PUBLIC SPACE SEEKS USERS

PUBLIC SPACE SEEKS USERS

NTUAARCH - 10TH SEMESTER DISSERTATION RESEARCH PROJECT

PROFESSORS: TYPE: STUDENT: YEAR:

ANDREAS KOURKOULAS, ARIADNI VOZANI ARCHITECTURAL THEORY RESEARCH MARIANNA BISTI MARCH 2012

This is an abridged translated version of the original NTUA dissertation, which is also available online. Bibliographical references are not not included in the translated version.

CONTENTS 02

PREFACE 1. INTRODUCTION

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The public space: Defining the Public Space and its Role The square: Definition and Role Development and Transformations 2. POSTMODERN DEPRECIATION OF THE PUBLIC SPACE

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Globalization and Consumerism: The New Public Space Technology and the Digital Revolution New Media Digitize me 3. PUBLIC SPACE IN GREECE

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Athens: Urban Evolution, Public Space Generation, Temporal Mutation The 21st Century: The pervasive city Post-Olympic Games Apocalypse Bankruptcy

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4. SPECIAL REPORT: THE GREEK PATHOGENS

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What is to be done now?

Squares as Black Holes: The End of Public Space?

5. THE CASE OF KLAFTHMONOS SQUARE

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Why Klafthmonos square? Justifying our choice Spatial - Historical analysis A Modern Reading of Space

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EPILOGUE

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PREFACE Our daily wanderings in Athens’ historic center, realized within the 9th semester’s course in Design, provided both the stimulus and the background for the present dissertation’s subject. Our primary observation, ascertained right at the beginning, referred to the urban desertification of central city squares and the latters’ inability to evoke substantial interest for social interaction and participation, as a result of the broader depreciation of public space.

Research is organized and presented in three sections. In the introdu- ctory section, we examine the transformations that the public space has undergone since its inception, in order to outline the key factors that have led to its present-day failure (namely, globalization & consumerism; technology & digital revolution).

In the second section, we trace the distinct Greek pathogens of the Athenian public space which result in depriving the square of its social role in the city’s everyday life (namely, “para-urbanism”; lack of central planning; “architecture without architects”; immigration issues; the 2004 Olympic Games legacy; the events of December 2008; current IMF/EU-dictated policies).

In the final section, having identified the factors that inhibit the function of public space as a ‘condenser of social activities’, we investigate how they are reflected in the case of Klafthmonos Square -- a typical ‘black hole’ in the urban fabric of Athens. An intervention, introduced on our thesis proposal, will question the assertion that such degradation is an irreversible phenomenon.

[Or is it not?]

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INTRODUCTION THE PUBLIC SPACE Defining the Public Space and its Role The concept of “public space” is a vague and usually subjective term, perceived and interpreted by each subject differently, depending on their personal experiences and their comprehension of the city and life within it. In any case, the collective unconscious connects the public space, even vaguely and intuitively, with civil rights, reflecting on the individual’s second nature as a member (unit) of a greater group (whole).

A more appropriate approach to clarifying the concept of public space might perhaps be reached through the distinction of polarities based on the private/public antithesis: The private and the public; the protected and the exposed; work and leisure; the individual and the collective; the traditional and the innovative.

Unlike the private, public space addresses everyone and belongs to everyone. Hannah Arendt in her The Human Condition argues from a political and philosophical perspective that public space is preeminently political space and interactively linked with the concept of public liberties. Despite the fact that it is regulated by laws and rules of conduct, it is potentially appropriable open space which vindicates the role of the city as the core of coexistence, communication and association through its functions.

As public space is transformed over historical periods, reflecting the Zeitgeist of each era, its role vis-à-vis the urban environment is equally adjusted. Examining its essence, one can draw informed conclusions about the history of the (geographic) location to which it corresponds, but also attempt to interpret its course through time.

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THE SQUARE Definition and Role The city’s public space par excellence since its inception as the “primary void,” the square is particularly charged with multiple messages: social, political, cultural, economic –with an emotional overtone. The square’s course is directly linked to the broader history of cities and their transformations through time; in this respect, its role is multidimensional.

As a spatial element, the square sometimes plays the role of the center-point or that of the entry-point (point of arrival and departure) in the city, sometimes placed along linear paths (streets), often as a hub for vehicle traffic allocation on complex intersections (roundabout); or even, as a visual release mechanism, framing and highlighting important spatial landmarks of the specific location (buildings, monuments, vistas).

As a locus, the square was created to accommodate people’s activities: a field for assembly, worship, transaction, and interaction. Following the evolution of the city, the square was enriched with features, events and values, all providing an inner meaning, a special character and an unique identity. The square has thus become a place for social discourse and social activity; a place where cultural, political and social output is produced but also consumed as social struggle, exchange of ideas and information; in short, the square is directly related to the social becoming of the individual.

The manner in which a specific locus is experienced marks any square as functional or dysfunctional while human activity in or around the square directly depends upon (if not fully determined by) the uses and users it is addressing.

Development and Transformations The square’s inception coincides with the city’s appearance in prehistoric times.

Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset states: “In primitive societies, when there were no towns or villages, people transferred their meager products in certain places to barter between them. These spaces slowly become enclosed and soon some began to permanently settle around them. So they started to build cities around the central space of the exchange or market. Therefore, a city without a central square or market is not a city.”

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Beginning with the ancient Athenian Agora and up to the 19th century, the square is experienced more or less as a public space, in the traditional sense, i.e. that of social intercourse (exchanges, meetings) and discourse (socializing).

A major coupure in the historical development of the city occurs during the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. The dominance of the Modernist movement removes the metaphors and symbolic meanings of Renaissance design, which permeated the entire trajectory up to Neoclassicism, seeking a clear break with the past. The movement, in need to address the problems of the modern city, problems inherent to the new mode of production, urbanization, internal migration, residence deficit etc, incorporates social concerns and reflection into architectural and urban design and introduces the concept of zoning. Functionalism then introduces the separation of functions in space and prioritizes access solutions, thus radically subverting the hitherto perception of urban public space. The square is transformed into a roundabout and almost disappears, streets are flooded by fast vehicles, public space is divided into green areas, playgrounds and sports facilities.

Zoning, although implemented with the best intentions to meliorate the city’s organization, leads to a level of standardization and uniformity resulting in the destruction of neighborhood relations and everyday life in the city. It’s innovative and global style bare public space of its traditional essence, affecting the sense of urbanity and the collective memory. Raised visibility (an enlarged horizon), weakened identification with the locus and the lack of references, symbols and meanings, lead to decreased participation and sociability, social separation and alienation.

The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe in St Louis (1972) acquires symbolic significance as, according to preachers of Postmodernism, it marks the death of the Modern movement. As it becomes more and more accepted that urban spaces constructed during the previous period have contributed to the dehydration of everyday life, the stagnation of collegiality in favor of a dangerous individualism, postmodernists increasingly focus on the fundamental questions concerning the relationship between collectivity and individuality, finally prioritizing the promotion of the collective nature of architectural practice. Concepts such as the users’ points of view and their right to participate in the decision-making process of the built environment’s creation, acquire timeliness and relevance, emphasizing the social dimension of the architect’s role. Monumentality (beyond classic motifs), symbolism and pluralism are back on 6

stage. Modern studies highlight the square as an essential factor of urban form, a structural component of urban design and of life in the city. The postmodern notion deals with public space as a stage hosting a variety of functions, as a platform for actions, seeking a “contingent” relationship between space and function.

During the 80’s cities have fully returned to the heart of architectural interest. Internal migration is complete, World War II’s wounds have healed, construction rates are reduced and ceased to be a priority for European cities. Economic development now leaves room for engagement with public spaces, which show evidence of abandonment and decay. Programmes for upgrading such spaces are usually combined or tied to the organization of international economic events: athletic (Olympic Games), cultural (Expo’s, Cultural Capitals of Europe) or commemorative (Centennials), releasing funds to benefit the forgotten qualities of public spaces -- mainly squares, parks, sidewalks in the cities’ historic center. The examples of Lyon, with 200 projects over 15 years (1989) and Barcelona (1992) deserve to be noted as overall successful experiences of cooperation between architects and local authorities, despite some reclamation effects towards economically disadvantaged residents.

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POSTMODERN DEPRECIATION OF THE PUBLIC SPACE GLOBALIZATION AND CONSUMERISM: THE NEW PUBLIC SPACE Neo-liberalist economic policies gradually being applied all over Europe caused an unprecedented wave of public services privatizations. The participatory perception of the city and public spaces dramatically changes under the influence of the new economic and social reality. Shopping, the now dominant activity, imposes its terms in matters pertaining to the organization and structure of urban space and its individual components. Open spaces are privatized, then immediately acquire excessive financial (exchange) value; in other words, they are produced by the Private for the private sector, to be consumed by it. In the transition from the 20th to the 21st century and while the theme parks of America have already made their mark, there appear in Europe new municipal recreation centers, acting as substitutes for traditional public spaces and swamping European capitals, as literal creations of the consumerist society. These enclosed private business premises, advertised as temples of consumption (shopping malls), redefine the meaning of public space as a new, condensed, “safe” and supervised city within a city.

This shift of the Public concept simulates movement within the urban environment and thereby alters the perception of the urban experience. The citizens’ rights to public spaces is replaced by the customers’ rights, a shift which abusively -even repressively- affects shared public spaces’ operation as a public good1.

During this phase urban regeneration projects purely serve the entrepreneurs’ profitable game, whose aim is to increase the market value of the area scheduled for redevelopment. A typical example is the case of the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.

1 Antonis Kapetanios, Silent Squares: Some Thoughts on the Greek Square (part II), greekarchitects.gr

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Following Germany’s re-unification, where before the war was a square, a good reference point for residents, was postwar transformed into a huge theme park which, although frequented by vast numbers of consumers, remains hopelessly isolated and cut offfrom the wider environment.

This depreciation of public space as a social good and its emergence as a field of consumption occurs and is recorded in the collective unconscious, in the same extent that shopping becomes synonymous with entertainment. Public spaces are perceived as most consumer goods are. Access and “opening hours” to them are now synchronized with commercial business hours.

Technology and the Digital Revolution As consumerism and the society of abundance have come to define public space from the 20th century onwards, it is technology which unquestionably plays the main role in the transformation and negation of life today. Telecommunications, television, modern mass media and most recently the internet and the new digital imaging technologies, gravely affect the way people communicate, socialize, establish their identity and the communities to which they belong. Technology changes the way man “exists.” These new conditions redefine social reality, synthesizing the elements which challenge the traditional role of urban public space and the square, rendering cities incapable of generating interest in direct and unmediated social contact and participation.

New Media Mass media daily newscasts, televised content and even cinema works, as leading reality manufacturers in contemporary society, are in turn transformed through technological breakthroughs. Following the dictates of consumerism and a conservative shift towards privacy, they constantly work forming an image for the public space characterized by high risk, violence, crime and other unforeseen, grave events. This cult of fear is damaging to the streets, squares and parks under the guise of promoting public safety: producing maps of “off-limits,” dangerous city areas where, according to the dominant broadcasted discourse “crime, illegal trade and prostitution” rage.

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Isolation in a paradise-home, limited circulation on the streets and provision of supervised relief primarily in protected recreation centers, constitute the framework within which the new relationship between the Public and the Private emerges.

The boundaries are perfectly sealed and well protected by the personal computer or television screens. The subjects of such a “society of the spectacle” are gratified merely monitoring the public space, perceiving such activity as “participation.”

Thus, activities of eminently public character invade the digital universe primarily through personal computers. Objects, spaces, buildings and foundations are constructed, navigated, experienced --always mediated through a computer screen.

Every transaction is made possible remotely, distance having no meaning. Remote financial transactions and trading, remote entertainment, remote fun and games for all ages, remote design, remote group therapy, remote education (distance learning), teleconferencing, remote browsing of museum collections, the countryside and whole cities2.

Digitize Me The new social networking media constantly digitize the city’s raw data, creating the conditions for the development of a culture without the physical city: Urban squares are transformed into virtual “squares,” fora and chat rooms where, as aptly pointed out by G. Tzirtzilakis, “everyone seems to be in contact with anyone in a potentially unlimited space which changes individual and collective life’s parameters. Physical coexistence, tactile situations and face-to-face dialogue between people who discuss issues are minimized; precedence is given to disembodied communication and domestic immobility. Face-to-face communication becomes face-to-facebook.”

The substitution of actual collective moments by those of “meeting” thousands of people in the virtual square appears to be an irreversible phenomenon. Furthermore, negative effects are amplified by a new social stratification.

2 Dimitris Polychronopoulos, “Virtual Space: A New Public Space” in Greek City Transformations conference proceedings, p. 155.

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Digital illiterates are excluded from the new public space. In addition, accessing the required technology presupposes special training and money to spend on resources.

Nevertheless, the internet to a large extent meets the needs for communication, dialogue, exchange of views , information, collective action, as it is converted to a new, separate element of public space where freedom of expression3 , democratic debate, even decision-making under special circumstances, refer to the institution of the ancient Agora in its classical Athenian version.

Those expecting the internet to lead to intensified individualism and isolation within a sealed household immobility have definitely overlooked that the latter also contains its opposite. Social media, in fact, cannot be viewed as a threat to everyday human contact. In times of crisis and intense repression societies use these same social media to reactivate. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, the dynamic mobilizations in the Greek capital in December 2008 and summer 2011, resulted from contacting and activating thousands of individuals, who formed virtual collectives on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking media, leading active digital citizens from digital squares to real squares, turning the latter full, pulsating, collective matter. This was a form of recovering public space which belies the prophecies about its death and permanent replacement by private spaces.

3 See SOPA, PIPA

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PUBLIC SPACE IN GREECE ATHENS: URBAN EVOLUTION, PUBLIC SPACE GENERATION, TEMPORAL MUTATION Within the global context described above, the case of Greece and especially its capital, Athens, is marked with chronic pathologies as well as some specific historical conjectures which aggravate the current discredited perception of public space.

Failure to implement central planning from the establishment of the Greek state to the formation of the city; dominance of private property and the city’s repeated rape which occurs with arbitrary building and the “considerations contract” model (antiparochi in Greek), are major parameters determining the evolution of the city and the character of public space until the end of the 20th century. Combined with crucial historic events such as the Asia Minor disaster (1922), the Nazi occupation (1941-44), the civil war (1945-49) and the military dictatorship (1967-74) –the latter, in particular, completing the annulment of public space’s historical continuity and memory-- lead to architecture’s rupture with its past but also to the city being shaped in a disorderly, unregulated and aesthetically indifferent manner. The neighborhood (as an urban and social element) is dismantled and public space is gradually decreased and degraded, bearing a direct impact to the quality of life of city center residents.

What is noteworthy during this whole period, there is no debate whatsoever on urban public space. The end of the military dictatorship (1974) marks the beginning of a gradual shift in institutional (State) responses to amassed urban problems.

The first systematic reform in the planning and generation of urban public space essentially occurs from the late 70’s to early 80’s. By 1985, state-owned Urban Reconstruction Corp. (Greek acronym: EPA), the Athens Master Plan (RSA) and their specialized implementations through General Urban Development Blueprints (GPS), focused on “healing” the wounds caused by uncontrolled postwar development.

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Embellishment of Athens’ monstrous character was set as the primary objective; to be realized through decentralization of financial and administrative operations, improvement and promotion of public space, streamlining city functions, and meeting social infrastructure and environmental protection needs. However, planning the city center and defining strategic options for the city as a whole remain largely unimplemented projects.

From the mid-80’s until the end of the 20th century, Greek society’s rising nouveau riche are the main factor for the growth of unbridled consumerism and suburban shopping malls, which are the new loci of social assembly. Multiplex entertainment centers followed suit, attracting increased public activity and renewing commercial traffic in the Athenian suburbs, substituting the city center’s squares and marketplaces.

Heavy inbound immigration in 1991 and 1997, combined with the advent of Iraqi refugees in 1998, cause social shock and alter the city’s identity, essentially partitioning it. Initial appearances of “third world living conditions” are observed. The various immigrant nationalities interweave without a common reference point, as the State is notably absent, offering no social policy options. Despite the fact that xenophobia and racist tendencies are kept to manageable levels as the indigenous community still lives in conditions of prosperity, the presence of immigrants forces many traditional users of public spaces away from the city’s wider Historic Center, leading them to an introspective and isolated way of life.

During that same decade, while the country is left to address a European-wide issue like mass inbound immigration without concrete European support, the city of Athens is ushered in a process of accelerated change, following its successful Olympic Games bid.

The 21st Century: The pervasive city As the new millennium and the common currency (the euro) arrive, a great part of the funds invested in the Olympic Games construction projects are directed to premium-land exploitation, strengthening expansionist policies and the alleged “regeneration” projects. The redesign of public spaces comes about devoid of long17

term vision or any serious intention to grapple the city’s long accumulated problems. The city is ultimately presented with a heavy yet valueless legacy and a huge deficit.

Despite a series of interventions around the center, no modern identity for the city is ever accomplished. That had to be expected given the absence of any central strategic planning instrument and the established logic of “architecture without architects”. Projects are implemented via express procedures, without taking into any account existing architectural research studies, which were “abridged” or entirely by-passed, causing extreme reactions. Square regeneration projects are implemented for the sake of budget processing in their majority (e.g. Omonia Sq., Syntagma Sq., Abyssinia Sq., Koumoundouros Sq.). The overall successful regeneration of Monastiraki Sq. is delivered with a 4-year delay and serious alterations to the original design -- similarly to the Omonia Sq. and the notorious “Archaeological Sites Unification” projects. Nevertheless, there’s pervasive joy and optimism across the city for the success of the upcoming Games.

Post-Olympic Games Apocalypse From 2004 onwards, Greece is undergoing a period of rapid changes. The Games’ actual financial cost amounts to four times the projected figure, which ultimately leads to new international loans, eventually resulting to an economic and political crisis, with direct repercussions on the city and public space. Helen Portaliou notes that “the Olympic Games destroyed any design culture inherited from the early years of the Urban Reconstruction Corp. (EPA) and the Athens Master Plan (RSA).”

Three years later, by 2007, the dominant discourse over the beneficial effects of the Games to the city and especially the central districts has mutated and the city has begun exhibiting severe signs of decline.

The events of December 2008 were experienced as a brutal wake-up call. Greek society, hypnotized to a bliss-state in previous years, was rocked by the surprise outbreak of the economic crisis and the social unrest ignited by the murder of youngster Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Meanwhile, a second large inbound refugee stream commencing in 2007, as the nation drifted towards economic collapse, only served to accentuate the ensuing chaos. Athens, the same city dazed in self-pro18

claimed glory four years earlier, is now in a deep crisis. The city is transformed into something totally alien to residents of the center ring: it ceases to be recognized as “their city,” resulting in domination of feelings of fear and insecurity, while xenophobia and racist violence become daily realities. Throughout this interval since the Games, the role of the State and the Municipality opposite the crisis of the Athenian center is limited to non-existent, negative to irrelevant.

Relocating major government services previously housed in the city center to locations across the periphery proved to be the coup de grace to normality, accentuating widespread degradation. By 2009, eight large State Ministries and Public Services’ headquarters were relocated. Along with the transfer of functions, approximately 4,000 to 5,000 employees left the city center. Besides working there, the majority of them also resided there, thus contributing significantly to the economic health of city center businesses. This decentralization wave produces empty buildings and market spaces as many small shops hitherto operating in connection with public servants, are driven out of business.

Moreover, the uncontrolled development of huge department stores and shopping malls in other areas of the city has, throughout this decade, further damaged businesses situated within the historic center. By 2009, almost 18% of shops in the central streets of Athens have permanently closed down. The streets, unsupported by strong commercial activities, languish and submit to delinquency while squares mutate to passageways or deactivate. Exceptionally, where market spaces at ground level re-filled with recreational function establishments, they appear to thrive. Such functions include bars, cafés, fast foods chains etc. These “islands” maintain a living city center 24/7. Thus, Karytsi Sq., St. Irene Sq., even Kotzia Sq. to some extent, but also Kolokotronis and Praxiteles Streets record intense activity throughout the week and significantly larger crowds during the weekends, in striking difference to other public spaces in the historic center.

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Bankruptcy Following 2010, when Greece appealed to the IMF and the EU for a bail-out, Athens has turned into a hostile, unlivable city for its citizens, almost on the verge of urban desertification. A huge social protest wave against parliamentary ratification of the bail-out Memorandum, in the summer of 2011, had a double effect upon the city center (similar to what had happened after the youngster’s murder in 2008). On the one hand, citizens’ wrath manifested violently upon the material city itself, which was burned, vandalized and looted (sometimes spontaneously, sometimes abetted).

On the other hand, there was a clear shift upon the essence and meaning of public spaces. The latter has already been maturing since the December, 2008 outbreak, residents had started initiatives and citizens’ movements, defending their rights to the city and public spaces. Examples such as the public re-appropriation of “dead,” unclaimed space on Cyprus Sq. and Navarino Sq. demonstrate that the need for public social intercourse was alive and strong. This observation is further strengthened by the activities of the “Indignant movement,” within which citizens articulate spontaneous political discourse in a public place for the first time in ages. Starting with Syntagma Square in Athens, large provincial squares are activated one after the other by once again active citizens.

Still, Athens has turned into a hostile, unlivable city. The Athenians who escape the vandalized center are increasing daily, delivering it to the destitute homeless, vampiric junkies and sullen passersby.

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SPECIAL REPORT THE GREEK PATHOGENS The fact that, today, public space in Greece is on its death throes; the fact that the collapse of the collective myth of a financially and politically “Strong Greece” further reveals the true nullity of the State as regards its ability to design public space or address chaotic situations in the center of Athens; both essentially point to seeking the roots of the wider problem in the chronic pathogens of Greek society. Such pathologies are rooted on the extra-ordinary character of the Greek State itself since its establishment in the early 19th century: poverty and financial dependence on foreign powers; the growth of an economy parasitic to the State; the emphatically retail nature of local Capital; a permanent deficit in government expenditure at large, not to mention budgeting for public space planning. Moreover, the substitution of urban planning tools by what has been coined as “para-urban planning” [Filippides] or “private urban planning” [Aesopos], is characterized by unlevelled arbitrariness in construction and continuing encroachment of public lands. Even small-scale reparatory urban planning interventions implemented retained all features of “remission of sins” acts and complicity, when not outright in favor of vested interests.

Athens was built by its land owning residents and their building contractors -without a Master Plan of any kind, without architects or urban planners. No priority whatsoever was given to the design of urban public spaces: they materialized only as leftovers, what remained after the development of private spaces. In the rare case of actual urban planning carried out (a number of research studies were commissioned and completed in recent decades), professional proposals were approved and immediately archived (the case of the so called “Calls for Archive”). Or, worse, their findings and final versions were altered according to the wishes of vested interests affected by their implementation prospect. This very obvious lack of ethos on the part of the State brought about absolute disrepute in the eyes of its citizens; the latter were then prone to reversing the situation, reproducing same immorality in order to somehow benefit as well. The ensuing mechanism heavily promoted the hidden interweaving of interests as the driving force of Greek society.

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What is to be done now?

As myths collapse and delusions collide with the realities of today’s crisis, as public funding becomes more scarce than ever, what remaining options are there in putting public space back onto the citizens’ everyday lives?

It should be made clear that the issue at stake does not fall under the “seeking public spaces” header. There is enough public space in Athens’ center today, certainly more than we think. What is missing are public space’s users. The question we need to answer is why Athenians strongly prefer to live isolated in their private space, using Facebook as their square and Twitter as their café?

Surely, we are faced with a global phenomenon. In the modern city, modern lifestyle pushes citizens to unbridled individualism which concludes with residential institutionalization. But, even if the internet successfully addresses social communication needs around the globe, Athenians have an extra reason to abhor the face of public space. Public space is an area in constant suspense, just like everything else in the country. “Athens is the seat of the Incomplete, what starts and remains unfinished,” Vassilis Karapostolis stresses. “Aesthetic wounds lead to moral resignation.” 4. Indeed, everywhere around the city, vistas are full of never-ending public works, openend stalls on buildings’ roof-tops, gaping reinforced framework “skeletons” awaiting masonry work funds (most always laid well in advance to benefit from a previous version of building regulations). Even ancient monuments like the Parthenon are enveloped in scaffolding, making one believe that restoration work never ends, and this signifies the triumph of the incomplete and the chaotic, forcing capitulation, addiction to sloppiness but also disgust, escapism and withdrawal within the shielding walls of a private residence.

As if everything has been predesigned by marketing, each free-willing inmate is further brainwashed by mass media, advertising, and lifestyle magazines. Each is compelled to build their own enclosed paradise, containing everything fashionable, addressing false necessities arising from the consumption patterns of the moment.

Should Europeans be thought of as vulnerable to such pressures, Greeks must be thought of as the “perfect victims.” Having matured during a period of growing material felicity, with all syndromes and frustrations such a condition implies, 4 Vassilis Karapostolis, Athens: Total realism or the defeat of Architecture, Athens 2002, p. 128.

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each is extremely prone to enter a bubble of bliss in order to experience one’s personalized fantasy.

Squares as Black Holes: The End of Public Space?

The city of Athens emerges in this social landscape as a city banishing its own citizens from public areas and particularly squares. With few exceptions, the Athenian squares have turned into places devoid of individual characteristics. Santaroza Sq., Kanigos Sq., Omonoia Sq., Avdi Sq. have been converted into non-places, where one happens to be in order to get somewhere else. These are some the squares bearing the symptoms of the busiest areas of the historic center, so the solution to the problem lies primarily on a political decision which simply does not happen, probably serving other private interests, keeping said squares in an uncontrolled degradation process. But there are other squares which have over the years, become literal “black holes�, transformed into non-places that cannot even be crossed but need be by-passed. Klafthmonos Sq. is one of them.

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THE CASE OF KLAFTHMONOS SQUARE WHY K-SQUARE? JUSTIFYING OUR CHOICE K-square is a living example of public space which acts like a “black hole” in the center of Athens. The square’s role in the city, during different historical phases, seems to remain unchanged to this era, never marked by periods of particularly high or low intensity regarding the public’s presence, patterns of appropriation and life in general within it. What remains as a constant over time is the square’s occasional function, favored by its location and size, as a site for short-time events, mainly cultural (the city’s Book Bazaar, European Music Festival, Music of the World), political (protest rallies, mass demonstrations, pre-election booths), or social activist (solidarity soup kitchen, Athens Gay Pride), confirming its position in the latent potential of the Athenian public space.

These peculiar characteristics of K- square, are the reasons of its selection as a locus for analysis and observation, with a view to identifying those elements which define its image, its occasional function, its lack of active participation in the city’s daily life.

Spatial - Historical analysis Despite its notable position on the map, along the Stadiou Boulevard axis, K-square is characterized by a contradiction. While one would expect its center-of-gravity position to warrant its inclusion in the historic center’s organization, in fact its role and participation in the functions of the city remain limited to non-existent.

This observation in itself raises serious questions as to the effectiveness of centralized urban planning. Indeed, the K-square was designed by Kleanthes and Schaubert in 1833, as part of a network of squares and boulevards which ensured a 26

continuous flow of traffic and providd suitably shifting vistas along the central part of the city.

Piecemeal implementation of that original design by Klenze, who eliminated the boulevard connecting K-square with its “twin” Koumoundourou Sq., condemned it from the beginning to suffocation.

Originally, K-square was defined by the rise of neoclassical buildings along its three sides, while its NE opening hosted the Ministry of Finance’s building (the Mint), which faced towards Stadiou Boulevard.

With the temporary settlement of the first Royal couple in the three mansions along Paparrigopoulou Street and the transformation of the square into a Royal Palace garden, completely sealed off by means of a wooden fence, its space becomes enclosed, its character further introverted, completing its isolation from the social life of the area.

Despite the removal of the fence following King Otto’s relocation to his new Palace and the garden’s transfer to the Municipality of Athens (1865), the collective unconscious continued to keep off the square as if intangible barriers were still in place. K-square’s gradual transformation into an area directly connected with administration and authority (the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of the Interior, the Admiralty, the British Embassy, and Athens Police Directorate were positioned along its sides), combined with the absence of any supportive use which would activate its public space (normal housing, recreation or trade functions), ensured it remained largely dormant for decades.

In the early 20th century, K- square’s face changes following plans by E. Lazaridis (1927), acquiring a symmetrical plan with radial access onto an octagonal central plateau. Its role within the city also changes, as its perimeter streets are used for vehicle parking and, since 1930, also used as the first starting points for Mass Transit lines. The square’s wider area witnesses new uses, such as banks, daily newspapers (The Acropolis, Progress), the first local tavern and a coffee shop.

The latter (the Melampianaki’s) turns into a literary hangout, with the prominent poet Karyotakis a frequent patron, and soon extends its coverage with open-air seating under the garden trees. Such concentration of local importance functions 27

(administrative, economic and cultural) turn K-square into a landmark enjoying a continuous stream of people moving through and around it.

But, while the 1927 study brought the area into the urban fabric, the (later) city center consolidation program deconstructs this operation once again, starting with the demolition of the Ministry of Interior building (1939), under a scenario of consolidating Korai Street with Monastiraki (a more convincing explanation is the fact that the maintenance cost of the building would be too high). That consolidation scenario remains (as usual) just a scenario, while K-square is revealed and exposed to the noise and rhythms of Stadiou Blvd.

For a long time the void resulting from the demolition is incorporated into the center’s street, as by-way of Stadiou Boulevard and a parking lot. This new “configuration” openly serves the private automobile, which tends to occupy the city, pushing the square to a retirement distance in the back. Meanwhile, its neoclassical façade is gradually leveled by the frantic building of Athens new high rises.

The tangential traffic flow constraint, strengthened throughout this period, is finalized in 1972 with the auctioning of a new underground car parking and redevelopment of the square that includes the integration of the existing surface parking area. The square suddenly obtains hard delimiters, first with the dual entrances (like open wounds) on both sides of the underground parking, along the parallel Dragatsaniou and Paparrigopoulou streets and also by the overall design.

A gravely erroneous section during the excavation has resulted in the exclusion and the third side, the square’s lower part (towards PP Germanou street), with an unmanageable height difference dividing the square’s interior from street level.

Furthermore, the construction of wide flower beds along the square’s three sides (except the one towards Stadiou Boulevard) literally seals the square off, severely limiting access. But, the plan’s bad implementation extends beyond the square’s boundaries: the plan included two escalators with entrances located at the opposite side of the adjacent streets, leading to the underground parking. These escalators were never put to use, serving only to further distort the square’s visual boundaries.

In 1989, by decision of the City Council, in accordance with the spirit of the times, K-square was renamed “National Reconciliation Square.” An architectural and artistic competition was issued for the erection of a commemorative sculptural 28

monument at the site. The solution adopted is characterized by intense monumentality. The sculpture’s alignment across the axis of Korai Street, positioning it right at the center of the space that was appended to K-square during the previous regeneration plan, coupled with an undue enclosure of flowerbeds not in scale with the rest, simply makes pedestrian movement inside the square even more problematic.

A Modern Reading of Space K-square’s dysfunctional floor plan, still in effect today, has created two almost independent sub-regions with different characteristics each. The upper zone, exhibiting a more public-friendly and extrovert character, seems in direct conversation with the surroundings, maintains visual contact with the pedestrian Korai Passage and the Trilogy, appropriating city sounds from Stadiou as its own.

The feeling in the lower zone is quite different. Less exposed to public view and the city’s noises, with dense vegetation and aptly shaped parlor corners, it calls for a leisurely walk and contemplation time. While this zone has the necessary qualities which are a prerequisite for citizens’ appropriation of public space, it ultimately fails to attract interest, entrenched by the hard delimiters mentioned above and abandoned by the City. One would expect the upper zone to function as a “mediator,” a transit way of sorts from the street to the square’s heart. But the lack of a unique identity, inner meaning and symbolism that characterize the area discourage passers-by to turn their gaze inside K-square.

If the gaze is our main tool for reading the site, K-square appears doomed. For if the gaze is averted, there is no chance for moving towards, for making contact, for meeting; in short, there are no other tools for furthering space perception. Thus, occupation of said site by those social groups seeking to avoid gazes appears fully justified.

Between 2008 - 2011 the (lower level) “garden” was occupied by socially vulnerable groups: drug users and homeless people (immigrants and Greeks), and abandoned by the Municipality. After being absent for over three years, then-mayor decides to retake K-Square for Christmas 2011, tearing up the benches under the pretext of required new “landscaping.” This move, realized in the name of the ‘majority’ receives much criticism and the Mayor is rather understandably accused for 29

mockery5 since there is no solution offered to the problem of the outcast minority.

Ensuing reactions and the bad publicity caused result in a minor “regeneration” project, affecting most of the lower zone, including cleaning, pruning, new benches and the reopening of the closed refreshments kiosk.

But, as Ariadne Vozani puts it, “The desire to return to an area is directly related to the quality of experience that is recorded both collectively and personally, through the process of memory. The more we have appropriated an area, the more it is inscribed on our consciousness, strengthening its relative importance to our lives.”6.

How possible is it then, for cosmetic regeneration interventions like the one described above, to trigger any desire to return to a square that is characterized by the absence of memory?

K-square remains a non-ingestible area, fully detached from the urban environment and its potential user. The pathogens studied above, such as poor design, halffinished and fragmented production planning interventions, sloppy implementation, lack of social policy have marked both its history and its potential users.

Then again, perhaps this “potential user’s” DNA has mutated to such an extent as to not to require such places anymore?

5 Dimitris Rigopoulos, “Klafthmonos square’s homeless,” Kathimerini Daily, 3.12.2011 6 Ariadni Vozani, “Public ‘Rituals’ and Theater,” 2010, unpublished manuscript

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EPILOGUE Obviously, the reply to our last, provocative question is not self-evident. We can discern two scenarios ahead, a pessimistic and an optimistic one. The truth probably lies in the middle.

The first scenario is that of resignation, accepting that the current status quo necessarily leads to the complete disappearance of public space, opting for the uniqueness of its dematerialized version, unconditionally surrendering to (as Koolhaas put it) a terrorist perspective of the future city, where diffusion will be complete, society will be indifferent to areas with identity, buildings will be plain transit stations for manpower passing through. What square? Which public space?

The second scenario, the optimistic one, presupposes the awakening of Greek society. For adding fresh meaning to public spaces we should first manage to add fresh meaning to our lives, value to our strategic choices. Perhaps this scenario sounds utopian. But the crisis being experienced today could alter the parameters involved. As Paul Virilio puts it “where there is the greatest risk, there lies salvation.

Salvation lies on the edge of the cliff and each time we approach such a hazard, we also approach salvation. It is a paradox of modern society.” Even a delayed citizens’ awakening presents some hope. Public space is by definition an object of contestation. The Athenian public space, until recently the object of claims by the real estate industry, the entertainment industry and speculators’ circuits, today acquires new contenders: citizens’ initiatives to rescue or upgrade residential and urban voids, the homeless, even immigrants against the far-right counter-argument.

Is there room for a new architecture in this landscape? Perhaps architecture can regain its capital “A” in this very context, regaining lost ground, reclaiming its social role, taking a leading role in the joint effort to create an alternative public space.

The answer can be “yes” -- provided architecture at the same time exceeds its own pathologies, which are inherent in the pathogenesis of global and Greek society.

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“Yes� if we can juxtapose a reversal to profit’s priorities; compromises; submission to customer pressures; addiction to tricks bypassing any sense of protecting the built and the unbuilt environment. If, instead of whimpering, instead of assuming painless complaining, instead of postponing any solution pending a just society, architects choose to become not just part of the solution, but protagonists as specialists in claiming alternative public space solutions. And they should choose to act so alongside the citizens, not separate as some kind of elite.

In this spirit, we shall attempt to address in our thesis, the challenge of redesigning Klafthmonos Square.

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