements of the unique and vital web of arguments and statements. Allowing all to communicate and act collectively towards the creation of a temporary common.

epiphany : a moment of sudden revelation or insight. from Greek epiphainein ‘reveal.’

dialectic* We are using these three concrete stairs to ascend from the area of a shadowy natural platform of various forms of low vegetation and the artificial water tank to the level where a line of trees are forming a front, a signaling natural feature, separating the area of stochasmos* from the brightness of the open. We are already identified and use this conceptual and actual difference to create and stabilize a functional dialectic* platform to use as a guiding process to navigate our primary thoughts towards the birth of a gesture. That is what we are now following in order to empower all our efforts towards the radical concept approach of a form constituting an ideal temporary addition into this short-range landscape. We have already stand for some time in the shadows of the trees staring for long towards the hills under the sun. And then, we did walk a distance to the openness of the clear fields and try to estimate and identify details of the natural lying into the shadows. This swinging between the qualities of the natural form the temporary investigating method we will use.

dialectic : The ancient Greeks used the term dialectic to refer to various methods of reasoning and discussion in order to discover the truth. More recently, Kant applied the term to the criticism of the contradictions that arise from supposing knowledge of objects beyond the limits of experience, e.g., the soul. Hegel applied the term to the process of thought by which apparent contradictions (which he termed thesis and antithesis) are seen to be part of a higher truth (synthesis). Dialectic : from Greek dialektikē (tekhnē) ‘(art) of debate,’ from dialegesthai ‘converse with’.

stochasmos : from stochastic (adj) : randomly determined; having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely. stochastic : from Greek stokhastikos, from stokhazesthai ‘aim at, guess,’ from stokhos ‘aim.’

sea front habitation From the top of the hill where the monastery, our short-term reconnaissance hive, is situated, it is easy to observe numerous details of life far away downwards along the coastline. The way the small boats are sailing to the center of the Pagasitikos Gulf and the farmers crossing the huge olive trees cultures. The scattered lights on the top of the far away hills indicating the places where small villages are situated and thrive for long. We will walk the distance through the cultures and record the hierarchy of dialogues as the workers are harvesting the olives. We will stay till the afternoon at the shore trying to understand the disciplines of the fishermen preparing to sail and spent the night in the sea. We will examine and participate to the early morning rituals regarding the welfare and blissful life. We will celebrate and enjoy the food offered during the feasts honoring the humble and plentiful, the prosperous life patterns. It is very hard to orient self towards an exodus* from the discipline of our common scope*. Life prevails calling us to participate and forget. The mythical sirens are still dominating the place. exodus : a mass departure of people, esp. emigrants. from Greek exodos, from ex- ‘out of’ + hodos ‘way.’ scope : a purpose, end, or intention from Greek skopein ‘look at.’ from Greek skopos ‘target,’ from skeptesthai ‘look out.’

esoterica* This constant drifting from the dark interiors to the brightness of the open landscape is the birthing plateau of ideas regarding the reflection the human beings create for the self and the environment. Although standing into the darkness of an interior can protect the body from the heat of a summer day, darkness is a powerful symbolic carrier of a hostile territory of being. If, to the contrary, the human being live its life into the open landscape soon some delicate or stronger disorders will force for the seeking of a warm and shadowy shelter. That is the reason we use to create small openings to the thick walls of the buildings we create. To constantly apply delicate adjustments in order to control the pick values for light and darkness. The same adjustments were soon after attached to meaning and the concepts regulating its reason. Life had spring and flourish because of luck and coincidence happen into this equilibrium pathway. The in between values protect the existence and the meaning of existence. So, it is always wise to choose a safe position to observe the peaks of reality. esoterica : esoteric or highly specialized subjects or publications. from Greek esōterika, neuter plural of esōterikos ‘esoteric.’

envelope It is wise to bring self into a well protected and fortified area, a spatial pocket surrounded by this dense vegetation, the richness of forms and environmental declarations, in order to organize and corporate with all experiences collected to constitute an endeavor. The discipline we, once again, have to follow and overcome while straggling to identify and stabilize our relation with reality. The monastery is been build to host and secure all intellectual needs and most of all the profound and most essential requirements, the arrangement and the clarification, the enlistment and the conveyance to a near future or longer time period, of all collections and appropriate thoughts mend to strengthen self correlating with reality. We will soon stand around a table, present the basic and the essential treasures we already collect, debate, think about, deviate while rearranging our personal strategies trying to form a collective and vibrant outcome. It has to be and it will be a set of commonly shared ideas about the experiences we had to deal with. This collection, then, will be transformed to designs, sounds, texts, digitized data that will form the ‘’everything’’ we’ve manage to adopt and harmoniously* share. harmony : the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole From Greek, from harmos ‘joint.’

metaphrace* The moment of a demanding intellectual harvest have come. Some spatial details, noted with sketches, illustrate and represent the typologies of the surrounding environment. Some very delicate sound recordings and collections of written ideas sprigged out while wondering around, regarding the possible and the accurate habitation elements that could be joined and, thus, lead to powerful hypotheses* evolving the long forgotten properties of the place, are now exposed. These feelings of searching and rephrasing*, of refining some minor details and exposing major structural meaning accelerators is what we all are connected with. During the daily constant searching and the overnight turbulence of meaning identifications the core navigation reason leading our desire is fulfilled. The form of a tree or a cluster of high bushes can now constitute an emerging possibility of welladopted time-depended knowledge. The stone made walls of the monastery and the tranquility of its interior courtyard is now engulfing the manifestations of our common efforts. The time of constructing a meaningful core of ideas and the time of expressing and sharing these ideas, making comments or standing in the shadows of a well protected expression discipline constitute a combination of phenomena motivating and directing self. metaphrace : a literal, word-for-word translation, as opposed to a paraphrase. from Greek metaphrazein, literally ‘word differently.’ rephrace : put in other words, express differently. phrace : a small group of words standing together as a conceptual unit, typically forming a component of a clause, from Greek phrasis, from phrazein ‘declare, tell.’ hypothesis : a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation, from Greek hupothesis ‘foundation,’ from hypo ‘under’ + thesis ‘placing.’

mnemonic* transportations The valuable collection of identity details and research consequences occurred from the exercised practices regarding the aim and the results emerge and accumulate from the on going workshop are going to transport and constitute the web of fragmented narrations, short preliminary notes, unidentified photographs and multi-media files, descriptions of a phantom idea about the place. This valuable treasure is the meaningful outcome each one of us is now carrying and transmitting as an excessive stochastic surplus already transform each personality. Aly (el Shafy) and Efthymia (Lilli) can narrate and protect their stories regarding the density of the flora and the surface properties around the water tank. Yehia (Mokhtar), Polyxeni (Papastergiou) and Marine (Medhat Amin) can describe in full detail a path and the tree canopies forming a shadowy gallerylike passage. Alaa (Eihalaboush), Efstathios (Stylidis) and Lobna (Elgamal) are now carrying some vital descriptions regarding the landscape of cultures extending smoothly toward the sea front. Mohamed, Ahmed, Danny, Athina and Sara are carrying sets of impressions regarding the overall experience of the workshop. The major and the secondary cities they have visited and stayed into, the short trip to the Hellenic geography. The rapid transformations of the proposed meaning of the project while they were meditate creating their personal interpretation. mnemonic : a device such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations that assists in remembering something. from Greek mnēmonikos, from mnēmōn ‘mindful.’

Paideia* Education is a cultural behavior pattern aiming to welcome and direct the young mind to the joy of thinking about the overall environment it is drifting into producing vital short or long-term answers. The training to research and disclosure the specific and the general features regarding a question given, to collect and archive the valuable and the meaningful elements correlating with the research question, to explore and manage a temporary synthesis into an ephemeral* proposal always compared to the origin of the collection it is standing upon. Education is the discipline to constitute and carry, to use and criticize, to reform, to reaffirm and restate the standard plateau of particular beliefs constituting the overall established personal perspective of reality. It is the exercise of self to the ability to participate into a collective and open assembly of willing personalities constituting a team of wanderers. A team following a call to reaffirm and further examine this ability of uniting and following a question towards the ethos of an answer. Education is the ability to travel, to relocate self from the ordinary, to stay alone and united in the same time and place, to join and react to the multiplicity of reasons rapidly constituting a context plateau that soon after will dissolved to another kind of content. Education is to form a willing self to investigate and in the same time to be investigated. The scope of the PAW2015 workshop is to confront with all these constitutional directions of thinking and acting in common.

paideia : (in ancient Greece) education or upbringing. • the culture of a society. ephemeral : lasting for a very short time, from Greek, neuter of ephēmeros ‘lasting only a day.’

prosthesis* The additions thinking about to propose in order to accelerate the fundamental hypothesis of a particular spatial detail reforming the short-range identity of the monastery’s ideal landscape might be a gesture of enhancement or distraction of meaning. Maybe both. Instantaneously. As we already know the living disciplines during the past century have been expressed, tested and verify the ideal living rituals and performances, accurate and expressive in a circular mode following the seasons. It seems that nothing more can be added as a surplus value. Much more than this the monastery is abandoned and the living order, or ethos*, sustaining the natural equilibrium is lost. It seems that this ideal phenomenon (structures, habitat, landscape, cultures, horizon, paths, networks of civilization) is there to serve only as an illustrative (although real) pocket to the needs of short-term visitors of the ‘’ideal’’. What is left to think about and propose is a unique and instant installation, a rapid clarification of a site-specific meaning mend to disappear some time later. Maybe just a fictional and figurative, a computerized phantom gesture, providing us the feeling and the experience of an expression out of reality but strong enough to motivate a discussion about it. Just like the dreamy dialogues we constantly find ourselves in during a cool and demanding afternoon. This can be a powerful scope to follow. A tiny – topo-visual gesture, never to be realized, but perfect to exercise our minds towards a collective educational need. prosthesis : Addition to a meaning form. from Greek, from prostithenai, from pros ‘in addition’ + tithenai ‘to place.’ ethos : the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations from Greek ēthos ‘nature, disposition,’ (plural) ‘customs.’

hypothesis* A strong hypothesis was delivered, accepted and rapidly activate a collective and vivid reaction uniting the group of participants with the ideas and the practices of meditation, of continuous and demanding debates, of research to conceive and design a short-time, site-specific, gesture into the uncanny and temporary plateau of common and plentiful life. This hypothesis prescribe the exploration of the multiple layers of this particular habitation phenomenon standing in perfect harmony with the overall environment, the observation of a variety of behavior patterns enabling each one to create and protect a demanding discipline of living and thinking rituals, to follow an austere and accurate look, disabling or accelerating the performance of crucial self qualities needed while acting within this on going time-pocket of correlations. Living by the sea or at the top of the hills while searching along the natural paths, the steep slopes facing the sea and the man-made local micro-geographies transformed self to a vibrant stochastic* anthropos* crossing the land and giving birth to a possible statement for a spatial gesture. Each and every selected spatial gesture is always navigating self to the peculiarities of moving from theory to action, of creating and restoring an idea and the assorted equilibrium of relations with reality. This hypothesis is well fitted to strongly support self emerging into the cosmos of experiences. hypothesis : a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation, from Greek hupothesis ‘foundation,’ from hupo ‘under’ + thesis ‘placing.’ stochastic : randomly determined; having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely. from Greek stokhastikos, from stokhazesthai ‘aim at, guess,’ from stokhos ‘aim.’ anthropos : Man, the first human being

syllogism : an instance of a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn (whether validly or not) from two given or assumed propositions (premises). From Greek syllogismos, from syllogizesthai, from syn- ‘with’ + logizesthai ‘to reason’ (from logos ‘reasoning’)

syntax* Some more conceptual demands enhancing the unique acquirements we are soon going to metabolize to long time stochastic and experience efforts have to be initialized. Fulfilling the archive we all have build and shortly will be shared through the uploading of personal thoughts and narrations to the web. We did activated and confront with the appropriate sets of questions compromising some minor materialistic results. It seems, so far, that we have walked a familiar path of research and tactical negotiation, manipulating a well-known plateau of concepts. We are all capable to do so. But, is there an extrapolate possibility existing? A curious, unorthodox thought? Driving us to reconsider this experience? A thought we should welcome and let invade and undermine the ordinary and secure system of thinking and acting? Is that all we can do? A question properly answered? Places where we rapidly have add a suitable and formalistic outcome? A short time searching thought to be the essential, the ideal learning discipline? A vivid collage made up from a well-secured deposit of flexible ready-made ideas? Is there a chance that we have misled and disorientate our consciousness towards and into an unattractive and unsatisfactory but well-done conceptual platform, thus, fall to the realm of the charming ordinary? Usually, whenever there is a need to search and finally form a syntax of elements, thus, create a perfect plateau of possible and livable civilization pockets, something useful and exceptional for the people, the answer to that tricky question ‘’what else can we do?’’ should include a research setting regarding the ‘’nothing to do’’ or ‘’plenty to be attracted by and nothing to add’’ variable of meaning. Were there any syntactic choices we should follow altering the content of the question given? Staying outside, in the dark, for example, standing for long to collect the near by and the far away sounds, navigating through senses for the length of a day, touching the earth, the grass and the water surface, transforming experience to a well written text describing a spatial possibility. Never gentrifying and visualize the meaning where a meaning is so evenly spread and altered locus. syntax : the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language from Greek syntaxis, from syn- ‘together’ + tassein ‘arrange.’

syllogism* This line of consecutive thoughts you are now acquire and use as a guiding principle, enhancing your personal mature confrontation with the reality you are drifting into, constitute and fortify a syllogism regulator of reasoning. It is a conceptual navigation platform –made from memory and thinking patterns you are exercised to- sending and receiving behavior signals, springing and interconnecting sets of ideas, create and accelerate answers, motivations and action motives, towards the manipulation and guidance of either the ordinary or the multivalent peculiarities of reality. You have to trust and constantly optimize the content of this acquisition of knowledge. You have to always think that this is a temporary treasure storage constantly reconfiguring yourself. There is no any certainty contexture to stabilize your conceptual thinking and comprehending rhythm as you are traveling into reality. There is only a constant and vibrating chaotic algorithm of giving and taking, exchanging and transforming the ordinary to a precious short-term meaningful flow of curiosities.

hypotheses PAW2015 AS FAR AS WE CAN NAVIGATE A DEBATE REGARDING SYNTHESIS

υποθέσεις hypothesesPAW2015 AGGELIKI AVGITIDOU CAROLOS GALANOS VASILIS IERIDES JOHANNES KALVELAGE KONSTANTINOS MANOLIDIS IORDANIS STYLIDIS

hypothesis -ses a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth. from Greek hypothesis ‘foundation,’

from hypo ‘under’ + thesis ‘placing.’

gates A set of semi-transparent curtains are deployed into the near by landscape densely filled with olive trees, fig trees and cypresses. The structures are supposed to accelerate a thinking process forcing the visitor and spectator to react and create a temporary answer sustaining the correlation between the environment and the enigma structure thus providing a semiotic set of signifiers connecting a familiar system of concept forms (trees, grass, bushes, paths, surface, openings, floral density, nature, self) with a unique and un-identified introduction of a blurred wavy surface provoking the action of penetrating to a meaning or a set of meanings. The blurred framed eidolon of the familiar landscape signifier is there either to present a smooth but essential visual meaning transformation or it is there to actually surprisingly enhance the ordinarity of a well known terrestrial formation for a fragment of time. This exceptional gesture creates and strength a plateau of meaningful conceptual possibilities.

EGT MSA Sara Tarek Abouzayed EGT MSA Manar Moustafa Hosni EGT MSA Alaa Sayed Elhalaboush

IORDANIS STYLIDIS

framing reality The sheltered platform on the surface of the water tank near the monastery is proposed as a stasis for meditation regarding the variations of experience constantly altering consciousness to react, to investigate, to archive and treasure, eventually to gain a powerful guiding answer optimizing the significant properties of concepts such as nature, landscape, floral density, view self. The body in repose on that semi-sank wooden surface and the shelter that is not a shelter but an indicator, a learning process, expressing the need for a continuous crossing between a framed detail of nature (in this case the investigation of the phenomenon of the canopy of trees) and the need to the overall rigorous experience towards the ideal binary meaning composition. This delicate structure can be also operate as a learning apparatus aiming to introduce the user to the variations of concept connectors linking the learning capabilities and possibilities to the endless formations of meaningful interpretations of the unstable reality enigma. IORDANIS STYLIDIS

EGT MSA Lobna Ahmed Galal EGT MSA Mennat-allah Fathy GR UTh PG Charalambidou Athina GR UTh PG Efstathios Stylidis

The staircase context The staircase phenomenon consists and rapidly accelerates multiple unique and forceful mental provocations. It creates a plateau of flexible connotations driving the viewer to stay and meditate for long in order to produce and treasure a personal archive of mind driving exceptional interpretation features. The staircase stands free producing and broadcasting sets of basic signifiers to work with the length of the day, reforming the correlation with the near by environment. A staircase without a tree to lean upon, deviates and undermine the established predictable and coherent meaning. A staircase high enough and off the usual structural features is not a staircase but a possible form (a house, a reading apparatus, an observatory) driving the user to rearrange and give birth to a new or multiple sets of meaning between the acquired experience of reality and the new evidence (the staircase) already active within it. IORDANIS STYLIDIS

EGT MSA Ali El Shafei EGT MSA Mostafa Ali Ghandour EGT MSA Ahmed Morsy

Creating a memory location* A memory location activated to follow and protect the content of a particular context is comprised of a nucleus-part sustaining robust self-confidence and a field-part sustaining temporary certainty and security to openness. When a researcher finds or creates the perfect position for the audio-visual and the mental supervision of the landscape, time becomes the key regulator regarding the length of such an experience constituted mostly of a tight engage with information not only in terms of rapid raw collection of details but in terms of leaving, abandoning, the ordinary self and staying in site for long. When we all find ourselves in the process of observing, fully attached to the interesting place lying in front of us, we need this pair of a vertical suspension surface and the flat and vast plateau of standing to observe enabling self being autonomous

EGT MSA Marine Medhat Amin EGT MSA Danny Adib GR UTh PG Maria Karavasiou GR UTh PG Efthimia Lilli

IORDANIS STYLIDIS

The ferocious meaning interplay The sheltered platform on the surface of the water tank near the monastery is proposed as a stasis for meditation regarding the variations of experience constantly altering consciousness to react, to investigate, to archive and treasure, eventually to gain a powerful guiding answer optimizing the significant properties of concepts such as nature, landscape, floral density, view self. The body in repose on that semi-sank wooden surface and the shelter that is not a shelter but an indicator, a learning process, expressing the need for a continuous crossing between a framed detail of nature (in this case the investigation of the phenomenon of the canopy of trees) and the need to the overall rigorous experience towards the ideal binary meaning composition. This delicate structure can be also operate as a learning apparatus aiming to introduce the user to the variations of concept connectors linking the learning capabilities and possibilities to the endless formations of meaningful interpretations of the unstable reality enigma. IORDANIS STYLIDIS

EGT MSA Yehia Mokhtar GR UTh PG Polyxeni Papastergiou EGT MSA Mohamed Adel EGT MSA Ahmed Farouk

Utopia, Eutopia IORDANIS STYLIDIS

TheUTOPIAconcept Multitude : Is a term used to describe the physical and the political/social existence and behavior, within a historical frame, of a large number of human beings gradually or radically transformed to a political body, the people, thus create, possess and exercise political power against an authority. The term was and is under a scrutinized focus by powerful political philosophers such as Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Antonio Negri, Sylvere Lotringer and Paolo Virno. Economy : Is a term referring to a set of active laws being created and precisely followed for the well being of a community. From the Greek ‘’oikonomia ‘’ ‘the household management’, from oikos ‘’house’’ + nemein ‘’manage’’. Stochastes : The people who exercise stochasmos, meaning to ‘’…randomly determined, having a random propability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely….’’ From the Greek ‘’stokhazasthai‘’ aim at, guess , from stokhos ‘’aim’’ Hetero-defined : Being under the influence of a set of ideas and doctrines determining the perspective of living and thinking about, created and proposed by others. These sets of ideas are constantly used as a reference and orientation method. The opposite of self-defined. From the Greek ‘’heteros ‘the other’ ,

Within the archives of narrated Utopias contained and criticaly examined in the books of Lewis Mumford ‘’The History of Utopias’’ and Maria Luisa Bernieri ‘’A Journey through Utopia’’ we can easily detect a variety of concept properties forming the field of acts and ideology where these time-space pockets are standing. Sustaining the written territory of these two and many more essays aiming to a precise description of such political phenomena of criticism. The spatial relationship (somewhere, far away, hidden, mythical), the time relationship (within a time pocket into a present, a past or a future, eternal, short, repeated) and, especially, their established multitude* relationship, their social and anthropological positions and connections. Additionally, Utopias, narrated as spatial and social phenomena are demanding a distand to be traveled (thus, the discipline of a journey), a cultural entity (a city, a town, a constellation of cities, an economy* ), a bedrock of sustainable life (enough food, protection and sheltering against weather), a faculty of intellectual exercise and discipline (seeking, creating knowledge, exercising meditation and self-reconnaissance) and a robust core of knowledge uniformly upload and dispersed regarding the correlation of humans (a group of ‘’stochastes’’* ) with nature (self-defined or hetero-defined* ). Each and every part of this sets of presuppositions were always verified and accurately described within and because of the risky educational venture of their creators and writters. Although Utopias are burst ideas filling the minds of their readers and followers they are also rapidly loose their power and disappear into the territory of their written narration.

TheEUTOPIAconcept Eutopias, to the contrary, become true and operational whenever a group of people (the ‘’stochastes’’) start seeking and creating a mental and physical field in order to constitute a temporal or long-term territory of existence and relations. The group and each individual respectively respond to a mutual working and behavior model, travel a distance, unite into a faculty of meditation and acts, and, thus, enter to a constantly changing communal territory of a unique civilization model, the Eutopia. It is an exceptional and inspiring mental and physical gesture that we (every time a different number, constituting a flexible and liquid multitude of idiosynchratic* personalities) can and do define a pocket of space and time, leave our ordinary living contition (become an other self), create and accept a name for this pocket, approache it, arrive and live within.

theWEthe GROUPconcept We have already travell the distance following our desire to meet. Rapidly approaching to this far away place, totally abstracted from all certainties. We are immediately organize our collective existence, prepare the way we are going to live together and meditate, orient ourselves to a constant and insisting detection using all our efforts. Aiming to reexamine, to comprehend, to manifest and reform the conditions of the civilized, the social, the technical and the natural within our growing pocket. We are already have compose a synthesis of units and classes folded tightly together. Eutopias are emerging either because of the acts of mature exceptional personalities or the will of brave emerging trainees taking the risk and the burden of exploring their overall territory, the ‘’outside’’, including self, the ‘’inside’’, and its multiple connections with it. Collect, examine and operate on all facts and ideas detected or provided enforcing the possibility of creating the Eutopia phenomenon* . Examine all and every property ‘’as found’’* conveying or representing a critical sequence towards the verification or the failure, the diversion or the intrigue systemic peculiarity of its existence. Regulating its possible conceptual and actual collapse.

Idiosynchratic : Is a term referring to a mode of behavior or peculiar thought to an individual. From the Greek ‘’idiosynkrasia‘’, from idios ‘’own, private’’ + syn ‘’with’’ + krasis ‘’mixture’’. Phenomenon : the object of a person’s perception, what is been noticed with the mind through senses. From the Greek ‘’phainomenon ‘’’appearing to view’’, from phainein ‘’to show’’. As found : A phrase being the title of a book referring to a set of ideas and acts of great importance. ‘’…Works of art were created in the England of the 50s and 60s which are of extraordinary topicality today. This applies particularly to the Independent Group which included artists, photographers as well as architects. Its members strove to achieve an authenticity close to the grass roots of life, to discover the essence of the everyday, to arouse a sensitivity to life in the raw as against a touched-up version of reality, to bring out both its hardships and its charm. The book is about architecture and art and photography. It seeks rather to show the unmediated impact and direct appeal of a refractory aesthetics…’’

Synopsis IORDANIS STYLIDIS

The text was reviewed (from the original text written during the PortSaid/Fuad workshop, 2011) and published in the digital edition of the DDW2014 workshop in Serres city/Hellas, 2013.

The experience of an international workshop is based on a set of correlating influences which are occur and contribute simultaneously to create the identity of such an initiative. These influences are: 1. The journey to a site in a specific area on the planet, 2. The creation of a common* between the participating cultural groups, 3. The practical contact and the observation of mutual life details and rituals over a period of time. 4. The creation of an archive of details of self interaction with the environment. Regional, local, national, geographical, geostrategic, historical. 5. The encounter with a given spatial question or a set of questions and the discipline to create an elaborate a persuasive answer through reasoning. 6. The exercise of self in cooperation. In giving, receiving, composing, clearly defining all and every aspect of the given spatial question. 7. The exercise to the discipline of writing. The transformation of all informational contents, provided or learned from every element of the survey, into an accurate and representative text. The city of Serres is situated into one of the most crucial planes of the North Hellenic territory. It is the bedrock of numerous historical incidents occurred and defined its identity. The word city is usually applied to a variety of spatial, cultural and economical factors defining, while operate as a robust combination of properties, an exact but always renascent content. This content is always accurately detectable while observed at a certain time frame. Thus, the city of Serres, as a spatial and cultural geo-economic reference includes the actual city of multiple urban phenomena but also the surrounding land of cultivations and various economic activities bonded together with the natural and cultural settings that produce, underline, accelerate and sustain a dense grid of habitation. Much more than this the city of Serres, as an extended spatial territory, is a considerable economical and cultural factor if seeing as a major link into another layer-grid including the general administrative area of the Hellenic central Macedonia region. The valley of Agioi Anargiroi is situated at and was the recent east limit of the city. It is the natural narrow end of a vast rain drainage basin from the surrounding hills and mountains. Thus, due to the dense and high forest-like vegetation and the constant air current blowing through it is the major recreational and pleasure area at a walking distance from the city. Because of this significant natural attribute (the drainage basin) the valley is crossed by a stream witch sometimes floods producing heavy damages to the side connected parts of the city. Into this area is situate the natural and cultural sites for a possible urban or architectural intervention together with the major need for a system of new bridges passing over the stream to the new habitation extension of the city. The extension of the city to the east as an indicator of growth and well being. The workshop initiative have brought together young students from different cultural backgrounds in a determined attempt to create a common. A common, actually, is a communication and cultural bond between people who should manage to join together, to react, express self, introduce and wel-

Synopsis : a brief summary or general survey of something From Greek, from syn- ‘together’ + opsis ‘seeing.’ Common : shared by, coming from, or done by more than one. Belonging to, open to, or affecting the whole of a community or the public

come aspects of the personal identity and the identity of the ‘’other’’, while they are interacting into an educational process (the academic discipline). Thus, to produce (and live in) a time-space pocket of mutual understanding and acceptance. Into this area of actions (into the pocket) self will be strongly exercised. Investigating and understanding the varieties of cultural diversity. Meditate about the everyday behavioral and educational differences, transform and criticize the very core of certainties, deeply think about the in-between spaces of theory and action left without a vital meaning. Offer every mental and working skill to the needs of a collective goal. The students of the four participating universities survey the valley and the daily performance of the city, collect details of mutuality, of hostility, of acceptance, of obedience or disobedience to the general western pattern of life as expressed in space and interrelations. Details about the contemporary, the forgotten and the disappearing ethics which were accumulated, lost and gained again to form the present multi-layered identity of the city.

Life experience information can be gained through and it is based on the variety of systematic formal and informal collections aiming to the creation of a firm and detailed archive. The analysis and the thorough comprehension of all variables and details contained. Comprehension is a mental process that can be taught and exercised through detailed observation of space and its related reality in certain time frames. Through the educational discipline of terrain and behavior investigation the content of space and its reality forming and sustaining the specific presence identity of the city as a phenomenon of time, space and interrelations, can be decoded and become intelligible. The act of collecting information must be followed by the process of clearance and unification of different information sets including facts, believes, narrations, snapshots and rumors. Thus, to create and activate an optional and possible preliminary archive containing the recordings of a variety of experiences. The detection of a walk through a street, the surveillance of an area while crossing a neighborhood, the night drift while driving to an urban/suburb/district area, the stasis* before a multi-passage of a bus or a market station, the multiple sets of details registered early morning, at noon, late in the night about the weather and the self-behavior seeing as part of the searching process. Designing the arrangement of these multiple layers of group information into a chart is a vital and precise process in order to create a systemic and stabilized icon for the city within an exact time frame. The chart created is the master identification archive. The invited and already furious students, already heavily motivated and inspired, will be the creators and the defenders of all living conditions as found* into this urban environment that manifests and shelters the proclamations of the human activity. The city of Serres actually consists of many cities. It expands into time until a limit that is always set by the spectator, the visitor, the mediator, the user, the reader of a book about the mythology of a far away city called Serres. Serres is lying into the territory of history and myth* , into the lines of a poem, into the graphic layers of a national or world map, into the gallery of a book of pictures, into the narrations and the pack of postcards of a voyager. Serres is

a city that has a present and a previous identity that consists of every building, every ethnic and religious community, every familiar or extraordinary sound that gives birth to a name of a street, of a passage, of a tiny detail of living by the landscape, of every dialogue that is aiming to add a possibility of a possible urban revitalization, of every hidden hope reconstructing an urban detail, of every open invitation to people to work for a minor or large area of the city, of every gesture, every invitation to stay, to recon and create a vision. The city has a past identity standing on fragments that are scattered throughout its land territory and history. The city might soon conquer a future made by the efforts and the imagination of its people. This multi-layered historical and present identity is the background, the trigger of an unlimited enthusiasm that can lead the reader of the city to follow every possible direction of knowledge, tactical, rational, extraordinary, poetical. The collection of information about the city is the learning of self acting into a civilization paradigm* , manipulating the faith or the presence of a city, understanding the always shifting core of its existence. Identity* can be detected either by a detailed searching of the overall geographical and social terrain of a city firmly combined with its historical* evolution, the macro-icon* of the contemporary city, or it can be understood by a thorough investigation of a section, the micro-icon of a major or a secondary city. The researcher has to be certain for the result he/she will produce although he/she knows that there is no such a clarified entity that can be fully addressed as a site-specific reality, there is no absolute knowledge regarding the phenomenon* of a city. That, eventually, some crucial identity features should or will be left as irrelevant, unique elements having no influence, radical elements that might have an undesirable impact, although the city might already carry and sustain these elements as new possibilities of thinking about it. The researcher has to take into consideration that the macro-icon might be a hostile area provoking rational thinking if compared with the findings coming from the micro-icon. He/she can easily understand that the world of the past centuries cannot be illustrated and affect a new vision, it can only be a highlight hidden somewhere in the streets, gradually deteriorating, having not any essential effect to a given problem regarding the identity of a city. So, there is no such a vision that can include all variables but a vision that consist of elements which are prevail against others or comprehend and accepted as such. We cannot think, for example, of creating an area for the poets and history, an area for the scientists and the technique, an area for assembling and working to understand more than our stereotypical cultural status. Allowing or educating self ‘’as we know it’’ to reach a new ‘’uprising’’ self that can be float free to the knowledge universe, experience varieties of behavior and practices. So, eventually we can think about some kind of flexible, diverse chart that can represent the idea of a constant change in time. A chart that will offer vital space for every existing social identity, a chart that will sustain and verify the idea of general public spaces protecting minor possible social expression details within. Details that can welcome and preserve all and every idiosyncratic* identity. Because, as the city evolve and constantly identify its entity into history it is continuously receive and shelter many and all additional new identities.

Stasis : a stop, a period of meditative equilibrium. From Greek stasis ‘standing’, ‘stoppage’. As found. The discovery of the ordinary : The title and the indication of the core content of a famous book about architecture, arts and the ‘’extraordinary topicality of life’’. Myth : a story narrated, concerning early history or explaining a natural or social phenomenon. From Greek mythos Paradigm : typical example or pattern From Greek paradeigma, from paradeiknunai : ‘show side by side’, From para ‘beside’ + deiknunai ‘to show’. Identity : the fact of being who or what a person or a thing is From Greek oida ‘to know’, History : the study and the outcome body of written essays, considered as a whole, about the past events in human affairs From the Greek historia : ‘ finding out, narrative, history’, from histor : ‘learned, wise man’ Macro-icon : a comprehension of a place build on consecutive time detections instead of a snapshot. A collage, a multi-layered chart of separate information crossings. Phenomenon : a fact or situation observed to exist or happen. From Greek phenomenon : from phaino (feno) ‘bring to the open, expose.

The acting Self is an educational condition, a demand and a desire. Self, then, is standing in constant informational exchange, within any given cultural environment aiming to produce ethos*. The acting self is formed, primarily, by the varieties of information coming from family acting as a reflector and conveyor of the major and prevailed social stereotypes, the ethnic, the tribal and the religion believes. Furthermore it is also a carrier of powerful stereotypes of a selected and tested regional, even global, education models through time. Self, they say, should confront constantly with a given cultural environment, while being into a given operational educational process. But, there is a time when we, the many, altogether, should work uniting and merging ourselves. Offer all personal mental abilities, all skills to a collective determined attempt for an outcome that will be finally achieved and offered. This is the major goal we had to reach during this and every workshop. To teach and exercise students to work collectively, to experience the acts of collecting and arranging information, to test tactics, to invent practices. To manage, to separate all tasks into accurately balanced personal-based methods and, finally, to assemble all outcomes into a united formation, highly persuasive to be accepted, to carried out and, finally, transform a city. So, we can thing of periods of personal and collective actions referring and, finally, applying to a city that acts periodically* as a field of personal and collective acts. This constant diversification equilibrium is the actual urban ‘’behavioristic’’ question to be identified in order to be used as a leading concept-direction that will eventually and hopefully render onto the city all necessary and politically synchronous* interventions. Everything, finally, ends up to the state of a specified written text. Aiming to carry an ideal mixture of information and design collections proving the human ability. Declaring and manifesting an understandable and accepted consensus of reason. Containing and unifying the varieties of collected and elaborated information in an ideal opinion. The urban forms and voids, the spatial questions and the desired probabilities, the believes, the dogmas* , the mirroring of external cultural interventions over the fabric of the city, the victories over the local identity that gradually consolidate the form of the city or stand as a crucial future reformation pole, the understanding of self penetrating into the networks and collecting fragments, units of meaning, leading to a vital or possible variable content. The comprehension of the process of investigating and exchanging information and, further more, controlling and designing an outcome. All these acts of investigation are forming the overlapping layers of the identity of the city and the map of disciplines a student must confront, comprehend and rapidly transform to a personal functional process aiming to understand, to manipulate, to conclude, to form an ideal response for a given enigma*, a question coming from and returned to the civilization he/she is containing in.

Dogma : a fact: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true From Greek dogma ‘opinion’, from dokein ‘seem good, think’. Enigma : mysterious, puzzling, difficult to understand, a riddle, a paradox. From Greek ainigma, from ainissesthai ‘speak allusively, from ainos ‘fable’. Ethos : the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations From Greek ēthos ‘nature, disposition,’ (plural) ‘customs.’ periodically : occurring or appearing at intervals; occasional From Greek periodikos ‘coming around at intervals,’ from Greek periodos ‘orbit, recurrence, course,’ from peri- ‘around’ + hodos ‘way, course.’ synchronous : existing or occurring at the same time, From Greek synkhronos, from syn- ‘together’ + khronos ‘time’ ) + -ous .

http://www.arch.uth.gr/PAW2015