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briefly presenting
the ΣΟΔΑ procedures
#1 - Coming together In September 2016, entering our final year of studies, two dozens of architecture students gathered in NTUA School of Architecture to discuss their diploma projects and the potential of a collaboration among them. Ιnstead of each person working separately, the idea was to assemble an experimental working group and aim all their efforts towards common ends. It was not about agreeing on everything and producing a manifesto-like approach, but rather deal with the same problems, discuss upon the different approaches, and finally come up with a series of methodologies and a variety of results. Aſter these initial conversations, a core of 17 people constituted ΣΟΔΑ, the Cooperative for Diploma projects on Athens (in Greek: 'Συνεργατική Οµάδα Διπλωµατικών για την Αθήνα’).
#2 - Picking the umbrella theme During October 2016, ΣΟΔΑ was meeting on a frequent basis to decide on the subject of focus. All members were encouraged to propose their area of interest to trigger a discourse among the team. Different subject proposals included: ‘Polykatoikia v2.0’, ‘The Olympic Heritage’, ‘Preservation in the age of internet’, ‘Knowledge Branding: the new School of Athens’, ‘Networking the Aegean Archipelago’, and ‘Reverse Building: an architecture of crisis’. Noteworthy, none of these subjects were picked, rather consensus was reached upon a theme which emerged through the discussions: ‘Misprint Athens: Towards a new Paradigm’ (in Greek: 'Αθήνα, από το κακέκτυπο στο αντιπαράδειγµα’) was decided as ΣΟΔΑ’s umbrella, summing up the team’s concerns on the present condition of Athens. ΣΟΔΑ’s desire was to confront the true face of the city, try to understand its paths and desires, away from its current dominant and colonial understandings. We considered Athens as the errant member of the western cities family; Athens is derelict, failing to follow the example of its successful siblings, New York, London, Paris and Berlin, thus falling into recession. However it is ΣΟΔΑ’s belief that this misstep is not a proof of
weakness, rather a different way of seeing the world; it is not a conventional mistake, rather an error in principles. Thus, our aim was to formulate Athens’ alternative approach to the dominant example of the western metropolis. #3 - Structuring methodology Aſter deciding on this central theme, the greater team was divided in 7 groups which were to work separately on a compatible subject of their choice. Independent groups brought their themes for discussion with the rest of the team in an effort to identify common issues and patterns. For the following two months, up until January 2017, ΣΟΔΑ was holding weekly assemblies to structure a common method for all groups to approach their subjects. Three distinct sub-themes emerged for everyone to deal with: Building Stock: In a city full of empty buildings, which also faces a decline in conventional demand aſter its economic downturn, we aim to organically engage with the past, rather than just consider it as a necessary design consistency. Acceleration Time: Accelerated living conditions have a particular impact on the public space, creating issues of both program (functions of efficiency) and structure (space of flows). Symbioses: Both from a functional and an aesthetical point of view, Athens of the polykatoikia, the open-air markets and the cafeterias, is a place of irrepressible symbioses, organically created and attached to the original structures of the city.
#4 - Curating α lecture series Because of the complexity of the problems ΣΟΔΑ was about to deal with, third party architects, thinkers and artists were asked to contribute, offering their views on our concerns. ΣΟΔΑ curated and produced a series of seven public pop-up talks specifying a certain participatory structure. ΣΟΔΑ invited certain speakers, sharing a position text including certain questions with them. Guest speakers were then asked to briefly lecture on the basis of our questions, whereupon ΣΟΔΑ memebers were commenting on their views. The rest of the attendees were also encouraged to participate in the discussion in an openended way. Staged at the central auditoriums of the NTUA Architecture School on Thursday evenings, these talks communicated the basic concerns and the approach of the team to the public of the architecture school and beyond.
The idea was to invite relevant speakers from different fields, people who would not otherwise talk in the architecture school. This desire to hear voices off the beaten track was well received by the audience, which was also heterogenous and active during the long aſterwards discussions. The series program was as follows: #1 - Athens defendant Filipidis D. #2 - Looking for Metropolises versions Rozanis S. & Kioupkiolis A. #3 - Absolute realism made in Athens Dragonas P. & Moutsopoulos Th. #4 - Resident of Athens Economides Y. & Tzirtzilakis Y. #5 - Athens, the new Berlin Leontidou L. & Maloutas Th. #6 - Planning the informal Point Supreme & Papalambropoulos L. & Issaias P. #7 - Athens, a gemstone in the ring of the earth Karidis D.
#5 - Discussing the projects Although groups were working separately, ΣΟΔΑ was holding weekly Monday meetings to discuss the progress of each project as well as a number of theoretical topics commonly agreed upon, thus establishing a field of informal mutual teaching and interaction among the participants. While initially ΣΟΔΑ discussed solely theoretical issues, debates gradually started featuring models and drawings. Planning and design principles of the separate teams were challenged, however in a completely open-ended procedure, with no central strategy to aim at. ΣΟΔΑ was not there to point out the ‘right track’, rather to be informed by the heterogeneity of the different approaches.
Professors I. Zachariades, S. Stavrides, V. Ganiatsas and I. Terzoglou were also an important part of ΣΟΔΑ and the overall interactive process, both supervising individual groups and participating in some of our weekly meetings. The variety of ΣΟΔΑ flavors was also evident in the promiscuous selection of our supervisors, who, despite any differences in their architecture philosophies and design approaches, they eagerly participated in this experimental process.
#6 - Concluding and presenting the work During the October 2017 and March 2017 periods, all separate teams presented their finalised projects. A common introduction was attached to the presentations, to communicate the procedures of ΣΟΔΑ and let the critics judge on the basis of the very questions we posed. The reception of the endeavor was exultant, with all professors and external critics highly endorsing our efforts and acknowledging both the importance of our collaboration and the quality of the debate generated. All in all, the very procedure of the initiative was an end in itself, establishing an informal, yet academic reference point for all participants to be involved. Indeed, building and sustaining ΣΟΔΑ was a tough, time-consuming, and many times stressful procedure, as it is always the case with experiments and team-building. Nevertheless, we found it essential to rethink the way diploma projects are done, namely in an individual, discoursecontext detached way, with so much potential ending down the drain. Stepping outside our comfort zone, ideas and designs were laid on our collective table to be debated upon, also straightforwardly facing the current complicated issues of the Greek capital. Ideas were not only shared among ΣΟΔΑ, but also traveled around the rest of the architecture school and a little beyond.
In the following pages we briefly introduce each of the seven projects of ΣΟΔΑ.
STUDENT HOUSING IN OMONOIA: EXPANDING PUBLIC SPACE
Omonoia square is a central and symbolic public space of Athens. Mass use and intense movement on a daily basis, leave a heterogeneous imprint on it. The square is considered to be a mirror that reflects social and economic circumstances. Today, the effects of Greek financial crisis are visible, among other things, in the empty buildings of the square.
Our diploma project aims to strengthen and expand the public character of the square. Its boundaries are widening in the buildings facing Omonoia, in the arcades of its perimeter, in the subway corridors. The recognition and emergence of a latent potential can transform this place into a field of social dialogue and action. As a new main use for the empty shells, we are proposing that of student housing, using pre-existing hotel infrastructures. The students’ coexistence with other social groups and their osmosis through a series of public spaces (referring to sports, culture, assemblies in amphitheatres, etc.), being a result of this spatial and programmatic expansion of Omonoia square horizontally (inside building ground flours), as well as vertically (consolidation with an underground metro level), can create a new dynamic field within the city.
A STATE ROMANCE: THE COMMUNAL HOUSE What we intend to search for is a new public service, and therefore a hypothetical public priority and demand, creating the basis of a more collective urban life. According to our reasoning, “the communal house” could be such a service in its material state. Our research simultaneously addresses issues of contemporary nomadic life, network employment and urban isolation. Therefore, a completely new, experimental program is created, aiming at the transcription of the principal living unit, namely the house, in public scale, turning domestic space to public space and the public building to everyone’s house. The result is a diagram consisting of individual/collective, productive/ entertaining/biological and daily/formal functions at the same time, giving the overall sense of a typical house. Everyone’s presence in this space is obvious and unimpeded, as it happens in a museum, in public transport, or in a hospital. The communal house is proposedly located in the premises of the Greek Ministry of Economy, on Kaniggos square, in the very center of Athens. The building was designed in 1938 and has gone through a number of alterations until this day. Our proposal intents to express the morphology of a public building, creating a sense of monumentality and emblematic presence, both connected to state affairs.
STOCK MARKET OF VALUES
The building of the Stock Exchange functions as an important “urban artefact� in the everyday life of Sophocleous Street. For 70 years, this building has accommodated a new function, the stock exchange and the hopes of thousands of citizens whose future depends on the fluctuations of an index of values, that they do not control or do not fully understand the factors that influence it. This index through the Stock Exchange building, changed the economic model of an entire country into something which, in turn, seems incompatible and impossible to be applied. The abandonment of the building from 2007 onwards, appears emblematic in the so-called Athens of the crisis, which emerges as the ideal field for the formulation of new protocols and emerging urban conditions. The proposal aims at a new public space for economic transactions, driven by the relationship between the economy and productive activity with the production of memory.
TRANSATTICA: TOPOGRAPHY OF DECELERATION IN “ATTIKI” TRANSFER STATION
The area of Attiki, at the northwestern part of Athens city center, is a place marked out as a public transport interchange, standing in-between arrivals and departures, serving multitudes of everyday people. The subway and overground stations, the bus stops, as well as car yards, depots and repair factories, create an infrastructural isle, bordered from public space, just next to the neighborhood’s central square. Despite the crowds constantly passing through the transit node, Attiki area remains invisible to them. Public transport may have a strict functional character aiming to effectiveness and time-saving, but it also has a great potential: it forces you to rub shoulders with total strangers, thus creating spaces of conflict and unpredictability.
In our proposal, making use of that potential, we are stretching the space and time of the interchange, so as to create an expanded stop, also functioning as local public space. Using rural topography as a tool to bring nature’s decelerated pace inside this urban environment, we are trying to compose an open air public space dispersed with neighborhood uses, or potential detours for the passenger; a place worth staying or at least staying a bit longer.
IDÉE FIX: INCORPORATION OF PUBLIC SPACE IN SUFFOCATING DESIGN CONDITIONS The National museum of contemporary Art, housed in the former Fix brewery in the southern part of Athens centre, lacks a surrounding public space of equivalent importance. On the site there are irregularly placed infrastructures, the museum is enclosed by the busy Syngrou Avenue and other roads of considerable traffic. Both its great interconnectedness and its important cultural value –the building of the museum is a monument of modern Greek Architecture– remain unexploited, giving way to spatial dissonance and ataxia. The methodology through which we approached this island-like urban plot was based on the analysis of the museum and its context (metro and transit station, autoroutes, etc.) as one system, created by interdepended scales. The project suggests the creation of a multifunctional public space. While retaining and rearranging the existing program, we further suggest its expansion with cultural/ artistic, ‘residential’ and leisure activities, in order to frame and vitalize the designed public space.
CONTROL TOWER: TRADE AND MARITIME CENTER IN THE PORT OF PIRAEUS In this project, the Tower of Piraeus, originally conceived as a Maritime and Trade Center, is being restructured to encapsulate not only private but also public interest by providing spaces of information, education and discourse over the topics that concern the recently privatized port of the city. The blending of different groups, activities and movements inside this vertical building, in other cases recognized as problematic and dysfunctional, is being proposed here as a method of creative conflict that can engage the public realm and establish its position in the new era of the port. Vertical movement through the elevators is being replaced by circular, sometimes unfinished or complementary paths whilst separation of uses in stacked blocks gives place to a nearly chaotic mix of intertwined spaces of both private and public use. In this way, the Tower of Piraeus, a symbolic structure overlooking one of the most important ports of Europe can act as a counterproposal of design by “lowering the walls� around the secluded, protected and highly secretive maritime industry and establishing once more the public opinion as a strong lever of policymaking on urban infrastructure.
HARBOURING THE CITY: URBAN AND INFRASTRUCTURAL ENCOUNTERS
The port of Piraeus in metropolitan Athens is one of the largest of its kind in Europe, serving a significant civic passenger traffic as well as a considerable flow of goods. On the occasion of the expansion of the current transport network as well as the recent privatisation of the harbour, our work aims to activate the port as a complex functional public space. An extensive series of maps and diagrams were produced, mainly focusing on the periodicity and ranging intensity cycles of the city-harbour ecosystem, proving an array of possibilities of overlapping and merging functions. The border between the city and the port is understood as a whole territory, loosely defined between the edge of the city and the quay; the project area becomes a threshold between them. What emerges is an inter-mediate space, subtly marked by its floor materials, where all independent functions are dispersed, assembling an amplified shared space: pedestrian movements, vehicle circulation, bus stops, ticket offices, kiosks, public toilets etc. Design elements were used to encourage specific uses while limiting others, in an effort to balance the potential of all actors in negotiating their place.
Konstantinos Tsellos Valerian Portokalis Jenny Lazari Dimitris Zampopoulos Spyros Tryfonopoulos Xenia Stoumpou George Bougioukos George Foufas Kostas Efstathiou Katerina Chatzopoulou Stathis Zimpounoumis George Papam Athina Angelopoulou Nathanail Tzoutzidis Thanassis Malevitis Aliki Iovita Constantina Papadimitriou