THE ATHENIAN PALIMPSEST TOWARDS A HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE

Project type: Academic |Dissertation

MSc Architectural Conservation

The University of Edinburgh professor: Theodossopoulos D year: 2019

How the palimpsest of the city of Athens could be enhanced?

The continuous habitation of the city for five thousand consecutive years is present in its numerous historic layers ranging from the ancient times until nowadays. This research aims to explore the Athenian palimpsest and particularly, the dialectic relationships between its layers. In order to identify the possible connections, the study of the historical evolution of the city, divided in layers based on different historical phases.

A place, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is reserved in physical elements or collective memories. The destruction or reconstruction of these attributes form a palimpsest, tangible and intangible respectively, whose character is the outcome of the existed layers and the act of their erasure to leave space for new ones to appear. The notion of the palimpsest of a city refers to both urban and architectural scale. Elements of various periods added in the urban fabric in a juxtaposed or superimposed relation. These elements, buildings or structures, are composed by their own smaller in scale palimpsests. Designing by respecting all the historical traces brings a depth to both buildings and places, engaging a dialogue between older and newer layers of history.

The addition of new layers in the urban context introduced space qualities, building heights and architectural styles, often linked with the collective memory, and hence, with the identity of the place. A series of morphologies, even if they seem unrelated, in fact they are part of the transformation process of the urban landscape. The evolution of construction and material technology of each period is expressed on the scale and audacity of the new layer. The contemporary image of the city is a collage of older small in scale buildings and the massive layer of the concrete multistorey residences, commonly known under the term ‘polykatoikia’.

The frantic rhythm of development, during the 20th century, resulted in a violent replacement of older layers by the polykatoikia. The scale and materials of the new building stock enforces the absence of dialogue with the architectural qualities of the earlier constructions. The lack of urban planning in their development and the fragmented ownership led to a deadlock; the paradox of a city with such a long history to acquire characteristics of a “Generic city”, linked with generic memories and loss of character.

These newer fragments could be perceived as a form of lacunae that after the progressive multiplication and replacement of the older structures, was established as the main theme of the cityartifact. However, despite its negative perception, it constitutes part of the current urban landscape. As it derives from the study of the Athenian palimpsest, polykatoikia emerged as a natural evolution of the Greek architecture and is not an alienated form as thought. Thus, it is part of the cultural heritage and collective memory. Several opinions have been heard regarding the massive demolition of this building stock in terms of urban renewal, as a repetition of the Greek history after the 1830s. The replacement of decayed buildings would be necessary in some cases, following the Morris perception that a building cannot be constantly reused, but this should not be the rule. By keeping the evidence of the period of massive reconstruction, the use of its traces would set the base for the creation of connections with the past.

Currently, interventions in both urban and architectural scale enhance the Athenian palimpsest, mainly in a fragmented way. Apart from the “Archaeological Park” that manages to see a large part of the city as a whole, any other intervention, both in urban and architectural scale, is isolated. There is no cohesion between them that could create an integrated perception of the city as a collage of time.

Reading the city of Athens as a Historic Urban Landscape, as a process, could reveal lost architectural and social qualities. Policies based on the Historic Urban Landscape (2011) approach, seeing the city as palimpsest could favor critical interventions on the extant building stock, historic or not, along with the education of people regarding the importance of architecture in relation to the collective memory. Such a strategy could upgrade the overall urban context and manage to reveal the deep palimpsest of the city in all of its dimensions; not only the underground one. The city and the traces of its continuous habitation in both tangible and intangible dimension could be perceived as an exhibit itself, linking the contemporary reality with the collective memory of the place. The weaving of the historic urban layers could transform the whole city into an openair museum.