Architecture

Greece received a great amount of refugee population during the past century which led to the transformation not only of the Greek population but mostly of the Greek cities. In the past century, a great amount of refugees from Asia Minor moved to Greece following the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations. In fact, today 40% of the Greek population claims full or partial descent from Asia Minor. The refugee crisis helped Greece increase the homogeneity of the population, especially in Northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace). Moreover, the increase of the urban population helped in the creation of the Modern Greek metropolises of Athens and Thessaloniki. Macedonia, where Thessaloniki is located, received 52,2 % of the refugee rows. The need of housing the additional population in Greece resulted in the establishment of numerous suburbs, towns or villages. During the years 1923-1928, the Greek state built 25,000 houses for the refugees. The new population created their own communities in the outskirts of city centers, where they could rebuild their own houses and their economy from the very beginning. The refugee crisis apart from the population growth and urban sprawl, led also to the development of Greek economy, as the refugees dealt mainly with agriculture, industry and trade. This thesis regards the urban renewal and residential development of Dialogi district, which is located on the northwest side of Thessaloniki, Greece. The whole district belongs to the municipality of New Kordelio, which was one of the areas that received great percentage of the refugee rows between 1924 and 1928. Dialogi is one of the various areas in the city of Thessaloniki that underwent deindustrialization during 1980-1990 and is characterized as deprived, mainly because many of the houses and all of the industrial buildings are abandoned or in poor condition and need significant upgrades. Within the district there is an old railway station, where distribution of merchandise and goods took place in the period 1950-1980 and today a limited number of small-scale arbitrary houses can be found there. The remaining small-scale refugee settlements as well as the arbitrary houses maintain small gardens and orchards. In the area of study there is also a great number of abandoned warehouses and industrial buildings that belonged to large steel processing companies during the same period and had access to the station's loading and unloading facilities. On the southern boundary a small stream with spontaneous vegetation and a large number of free crops with vegetables and fruit trees can be found. The basic design principles focus on the sustainable residential development of the district with the application of environmental practices and the construction of low-energy houses, the preservation and enhancement of its natural features and the establishment of community gardens that would empower the contact of the residents with nature. As a final result, the proposed housing units contribute to the preservation of the area's identity, create a layout of green open public space and respect the district history related to the pre-existing orchards and refugee settlements. The paper concludes by exploring urban policies that enhance the positive transformation of a blighted area to a neighborhood with sustainable future and collaboration of its residents. Greece and her Refugees-Historical Background The origin of a large part of the Modern Greek metropolises of Athens and Thessaloniki has developed through mass-housing strategies after the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in 1922-24 and the consequent population growth due to the influx of refugee rows. Greeks from Asia Minor were relocated in

Evros Delta is located in Greece and is an important wetland on a national, European and international level. Structurally is characterized as a single surface, composed of large amounts of water, geological substrates and soil formations. Whereas in the past the main anthropogenic activity on the landscape was the development of farmlands and the organization of the fields, nowadays a new type of such an activity has emerged, related to the influx of refugees and immigrants in Greece. It is reported that by 2010 every day almost 350 people illegally crossed the Delta, and, as it was expected, this number has increased significantly after the start of the Civil War in Syria in 2011. Crossing the river is dangerous and several cases of deaths from cold and drowning have been reported. With starting point the assumption that a memorial in the Evros Delta would contribute to the awareness of people in relation to this problem in the future and could express spatially collective memory, this paper explores the creation of a space that will have as its point of reference a potential burial place for immigrants and refugees. The intention of this paper is to examine how collective memory can be activated through the creation of a memorial in constant transformation and under the influence of natural phenomena. In the same way that Heidegger places the human being in the surroundings of a lived and felt space, this proposal places the visitor of the Delta on a way to a floating cemetery for the people who lost their lives while crossing the river. This temporary memorial could give a topographic meaning to the graves of this people and at the same time leave permanent traces of their death on the landscape of the Delta.

Η έρευνα αυτή μελετά τον τρόπο με τον οποίο η αναπόληση του έρημου νησιού έγινε το αμυντικό καταφύγιο του ανθρώπου, συνώνυμο του εξωπραγματικού και του ανέφικτου. Θεωρήσαμε το ερημονήσι το αντίθετο του πραγματικού κόσμου· κι όμως, αυτό που κάνει υποφερτό τον πραγματικό κόσμο είναι το ερημονήσι : ο άνθρωπος κατοικεί εν τέλει τη νήσο που ονειρεύεται. Το ερώτημα που τίθεται είναι πώς φαντάζεται ο άνθρωπος το έρημο νησί, τι είδους χώρο παράγει η αρχιτεκτονική ως κατ’εξοχήν σύμβολο της πολιτισμικής πράξης πάνω σε αυτό, ποιά είναι η σχέση του χώρου με το χρόνο σε έναν τόπο που δεν βρίσκεται πουθενά, αλλά κάθε άνθρωπος τον κατοικεί με τον δικό του τρόπο ; Μπορεί η ενικότητα του φαντασιακού ταξιδιού προς το έρημο νησί να μας δώσει νέους τρόπους αντίληψης και κατοίκησης με βάση τους κοινούς δεσμούς συνύπαρξης και τον κοινό χώρο ζωής στον πραγματικό κόσμο ;
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The reason for engaging with the typical Greek block of flats, known as polykatoikia, and its context is generously offered to anyone who resides in the city of Thessaloniki. During the postwar period the antiparochi system (a uniquely Greek arrangement, whereby the owner of a building plot was compensated with apartments in lieu of payment for the land that they relinquished to the contactor who built a block of flats on it) was applied as a solution for the acute housing problem caused in large cities and especially in Athens and Thessaloniki because of the huge population accumulation resulted from the destruction of thousands of villages and towns during the Civil War of 1946-1949. This system in conjunction with the intense commercialization of residential space and the consequent increase of land value contributed to the massive explosion in the built environment. The purpose of this design proposal is to examine the basic characteristics of the Greek polykatoikia and its surroundings and to ascertain whether they can be transformed into a potential tool of change and renewal of architecture of the Greek cities. In the first phase of our project, we choose a project of foreign architects and we study in detail its geometry, form, structural system, spatial organization and materiality. The building chosen is the Prada Aoyama Epicenter of Herzog and de Meuron, whose basic structure consists of the structural body and the outer skin, which is mounted on it. The vertical cores, the horizontal tubes, the floor slabs, and the facade grills define the space but at the same time provide the structure and the facade. The outer skin consists of a steel grid with diamond-shaped glass panels, which appear to display different degrees of transparency. As a result, the facade is conceived as a porous spatial structure, with continuous transitions between opacity and transparency. Prada Aoyama Epicenter is considered as the first building by Herzog and de Meuron where the structure, space, and facade form a single unit and thus, every single visible part of the building except for the glass panels operates as structure, space, and facade all at the same time. In the second phase we study a building that lies between the streets Tsimiski, Katouni and Agios Minas, in the center of Thessaloniki and today houses no use. The building has the typical structural body of the Greek block of flats but the outer skin is missing. In the process of redesigning the building we aim to create a flexible surface, with reference to the facade of the Prada Epicenter studied in the first phase, which is folded and ''cuts across'' the existing structure in order to generate space inside the building. The folded surface operates at the same time as the facade of the building which consists of a metal structure and three types of metal panels with different surface inclinations. The panels both in the facade and the indoor patio generate interesting alternations between full and void and regulate luminosity and ventilation.

The contemporary crisis of spatiality issues lies largely in the sense of the uncanny, the existential anguish. This thesis studies the way in which fictional island societies became the defensive refuge of man, a separate reality. Deleuze in his text ''Desert Islands'' studies this separate reality, which he highlights as a fundamental driving force for the re-creation of the world. Plato's Atlantis and More's Utopia are typical examples of such separate island societies that function as virtual places of re-birth and re-creation.
A renewed reading of these classic works has the potential to bring contemporary architecture close to what Deleuze saw in the 'Desert Islands', that is to be the concept of collective in the individual. This approach is related to the recognition that island societies such as More's Utopia are conceived as imaginary worlds where we discover the collective soul of the place that we lost in contemporary cities and elucidate a spatial model of common good where architecture and urban planning emphasize on collectivity –and thus, public space- and convey and draw values from the society.

The starting point of this paper emanates from Jason Moore’s statement on the binary Nature-Society: “[..] nature is not “just there.” It is historical.” (2015, p.12). In the light of climate change, ecosystem derangement and debasement of local economies in the name of globalisation and free trade, capitalism has almost exhausted its own source of subsistence: Nature. However, going beyond the widespread –and very popular- myth that humans act as destructive agents of the pure and delicate nature, instrumentalising the landscape to support various production models has always been the way to build human economies and societies. Today, our rupture with nature is still manifested in the antithesis between Economy and Ecology, as two opposing notions. In fact, the concept of placing humanity within natural processes [or, in the other way around, defining humans as custodians of nature’s ecological heritage] has strong supporters in theory and strict critics in practice. On the basis of this heated debate, this paper discusses in which way anthropogenic activities could intertwine harmoniously with ecosystems [a re-established human-nature equilibrium] and investigates a new pollution theorem: a projective ecology that overturns negative outputs of our current economic model (pollutants, waste flows) into inputs for new productive landscapes of the Anthropocene. The operative framework of such a shift, as examined and illustrated within the paper, could eventually lay a solid foundation for enhancing the adaptive capacity of local economies, ecosystems and socio-spatial constructs.

In the light of climate change, ecosystem derangement and debasement of local economies in the name of globalisation and free trade, capitalism has almost exhausted its own source of subsistence: Nature. However, going beyond the widespread –and very popular-myth that humans act as destructive agents of the pure and delicate nature, instrumentalising the landscape to support various production models has always been the way to build human economies and societies. Today, our rupture with nature is still manifested in the antithesis between Economy and Ecology, as two opposing notions. In fact, the concept of placing humanity within natural processes [or, in the other way around, defining humans as custodians of nature's ecological heritage] has strong supporters in theory and strict critics in practice. On the basis of this heated debate, this paper discusses in which way anthropogenic activities could intertwine harmoniously with ecosystems [a re-established human-nature equilibrium] and investigates a new pollution theorem: a projective ecology that overturns negative outputs of our current economic model (pollutants, waste flows) into inputs for new productive landscapes of the Anthropocene. The operative framework of such a shift, as examined and illustrated in the case of the Dutch-Flemish Delta, could eventually lay a solid foundation for re-instrumentalising deltaic landscapes and enhancing the adaptive capacity of local economies, ecosystems and socio-spatial constructs towards resource depletion, climate change and sea-level rise.

Within today’s globalised urbanisation, any model of sustainable development intended to respond to climate change, environmental destruction and the weakening of our local economies will have to call for the re-coupling of anthropogenic and natural processes. As these processes unfold within multiple scales and spatial conditions, they reveal a new, trans-scalar nature of the urban in the Anthropocene; hence, future architects and urbanists will need to address urbanisation as a multi-scalar field of circular metabolic flows, cascading resource streams and efficient material cycles. On this basis, the main argument of the essay is that, within our disciplines, we should be ready to abandon our inherited theoretical frameworks deriving from modernity and its dualistic character [humans versus nature and vice versa] and develop a new agenda of means with which to embrace and assess these new hybrid, highly synthetic urban environments. In this regard, artificial intelligence becomes a tool, which doesn’t come to replace us, but to help us track the new –material and immaterial- processes of the Anthropocene. The fact that non-humans are likely to perform some of our current, easily replaceable duties (site analyses, material research, data gathering etc.) will facilitate our work on developing concepts, evaluating different options and taking decisions –tasks that will be hard to replace or completely automate.  In that sense, AI and real-time production of data will shed light to different aspects of urban space, while architects and urbanists evolve into a new, unique kind of “urban coders” of the 21st century.

The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long is a crucial case in ancient Vietnam’s planning and design history. Although historical materials indicate that the orientation of the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long has a dialectical unity relationship with the surrounding mountains, current research is only speculative generalization and lacks empirical analysis. Based on existing findings, this paper identifies the collineation measurement as a general method in the Sinosphere countries for determining spatial orientation. Using a mixed-method of historical archives, fieldwork and simulation model, this paper summarizes historical clues and three design perspectives related to spatial orientation by statistical analysis. Further, it analyzes the logic and application of collineation measurement in constructing the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long. The results show that Vietnamese designers used Tản Vieˆn Mountain as a component of Thang Long city by collineating the two mountain peaks to the west. Tản Vieˆn Mountain and the highlands extending eastward from it are used as the key to establishing the position of the Imperial Citadel, setting the spatial structure of human settlements, and the development of city space. The location, layout, and form of important buildings in the Imperial Citadel are also closely related to the surrounding landscape within 50 km.