Selected Projects + Texts by eftychios.savvidis

SELECTED TEXTS + PROJECTS Eftychios Savvidis

Eftychios Savvidis Flat 9 2 St. Quintin Avenue W10 6NU, London / UK t: +447729782862 e: savvidis.eftychios@gmail.com

Education 09.2016 09.2017

10.2008 04.2015.

02.2013 07.2013.

09.2003 06.2006.

MA Architecture & Historic Urban Environments The Bartlett School of Architecture University College London, UCL / UK Diploma BA + MArch in Architecture School of Architecture National Technical University of Athens/Greece Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura Universidad de Granada / Spain With Erasmus Programme Scholarship Ayios Ioannis Lyceum, Limassol / Cyprus Graduated with 19.9/20 (Apolytirion) Professional Experience

08.2016

Tabuenca & Leache Arquitectos, Pamplona / Spain Reference: Fernando Tabuenca - ftabuenca@gmail.com

06.2014 -

Ariadni Vozani Architects, Athens / Greece

03.2016 -

03.2016.

09.2015 02.2016.

Reference: Ariadni Vozani - avozani@yahoo.com

Teaching Assistant at Urban Design Studio 9 School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens /Greece

Reference: Andreas Kourkoulas - andreaskourkoulas@gmail.com 06.2012 09.2012.

Projmetal Architecture, Belgrade / Serbia

Reference: Silvija Djuric - silvija.djuric@gmail.com

Participations 11.2016

Digital Curatorial Project “Whistles of Surfaces” Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia / Cyprus

05.2016

Group Show Exhibition “What is the other” Circuits & Currents Art Space, Athens / Greece

05.2016

Young Artists Residency Confrontation Through Art, Athens / Greece

02.2016

Artists’ EBook Publication Radical Reading Curatorial, London / UK

06.2014

International Architectural Competition Plovdiv Central Square, Plovdiv / Bulgaria

with A. Vozani & A. Tzortzis for which received an Honorable Mention as one of the top 4 unrealized projects for the years 2010-2015 at “ΔΟΜΕΣ 2016 Greek Architecture Awards” 11.2013 03.2014

NTUA Research Programme: “Strategies on Networking Urban Interventions in the city of Athens” School of Architecture N.T.U.A, Athens / Greece

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FUTURE PASTS / PAST FUTURE

UNINTENTIONAL MONUMENTALITY

Academic, MA Dissertation, London 2017

Academic, Text Essay, London 2017

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WHISTLES OF SURFACES

NEW DIGITAL REALITIES

Curratorial Project, Nicosia 2016

3D Laser Scanning Project, London 2017

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REVEALING GEOMETRIES

CHAPTER1: WHAT’S NO LONGER ALIVE

Academic, MArch Final Design Project, Athens 2015

Art Project, Epub for ‘Radical Reading’, Athens/London 2016

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TERRITORIAL CONTROL

ROOM 18

Art Project, Installation, Athens 2016

Architectural Competition Entry, Pamplona 2016

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VENETIAN NOCTURNE Academic, Research - Design Project, London 2017

F U T U R E PA S T S / PA S T F U T U R E Academic, Dissertation Project1, London 2017 (to be) Presented at the Exhibition “Post-Past, Pre-Future” at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL / October 2017 (to be) Presented at the Symposium “digital cultural heritage : Future Visions” / November 2017

t rather seems that in a transient largescale digital moment a new preservation paradigm is born. Rather than giving highest priority to preservation of carriers, in the digital “it is the wine that is to be saved, not the bottle”. Frequent use and widespread circulation provide and enhance a chance for survival whilst preservation seems no longer dependent on the lifespan of the carrier, but on the ability to transfer the information to new media. In a post-digital era, the concept of media conversion and migration on an ongoing basis over time rises as important and necessary, and the ability to allow digital information to circulate rapidly on new carriers, to migrate form one carrier to another as often as possible, appears as the ultimate guarantee for its permanent existence. Records and files that are not ‘translated’ or moved out of obsolete hardware and software environments are very likely to die with them , and unlike matter, digital information is not subject to gradual decay, neither slowly disappears, dissolves, disintegrates or yellows; it either exists or it does not. New preservation models are evolving where traditional strategies as we know them in the analogue domain, seem no longer relevant – or at least are no longer sufficient to guarantee perpetuity or secure eternity.

and threats that trouble our century. Threedimensional digital replication is becoming a preservation phenomenon of our age, rapidly transforming attitudes towards decay but also attitudes towards material preservation itself. The distributed monument through the binary form that it acquires through its digitization, allows for backing up historically significant structures facing threats of loss in war and conflict zones, keeping intact 3D snapshots of whole cities sinking into tourist throngs, or even 3D-virtually saving decaying Zoras while building on top our pristine Generic Cities. ICOMOS in alliance with CyArk have already set out to ‘save’ as much of the world as they can by 3D documenting cultural heritage sites before they are lost to natural disasters, destroyed by human aggression or ravaged by the passage of time, while at the same time ‘Scan the World’, is setting its own online digital “Cast Courts” collecting 3D printable scanned cultural objects from all over the world. The profound impact of digital technologies in cultural heritage is universally acknowledged but still poorly understood, while the rapid pace of change coupled with the urgent need for immediate response to the fragility that our material world suffers from, makes it increasingly difficult to establish common ground and to promote thoughtful discussion. To predict or try to interpret new developments in the field of digital engagement with heritage on the basis of its recent history is risky, as one needs to “extrapolate from a curve that is too short and build on evidence that has not been shifted by time”, whereas projecting to a more distant vantage point to see past future “entails a loss of detail, but may reveal the outlines of more general trends”. However, as we move further into the new millennium, into a more

In an increasingly digital world of immateriality, objectlessness and transcendence, heritage objects take on new unexpected dimensions. The monument released from its static material state, stripped away of the only thing that kept it bounded to Reigl’s narrative of danger and fragility, is now re-conceived as a digital script, as a condenser of information, data and immortal bits ready to conquer eternity. Digitization is promised as a tool of overcoming brittleness or as an antidote to the uncertainties •

mature digital era (or a post-digital era), we further realise that entropy is unavoidable. All things are doomed to decay – even the most seemingly stable ones. The dipole of fragility and the need for perpetuity appears also in the digital world - as in the physical one – revealing interesting new ways of responding to the mandate for conquering eternity. Longevity in the digital domain though, is understood in different terms and the fragility of digital information initiates new procedures and establishes a new preservation paradigm. A paradigm that guarantees survival based on processes of constant migration, translation and renewal – everything that material preservation is not. The digitisation of heritage simultaneously affects the process of creating content, the way in which content is disseminated and the ways that it can be preserved over time. Although preservation mainly associated with a sort of deference to the past, and often equated with keeping things the same, the current transition to a new dominant media opens up the way for interrogating, evaluating and challenging preservation conventions and offers special opportunities for analysis and critique. The digital obliges us to consider all our certainties about the very meaning of the word “preserve” and the ways we hold on to heritage objects but also to rethink cultural processes in dramatically new ways. Digital technology has already thrown heritage into a new reality where scanning and possible reprinting, dematerialisation and rematerialisation, endless dissemination and perpetuation, are starting to blur the boundary between the physical and the virtual and challenge the primacy granted to presence and materiality in preservation. Furthermore, heritage seems that can no longer

be thought of just in terms of unique immutable objects and preservation appears to be framed in different ways which may or may not rely exclusively on maintaining objects materially but more on allowing memories, meanings, and information to be endlessly transformed, migrate and incarnated into every possible form and materiality. By sacrificing the preservation of preservation as we know it until now, new fertile territories open up that allow us to question again “how do we keep things”, while at the same time our post-digital relationship to monuments suggests a new conception of the monument itself. A conception that liberates us from the primal importance of intense objects demanding our attention, obedience and reverence, and provides us with promising avenues to move toward more existential questions like: “why do we keep things in the first place”.

1 The word past in the title of the essay acquires a double meaning: as a noun it indicates the totality of events gone by or occurred before a given point in time, while as a preposition it signifies the passage beyond a certain point in time. Combined twice with its antonym – future, used both as a noun and adjective – it accordingly forms the titles of the two extended chapters that the essay breaks down to. Both chapters using the dipole fragility – mandate for eternity, that motivates the phenomena of preservation, consider the renegotiation of heritage in the digital age, but also in the unforeseeable future. Full text available on: https://issuu.com/savvidis.eftychios/docs/future_pasts *The Dissertation was supervised by Hannah Cortlett. p6: Unwrapped Texture Atlas of 3d Scanned Rialto Bridge p8: CNC-milled foam model of the Mound in Robin Hood Gardens.

U N I N T E N T I O N A L M O N U M E N TA L I T Y Academic, Text Essay1, London 2017 (to be) Published in Future Anterior, University of Minesotta Press, February 2017

he rather problematic -yet emblematicSmithsonian ‘streets in the sky’, seems to have been proven insufficient, or better inefficient, in getting Robin Hood Gardens in the List, joining the ever growing fleet of English Heritage. Instead, the provocative and influential public housing scheme, designed and completed in 1972 by two of Britain’s most important architectural designers and thinkers and also leading protagonists of the New Brutalism , was given the title of the “monument” and offered a place in PastScapes – a repository / link in Historic England’s online presence for non-listed or non designated sites. The project that has since its realisation become evocative of what is now seen as a pivotal moment in British post-war architecture, signifying also “the progressive state of architectural design and public expectation at a time of change and social advance” , as of August 2015, was granted a second certificate of immunity , meaning that it cannot be considered again for listing until at least 2020. At the same time, the recent approval of the planning application for the second phase of the Blackwall Regeneration Project by the Tower Hamlets Council marked the end of a failed campaign to save the historic estate and gave a conclusion to this controversial conservation case , condemning the concrete complex to demolition. Surprisingly, the only feature silently surviving as a reminder from a previous era, according to the redevelopment proposals, would be the grassed mound at the heart of the estate, which will not just be “preserved” and “retained in its entirety” but also “incorporated into the new landscape arrangements”.

block of “model dwellings” built in 1892 – that stood in the site before, was decided to be demolished and replaced with new housing. The Smithsons, that were then commissioned by the LCC for the redevelopment project, retained the rubble from the 19th century structures and heaped it into a monumental pile covered with earth and grass, around which they would later assemble their incredibly sophisticated vocabulary of exposed concrete molded into a new architectural language. [...] While Robin Hood Gardens will pass on to eternity as a digital ‘monument’ entry in a site on the web, the mound, as a part of the earth itself, will stand for everything that the actual building wasn’t allowed to stand for and certainly more than it was initially intended to stand for. Challenging at the same time the very idea of the monument, questioning the very sense of monumentality and proposing the existence of a series of micromonuments that alternatively (and unintentionally) rise and silently take over our cities… p10: Stills from the project: 1,636658 points / 20,367 vertices / 36,369 faces. The mound in a new digital reality, shrouded in a cloud of mistaken measurements, noisy data, confused surfaces and misplaced three dimensional reflections – that would normally be excluded by rigorous survey filters -. Just before the first Certificate of Immunity from Listing was issued in 2009, after the first failed campaign to list Robin Hood Gardens, the then minister responsible, Margaret Hodge, argued that a digital model of the estate would be sufficient for posterity. In a world of increased uncertainty and a now-more-than-ever-realized material culture fragility, new digital technologies have emerged, challenging conventional notions of preservation. The production of copies appears to be the key to ensuring that our cultural links to the past are preserved well into the future. Paraphrasing the suggestion that providing a digital replica of the building would be enough to legitimize its demolition, the mound in Robin Hood Gardens was instead roughly 3D scanned (using photogrammetry).

Ironically, the mound itself was formed after a similar historically poignant incident, where the Grosvenor buildings – a •

WHISTLES OF SURFACES Digital Curatorial Project1, Nicosia 2016 Presented at Point Centre for Contemporary Arts in Nicosia as part of the event Matters as Pleasures, Forces as Things, Bodies as Matters / November 2016 www.whistlesofsurfaces.com www.youtube.com/channel Whistles of Surfaces

collaborative ongoing project by visual artist Lito Kattou and architects Eftychios Savvidis and Charalampos Ioannou. Main concern is the collection of artworks and digital artifacts that negotiate the manifestation of materiality and the potential of the sculptural form. The collection is hosted on the website whistlesofsurfaces.com that acts as an archival interface. On the occasion of the event Matters as Pleasures, Forces as Things, Bodies as Matters at Point Centre for Contemporary Art in Nicosia the collection was presented as an installation that brings together a curatorial process, the design of a digital environment and a spatial and bodily experience. The digital environment as a composition of spatial fragments that was experienced through Oculus Rift Virtual Reality device. The artworks from the collection inhabit the digital space as sound versions of their visual form dispersed in the environment as sonic areas. This conversion occurs as a subjective literary translation hovering between descriptiveness and poeticness as if the viewer would articulate his recorded impression of the work after his viewing. 1 The project was presented as part of the event Matters as Pleasures, Forces as Things, Bodies as Matters, organised by Point Centre for Contemporary Art in collaboration with artist Lito Kattou, and held in Nicosia on the 26th of November 2016. For the event, the curator and director of Fridericianum, Kassel, Susanne Pfeffer gave the talk Speculations on Anonymous Materials, nature after nature, Inhuman .

* The collection currently features Dorota Gaweda & Egle Kulbokaite, Enrico Boccioletti, Fenetre Project, Giacomo Rafaelli, Oliver Laric, Petros Moris, Phanos Kyriakou, Valinia Svoronou, Yves Scherer.

p12: Whistles of Surfaces Stills from the digital environment as it was presented at Point Centre for Contemporary Art in November 2016.

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3D Laser Scan Survey Project, London 2017 bartlett3dscanlibrary.com/2017/01/16/st-boniface/

he 3D laser scan survey of St. Boniface church was carried out in the context of the ‘B-Scan 3D Laser Scanning Open Classes: Built Heritage Series’. The course, that was led by Bernadette Devilat consisted of five sessions, four sessions of familiarisation with the 3d scanning technology and software, including alignment, data export, visualisation, edition, and the creation of images and videos; and one day of on-site data capture. At the end of the course, there was a two-day workshop for the creation of images, technical visualisations and 3D printed models from the 3D scanning data.The software tools that were used are: Faro Scene, Bentley Pointools, Meshlab. The survey was carried out in collaboration with the Survey of London, for the forthcoming publication of the ‘Whitechapel’ volume. More information: https://bartlett3dscanlibrary.com/2017/01/16/ st-boniface/

1 Project Leader: Bernadette Devilat (B-Scan, The Bartlett School of Architecture / UCL) Participants: Eftychios Savvidis, Marisa Daouti, Tasos Theodorakakis p14, 16-17: Stills from the 3D scanned model of St. Boniface church while processing data in Bentley Pointools .

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REVEALING GEOMETRIES Academic, Final Project1, Athens 2015 Presented at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens /April 2015 Presented at Urban Design 9 Studio of the School of Architecture, Athens / January 2016 Published in Ground Up Journal Issue 05: Delineations, Berkeley University, California / May 2016 Published on greekarchitects.gr / July 2016

aving to deal with a rather peculiar and complex place, a new way of approaching, reading, comprehending and interpreting it, is attempted. Following secret and invisible traces of the past, a whole new condition is evoked and placed in space as it never existed before, while uncovering geometries and revealing accumulated inscriptions that molded and formed the landscape for ages.

As a place that constantly embodied alterations and accepted “inscriptions” throughout the ages, today it is considered as one of the islands’ great cultural and archaeological sites, whereas it is only partially showcased. Just the part of the ancient agora functions as a visitable archaeological site and the rest of the findings just lay around in a natural and intact landscape. What was once significant, today comes to be nothing more than a residual decorative element that slides into oblivion and withering, trying to survive in the urban and touristic suburbs of a big city. The last “virgin” and intact landscape, a rocky scenery filled with agaves and cyclamens...

It is about Amathus. The capital city of one of the eleven ancient kingdoms of the island of Cyprus, a place that once was one of the three largest cult centers of goddess Aphrodite, and also the place where, according to Plutarch, mythical Ariadne was buried, after she was abandoned there by Theseus. A vast amount of ancient texts and references had depicted and formed a blurry image of the city, before it was brought back to sight at the end of the previous century.

Current issues, such as the luck of the whole monument in contemporary times, and a series of concerns and considerations around its rescue, its protection and preservation, its exposure, its reactivation its reinterpretation and its place and redefined role in the contemporary city come to the fore.

Starting in 1975, École française d’ Athènes under the direction of Pierre Aupert begins its excavational expeditions in situ, revealing large parts of the lost and forgotten capital city. Among huge amount of findings that today adorn collections of the biggest museums around the world - such as the MET, le Louvre, the British Museum and the Neues Museum-, the most important arouse to be those revealed on the acropolis on top of the hill, those in the lower city level around the ancient agora, as well as those lying underneath water into the sea. All significant in forming and deciphering the tumultuous history of this great kingdom, that seemed to be hosting human presence already since 1100 B.C up until the 7th century’s Arabs’ crusades, where it was left destroyed and deserted.

Fascination and intrigue accompanying a closer and detailed look and observation on the palimpsestic and complex, yet mysterious nature of the remains and the archaeological findings urged the initiation of a need for deciphering the layered and superimposed inscriptions of different condensed historical phases and time periods. A series of incomprehensible correlations, unexpected conjugations, unexplained contradictions and strange deviations, gentle annexations and violent impositions, all summing up to a genius complexity that depicts the flux of history in the best possible way. •

The way of carefully “reading” and interpreting the place, defined or better determined the method and the nature of the intervention. An intervention that takes into consideration the monumentality and the significance of such a site, and while remaining consistent to laws, legislations, charters, declarations and texts referred on architectural heritage, insists on creating a new situation and on imposing some new conditions on the place itself. An intervention described as being allusive towards layering, archaeological stratigraphy and the laws of superposition, aims on revealing geometries, bringing back to sight invisible traces of the past, and charging the place with the notion of time. A system of laws, principles and tools is set up, and by the use of light and minimum gestures, a new text layer is created that allusively would reveal and state all the previous ones. Metal poles carrying laser light pointers are placed on the intersections of different historical grids, emitting white laser light beams on specific directions, thus recreating the grids for different historical periods. Laser grids and meshes hovering on three different levels, alluding to three discrete historical phases, can be disturbed and disrupted and then back again appeared. (i) Light running on the ground, coincides with the grids and geometries of the remainings of the different eras. (L) Routes having a distinct, discrete, and repetitive form starting up from the city or the coastline level enter the site joining preexistent and new grids, abut, hover, approach and deflect while manipulating sight and hosting human body experience. (B, R, V)

New conditions are settled in place. New identity is given to it. Deciphered and clarified, or even more complex and convoluted but certainly enriched in meanings and values.

1 the project originally entitled in greek “Επάλληλες Γραφές. Αμαθούντα: σύγχρονη προσέγγιση στην αρχαία πόλη” was presented in Athens on the 1st of April 2015 at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens. It was supervised by professor Ariadni Vozani and was consulted by professor Panayiotis Vasilatos and light designer Anna Sbokou. Through these pages just a minor part of it is being presented. p20: Amathus / The Acropolis: Accumulated Inscriptions H - hellenistic / R - roman / V - vyzantine Diagram revealing the sliding strict grids upon which structures of different eras lie. Same diagram was made for the part of the lower city reveling some interesting correlations that were investigated. p22: The new text layer: The Tools i - metal poles carrying laser light pointers L - light lines B - bridges connecting site to city level / R - ramps connecting site to sea level / V - viewpoints. p23: The new text layer: Assembly Instructions p24-25: Revealing Geometries. Night View A whole new condition evoked and placed in space as it never existed before. Due to high humidity levels recorded, as soon as the sunlight goes off the laser light beams start appearing over the ancient city ruins. p26-27: The Acropolis / Proposed Afternoon View p28-29: Lower City - Western Gate Entrance - Bridge / Proposed Morning View p30-31: Lower City - viewpoint + external underwater port / Proposed Afternoon View p32-33: Lower City - double viewpoint to Agora and Port / Proposed Night View

CHAPTER 1: WHAT’S NO LONGER ALIVE Art Project, Epub1 for Radical Reading Curatorial2, Athens / London3 2016 Published - Presented in Jupiter Woods, London /February 2016 Published online on radicalreading.com / February 2016

magma of information containing all evolutionary phases of history confined in just one era: “the one before now”. Several thousands of years condensed in just one chapter: “what’s no longer alive”. Three texts written by three archaeologists while excavating the acropolis of ancient Amathus in Limassol, Cyprus, are being squeezed together in this fluid mega-text. Each text – written in French as the expeditions that were held in Amathus were directed by École française d’ Athènes – describes in full detail each of the remains of three specific discrete structures, corresponding to three different time periods, revealed in a palimpsestic state on top of the hill: a hellenistic palace, the roman temple of goddess Aphrodite, a byzantine basilica. Each description bearing a special font attribute (e.g the roman temple text is typed in italic and the one referring to the basilica is in bold) is being fully recognizable in this seemingly homogenized “river of rubbles”. Taking into full account the features and the capabilities of an epub text, such as its fluidity, its flexibility, its shaping and adaptability, depending each time on the mean on which this mega-text is being screened on or the settings to be applied, different aspects of it seem to appear and multiple readings of it are being offered. Different formations are being displayed, interesting correlations are being revealed, strange stratigraphic sequences are being uncovered. Fragmented views or in total appearances are used to decipher and comprehend this thick multilayered “rubble” of the Past. The Past that appears not to be just “no longer alive” but more vivid and dynamic than ever, rearranging itself over and over again.

1 Epub Shelf is an ongoing collection of electronic publications by artists , architects and other practitioners. www.radicalreading.com/en/projects/epub-shelf/ 2 Radical Reading [RR] is an Athens-based curatorial project which deals with contemporary art practice: the presentation and contextualisation of solo exhibitions as well as theoretical and literary composite of heterogeneous elements that infiltrate and rearrange the sensible and the performative. www.radicalreading.com 3 in February 2016, RR presented an account of their curatorial practice and speculations at Jupiter Woods, London / UK. Part of the presentation was the publication of the first series of artists eBooks by Theodoros Giannakis, Georges Jacotey, Yannis Papadopoulos, Nayia Savva, Eftychios Savvidis, Stefania Strouza and Valinia Svoronou. p34: “Chapter 1: What’s no longer alive” , epub still

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TERRITORIAL CONTROL Art Project, Installation: 5 concrete boards - aluminium runners - studs, Athens 2016 Participation in artists group show 1 “What is the other” curated by Evangelia Ledaki, in Circuits & Currents Art Space, Athens / May 2016

ommission by the curator for a “conceptual architectural intervention” within the exhibition’s theme “What is the other”, gave the chance for further exploring concerns around “intermediary spaces” which were questioned and investigated a lot in previous projects, while trying to figure them out, comprehend or decipher them by manipulating sight and the way of approaching and “reading” them – through the idea of boundaries or otherness. Choosing to work in the tobe-exhibited-gallery’s basement, the initial proposal featured the construction of a “border-wall” (made by concrete boards) separating the lower level of the project’s space in two, interrupting the continuum and blocking connection. A narrow slit appeared to be the only “point of crossing” between the two separated worlds, constantly implying the awareness of existence of “the other”. A guided and controlled reading of “the other” through this fragmented view allowed not its complete understanding but gave just a small impression of what’s trapped behind the separating surface. “Coexisting” with London-based artist Marianne Spurr in the basement of the exhibition space led to an in-situ reconsideration of the initial arrangement, imposing the immediate “deconstruction” of the strict and absolute intervention and its “relocation” to a more sculptural form and expression. Continuous dialogue between the two installations -“Territorial Control” by Eftychios Savvidis & “Untitled” by Marianne Spurr), which appear to be fuctioning as one, create a “landscape of inbetweeness” in the humid basement, in which the viewer is being absorbed and projected by awkward or secret symmetries and bilateral filters and relations.

1 “What is the other” was the outcome of eight artists having worked together in Athens for a period of ten days. The concept of difference and the construction of meaning through the consecutive succession of distinction, operated as the theoretical reference for the exhibition and defined a liminal topological field; an enfolded space scattered with materials and intentions. The object of dramaturgy functions here as a constitutional act by stiching the narrative and orchestrating the spatiotemporal protocol of materials and meanings, setting the parameters for the emergence of the scene of the exhibition as a scene of exposure. Participants: Ada Avetist, Elif Erkan, Lito Kattou, Fatma Nur Ozogul, Petros Moris, Eftychios Savvidis, Marianne Spurr, Sila Tufekcioglu. Curated by: Evangelia Ledaki p36: Transformations - Relocations Evolution of the installation, from proposal to final state p38-39: “Territorial Control”, Eftychios Savvidis / “Untitled”, Marianne Spurr. (photo by Ada Avetist)

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RO O M

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European Architectural Competition Entry, July 2016 in collaboration with Mariza Daouti exhibited in the Benaki Museum, Athens / November 2016

he main gesture of the proposal, the mild elevation of the floor from the entrance to the south, corresponds to a room that at first glance looks “unusual”, which, however, seeks through this powerful elementτto reintepret a space of hospitality. Responding to the need of renewal of the architectural vocabulary, in order to meet the desires of a modern traveler, who is now independent and demanding, and seeks experience, more than comfort and luxury, our proposal describes a room that reviews the elements of hospitality through the spatial elements and broadens the boundaries of intimacy and privacy.

filter, between the common areas of the hotel and the interior, personal space . From there, the core of the room is not visible, as a concrete border centrally on the axis of the room hides it, leaving two options of movement on either side. Approaching the slope, an interior space lined with ceramic tiles and low linear illumination from the ceiling is revealed. Behind the linear construction, the bath, the sleeping and the living room coexist. This central space, powerfully self-referential, bright and spacious, acts as a distinctive background, which leaves the motion level unimpeded as the objects sink into it.

The proposal invests in an unpretentious relationship with architectural space. The floor rises gently to accommodate living spaces inside. The floor thus becomes an active ground that participates in the production of architectural space while defining a longitudinal axis on which the individual spatial units are adapted by digging it. The furniture and objects, as described in the Greek Tourism Organization specifications, are interpreted as spatial components and are absorbed by the inclined floor.

The immersive elements that form spatial units and the minimalism of the decor define an architecture that remains ‘discretly present’. The room is ultimately a carving of the spatial footprint of objects, where space embraces human activity as a sculptural interpretation of hospitality.

In accordance with the above, the specifications are updated according to the current residence data, resulting in the objects being differentiated or replaced. For example, the TV is replaced by a projector, so apart from the TV channels a computer or other media can be connected. Respectively, the storage space is limited, since the majority travels with small-sized luggage or hand luggage. The entrance, at the center of the northern side, free from objects, with low lighting and wood surfaces, creates a threshold, a dense privacy

p40: Perspectives of the 18-square-metre Room p42-43: Paper Model Cutouts

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VE N ETI AN

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Academic, E-merging Design Research, London 2017 Visuals from the project where presented at the Historic Urban Landscapes Forum held at The Bartlett School of Architecture / March 2017 (to be) Published in the E-merging Design Research / Msc Spatial Design: Architecture & Cities 2016-2017, London / November 2017

o the delight of visitors and the dismay of residents, Venice appears as a fragile city that has mainly resisted any kind of modernization, “forced to remain motionless and always the same in order to be more easily remembered…” The current project argues that in this rather conservative cityscape, Night gives a chance for “creative intrusions” that could potentially be intangibly interweaved in the sacred homogeneity of the city without threatening the imagery of the historic architectural fabric, while at the same time opening the way for underlining or pointing out the ‘fear of the progressive’ – a recurring issue concerning Venice and historic urban environments in general.

The project, in three different scales of interventions based on the logic of the minimum and the intangible, sets out to: 1. reveal and retrace forgotten, demolished or unbuilt bridges along the extended nocturnal isovist field of the Grand Canal; 2. reinterpret monuments at night by reinterpreting the radiated isolated space surrounding them; and 3. orchestrate the night experience and the way the city is navigated and perceived at night. A new city element, a discrete 12metre-high metal pole carrying a laser light beam pointer, or in some cases attached reflectors, is introduced to create the new intangible layer that will hover above the cityscape. In the case of the three major Grand Canal Bridges the poles will be placed in such points as to emit and reflect laser light that will recreate the geometries of the demolished Neville’s iron bridge at Scalzi, the proposal of Palladio for the Rialto, and the 1985 competition entry of R. Venturi and D. Scott Brown for the Accademia, whilst the position of the poles and the geometry of the laser light beams in each of the isolated monuments’ isovist fields is defined using axial analysis (reduced to fewest lines) in each of these spaces. The shortest path between each installation and the closest major bridge is calculated, defined and illuminated establishing an alternative night network.

‘Venetian Nocturne’ proposes an extended network of laser light installations that appear to be curating the city at night, triggering a whole new condition, where a general landscape of monuments is perceived in an alternative way, offering a new stratified perception of the city based on how it has been or how it could have been. As the night falls, and the city - often referred to as an open air museum - ‘shuts down, the actual visible space, or the space that ‘exists’ at night (assuming the visual world is a field of lightborn information) shrinks to the isovists fields ‘created by’ luminous objects and illuminated surfaces of monuments scattered around the city. These fields appear as the spaces from any point of which the luminous radiating monuments are visible and the Venetian nightscape emerges then as a constellation of disconnected isolated isovists surrounding two major extended isovist fields along the Grand Canal (that include the three monumental, historic bridges of Scalzi, Rialto and Accademia)

p44: Retracing Palladio’s 15th century Rialto Bridgle proposal using laser light. p46: Axial Lines (reduced to fewest lines) in each of the ‘monumental’ isovist fields scattered around the city. p47: Above: the constellation of the city’s monuments’ isovist fields and their relational interconnection with the Bridges of the Grand Canal. Below: the extended network of laser ight installations that appears to be curatting the city at night p48: The new element: the pole (either emitting [A] or reflecting [B] laser light beams) p49: Scalzi Bridge at night.

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Eftychios Savvidis Selected Texts + Projects / Oct 2017