BRA DIMITRA Portfolio of works
DIMITRA BRA
dimitra.bra@gmail.com
www.virtual-asylum.tumblr.com +306943900790
Dimitra is an awarded architect/artist based in Athens, GR. She likes urban voids, decay, disaster, phantoms and memories,traces and patterns. Dislikes boring, simplistic structures. She is currently seeking the tools and guides to reach a hybrid state between architecture and the arts.
Managing Crisis/Diploma Project Team: Bra Dimitra, Chrysanthi Vathi
Catastrophy in Networked Cities/Research Project Team: Bra Dimitra, Chrysanthi Vathi
Future Archaeology/International Competition Team: Petros Babasikas,Dora Moudatsou Dimitra Papageorgiou,Bra Dimitra, Chrysanthi Vathi Drip I/Public Installation
Team: Petros Babasikas, Kassiani Leontiadou, Bra Dimitra, Chrysanthi Vathi Drip II/Public Installation, Victoria Park UK Team: Petros Babasikas,Farzad More, Chrysoula Voulgari Bra Dimitra, Chrysanthi Vathi
Self-Ostracism/ Ongoing Study Only me
Realized
Exhibited
Competition Research Urban
Academic
MANAGING MADNESS
Diploma Project Collaborator: Chrysanthi Vathi Supervisor: Petros Babasikas
WHICH CRISIS? Since 2008, Athens is best defined by the term 'city of constant crisis': riots happening mainly downtown, due to economical and political demise, disturb and ruin the urban fibre around the historical center. The most vulnerable areas are around the central squares with dedicated metro stations: Omonoia square, Panepistimio, monastiraki, Syntagma. We identify a civil 'hole' in the main axis that connects Omonoia to Syntagma and carries the path of riots, towards the Parliament, the main target of anger. That hole is localised in Klafthmonos Square. Wifi is quickly replacing the natural ear-toear spread of news, thus enhances mass interaction and creates new forms of human patterns. WE: Decide to use the Web to create another dimension of public space : a digital square that exists on the net, collects info from users and alters or redefines the concrete one. And the actual, by reforming the urban space of Klafthmonos Square. The one feeds the other. working between parallel projections of the urban landscape, we create a hybrid public space, one that self feeds and absorbs damage, re emitting it as collective information.
3d diagrammatic cut, proposal pre model
Conceptual Drawings
of the Infastructure
Constant crisis in Athens is televised
Monastiraki
Panepistimio
Omonoia
Vouli
Schematic Connection of strategic public spaces under attack
Typical Athenian Topography: Polykatoikia
Zones of high and low risk in Athenian Landscape
high to low danger zones
Steps of intervention : Creating a Datascape
Study of Central Athens Squares
Data flow Diagram
21.00 pm
daily life
19.00 pm
12.00 am
9.00 am
emergency
Data flow
People Concentration
Volumes Density Diagram
Urban Surrounding Traces
urban tracings
Trace to Propylaia
Connection to Subway
Connection with underground arcades
Ancient Walls of Athens
Digital Layer Happy
Unhappy
Crowd Patterns
Urban Shell Plan View +0.00 m
Underground ephemeral market Plan View
-12.00 m
How to: Book a place in the underground ephemeral market
Virtual Space: The Scanning of Social Media
Information gathered: from Web to Urban Projections
Public Spaces affected by Crisis, percepted as Gears of a Mechanism
Typical 2.5x2.5 transfomring unit of the ephemeral market
Plan of two units merged into an ephemeral shoe shop
Klavthmonos Square, Time of Peace. View Toards Lycabettus Hill
Klavthmonos Square, Time of Peace, view towards Omonoia Sq
there is a fine line between peace and disaster; A fragile equilibrium.
Section Plan Final Model
Final Model Multiscape during Crisis
Smyrna
New York Athens
Tokyo
Catastrophy in Networked Cities
MAPPING DISASTER in Networked Cities
Research Project Exhibited:Biennale of Thessaloniki Architecture and Urbanism in SE Europe 2012 Collaborator: Chrysanthi Vathi Supervisor: Petros Babasikas
The contemporary city is defined by the full interconnection among others, shrinking distances and homogenization. Cities expand beyond geographical borders and eventually become hub points dispersed in the global grid of capital and transaction. The essence of space is altered, as it no longer lies on its spatial dimensions but on the effect of time; this which Castells calls space of flows and James Corner milieu. The network becomes a basic means for communication between people, transaction of goods and mostly spread of information. The structure of the global city is based on networks thus its viability depends on them. If one or more connections between the city hubs breaks, as would happen on a computer network, the urban system passes through multiplied disturbances from an equilibrium to another. This procedure is called catastrophe. The ability to resist, absorb and adapt to these disturbances is crucial for the resilience of a city, defines collective memory and generally consists of an integral part of the nature and history of cities. These theories are being tested in four case studies: Smyrna, New York, Athens, Tokyo transform into information. Mapping is conscripted as a basic means of the city imprint, in order for these case studies to be analyzed. Four dynamic mapping techniques- drift, layering, gameboard, rhizomeproduce four maps through which we attempt to collect results related to the disasters, actions and alterations of the urban field.
Research Project Extracted pages from the booklet
Mapping Techniques Four mapping techniques are being presented: Layering, Gameboard, Rhizome and Drift.
“What distinguishes the map from the tracing is thatit is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious.It fosters connections between fields, the removal of blockages on bodies without organs onto a plane of consistency...The map has to do with performance,whereas the tracing always involves an alleged competence� A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari In this research project, we use mapping as a tool in order to study the disaster in global networked cities. The four techniques described in Agency of mapping, by James Corner, are adapted to our four cases of study: layering for New York, Gameboard for the fire in Parnitha, Rhizome for the disaster of Smyrna and finally drift for Fukushima.
96th floor plan
9:59 WTC2 collapse/10:28 WTC1 collapse 8:46 crash on WTC1/9:02 crash on WTC2
NY Coastline before 2001
Layering Emergency Service Units final position Emergency Service Units 1st position Turner/Plaza Construction Joint Venture AMEC Tully Construction Company Bovis Lend Lease
14th Street closed and all roads to lower Manhattan closed open Ltd Pedestrian and Vehicle Access Secured Area-No Access Hospitals Restricted Area
Limited telephone service No water service No electric service
Emergency Response Main network Facilities problems
by 12:00 All roads to lower Manhattan to Chelse Piers
to staten island ferry pier
Extent of Debris Extent of Heavy Debris
Emergency Medical Techicians
Construction Zones for cleanup Dust Radius
open closed
Emergency Service units by 13:00 All Trasit Stations from Canal St Closed
Pier 25
1 mile
15.413 businesses 376.057 employees
to Pier 25
Full Collapse Partial Collapse Major Damage Moderate Damage Human Remains
0.5 mile
8.762 businesses 262.697 employees
to Staten Island
Staten Island Fresh Kills
Damage Key/Casualties Battery Park seabed was dredged
New master plan
Final Cleanup - The way of Debris
Debris Radius Economic Disaster Vicinity 1 Mile
parnitha
fire nodes
animal traces
protection zones
West Attica human interventions
Gameboard map Parnitha urban destruction,2009
Rhizome Map Smyrna 1922, Memories of Destruction Map
“...Returning to the street I found the stampede from the fire just beginning. All of the refugees that had been scattered through the streets or stowed in churches and other institutions were moving toward the waterfront. Steadily augmenting this flow were those abandoning their homes in the path of the fire...It was now dark. The quay was already filled with tens of thousands of terrified refugees moving aimlessly between the customs house and the point, and still the steady stream of new arrivals continued, until the entire waterfront seemed one solid mass of humanity and baggage of every description.�
Rhizome Map Smyrna 1922, Memories of Destruction Map
Psychogeographical Map of Smyrna of Disaster, Research Project Psychogeographical map of Smyrna,part research project
Korilyama
Fukushima
Sukagawa
Sukagawa
Shirakawa
Shirakawa
Iwaki
Iwaki
Hitachi
Hitachi
19.3.2011
17.3.2011
20 klm
20 klm
Tamura
Tamura Fukushima
Korilyama
Korilyama
Fukushima Sukagawa
Sukagawa
Shirakawa
Shirakawa
Iwaki
Iwaki
Hitachi
Hitachi
23.3.2011
25.3.2011
20 klm
20 klm
Tamura Fukushima
Tamura
Korilyama
Korilyama
Fukushima
Sukagawa
Sukagawa
Shirakawa
Shirakawa Iwaki
Iwaki
Hitachi
Hitachi
30.3.2011
28.3.2011
20 klm
20 klm
Tamura
Tamura Fukushima
Fukushima
Korilyama
Korilyama
Sukagawa
Sukagawa
Shirakawa
Shirakawa
Iwaki
Iwaki
Hitachi
Hitachi
5.4.2011
10.4.2011
Seismic density per hour and region
drift mapping technique/Japan
20 klm
Tamura
Korilyama
Fukushima
Radioactivity in Fukushima
20 klm
Tamura
North Sendai
Friday 11.3.2011 01:54/ depth 5.2m
Friday 11.3.2011 14:45/ depth 9m
Sendai
Saturday 12/3/2011 00:13/ 6.2M, depth: 19km
Sunday 13/3/2011 11:23/ 6.2M, depth: 25km
Sendai
Iwaki
Monday 14/3/2011 09:40 /4.6M, depth: 25km
Thursday 17/3/2011 10:08/ 5M, depth: 20km
Fukushima
Friday 25/3/2011 20:36 6.4M, depth: 39km
Sunday 8/5/2011 08:18/ 4.8M, depth: 32km
FUTURE ARCHAEOLOGY The Autostrada del Sole, disconnected from Calabria's local scale and coast, is strategically opened to regional flows and structures. A Montage Map (Phase I: Survey), expanding the land from the point of view of the highway, leads to 12 basic actions of intervention, abstracting infrastructure to a work in progress: a Future Archaeology (Phase II: Preparation) open to appropriation. From then on, a kit of hybrid design interventions organizes Tourism, Culture, Research, Energy and Access into a sustainable landscape (Phase III: Intervention). Parco Solare 2020 grows in time, its local economy regionally activated through the weaving passage of water, flora, fauna, pedestrians, vehicles, light rail, waste and power.
International Competition Shortlisted 30/480 Calabria, Italy Role: Assistant Architect Drifting City
program matrix
100m
Research Nests, Costaviola IT
Hanging Motel, Deborah Bridge(Favazzina,Italy)
THE RIVER
Design Comission Athens GR Onassis Cultural Center Role: Assistant Architect Drifting City
The River transforms human, urban and cultural movement into data and then creates new movement through its architecture. It flows over the lobby of the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, mapping and feeding back change from inside and outside the building. The River is a 110m long frieze carrying an embedded, custom-made, program mable, transparent LED display. Integrated with projections, touch screens and furniture in a continuous material structure with a series of architectural plug-ins, the River broad casts images, words and information, directs movement from the City to the Stage, generates encounters and creates collectivities through touch. The River is both hardware and software; virtual and physical; interactive-digital and analog-fluid, solid and discretely luminous. It activates architectural forms and interfaces between the crowd, perfor mance, traffic, atmosphere and shape, notation, light, images, words. The River tells linear and non-linear stories.
interactive platform, lobby of Onassis Cultural Center
Conceptual drawing showing the River in the Lobby
TOUCH SCREEN
4.PERIMETER
3.STAIRS FRONT
TOUCH SCREENS
2.AREA INFORMATION AND STOP
INFORMAT
1.LOBBY
HD SCREENS
ANALYSIS -DENSITY OF CEILING ELEMENTS
LED STAIRS
PRJCT No
TOUCH SCREENS
POSITIONING OF VISUAL CONTENT "THE RIVER"
2.AREA ION AND STOP 3.STAIRS FRONT
0.OUTDOOR AREA
SCALE:
1:10 IN THE LOBBY OF ONASSIS CULTURAL CENTER
INFOSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURAL INTERACTIONS
4.PERIMETER
T: 424. 229 1868 F: 424. 207 1706
LOS ANGELES 311 N ROBERTSON BLVD #2
WWW . DRIFTINGCITY . COM
ATHENS LYKAVITTOU 16 - 6th FLOOR ATHENS, GREECE 10673 T +30 210 36 16 986 F +30 210 36 16 983
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
TOUCH SCREEN
DATE 5 JULY 2012
ȂǼȁǼȉǾ ǼĭǹȇȂȅīǾȈ
36.2011.ARC.MED
The Parthenon Frieze, parallilism to the ‘River’
RIVER PATTERN DENSITIES The Pattern uses coded language to transmit through light the program of performances
1
2
3
Conceptual Sketch, Central Lobby of Onsddid Cultural Center
DRIP I Ephemeral Installation Green Design Festival,2010
Drip juxtaposes the organic and the inorganic as upward and downward flows in time, triggered by atmosphere and gravity in a 2.5x2.5m vertical garden. It consists in a large volume of salt held 3m above a planter. As water drips over the planter through special orifices, salt crystallizes downward forming 9 stalactites over the planter. Creeper plants grow upward from the planter. Stalactites and plants bond together in time. Drip keeps transforming under the refracted light of the suspended salt-volume. It changes in time, physically and locally responding to a global phenomenon, aiming to redefine climate change as a hybrid, transitory stage also known as “Salt of the Earth.�
Exhibited:Syntagma Square, GR Role: Assistant Architect Drifting City
Drip I Making Process. Testing the formation of stalactites
Large volume of salt close up, water drips, creating 9 stalactites
Axonometric diagram. Drip
Salt Stalactites: Creation process
Drippping down and growing up,Drip grows as it self-destructs
DRIP II
Exhibited:Victoria Park, London UK Ephemeral Installation Role: Visual Artist for Olympic games 2012 Planning:Drifting City
Drip is a public pavilion containing a vertical garden. Inside it, hydraulic water movement nourishes twelve tamarisk trees and dissolves a canopy of salt into stalactites. Dripping down and growing up, the two compete in time, transformed by atmosphere and gravity into a steel-green-crystal hybrid. Drip is an urban hourglass, changing rapidly when it rains. It reconfigures the basic elements of an Island: isolation, loom, clear perimeter, cut-off hinterland, ebb, flow, spray of salt and freshwater, and the shadow of beach trees. Drip grows as it self-destructs.
TYPE B
TYPE C
PLAN
TYPE A
Canopy Salt Containers
PLAN
Formation Sketches
Connection to structure Containers filled with salt
Victoria Park Final Installation
Self-Ostracism
Or how a treehouse acts as repulsion of memories “La jetee�(film) tells a story of a man, prisoner in the aftermath of the Third World War, in a destroyed, postapocalyptic Paris . Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods "to call past and future to the rescue of the present". They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel. They test their theoris on him; his key to the past is a vague but obsessive memory, from his pre-war childhood, of a woman he had seen on the observation platform at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a startling incident there. After having suffered these experiments, this man results in seious brain damages, leading to hallucinations and strong anti social characteristics. He decides to build a house in a tall tree, from where he can observe the world and fight with his fragmented memories. The shelter has a piano room, an observation room, and stairs which he is not sure if they are real : They lead to nowhere. Moving its walls, is like triggering his imagination; The effort he makes to do that, ressembles the dark memories of his other self he is maniacally trying to repel. The circle symbolizes the eternal loop within his own self; and enless journey between reality and hallucinations.
Ongoing Project Personal Work
Footage of Nazistic Experiments
La jetee : fragmented memories of the man of the treehouse
PLAN walls still +12.00 m
Memories of the Man that lives in the Treehouse
Progressive brain damage, used as drawing procedure
Movement pattern diagrams
ing
Mov
s
wall
Stairs
Vie
wt
ow
orld
PLAN walls moved +12.00 m
Afterimage of the Man that lives in the Treehouse Merged Photo: Diane Arbus
Four objects of use:
mattress
piano
binoculars
notebook
The Man that lives in the treehouse: perception of space
“In the shadow we again see a precious terror. Thank God, it's still only Purgatory. With a shudder, we cross what the occultists call dangerous territory. In my wake I raise up monsters that are lying in wait; they are not yet too ill-disposed toward me, and I am not lost, since I fear them. “
Manifesto of Surrealism
The End