INSTEAD (parapoesis)

Postgraduate program, Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly

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Kitchenless City

Seminar with Anna Puigjaner (MAIO) 29 May – 2 June 2017

This workshop will explore signs of daily domestic collectivity that go beyond the limits of the house itself and blurred the domestic and the urban sphere, with an special interests on collective kitchens and other types of collective domestic food production and consumption. Through that exploration, we will try to understand the diverse political and economical agendas behind these phenomena, and its consequences in the built environment.

Meanwhile collective kitchens and kitchenless living have been popularly known by its communist character, collective architecture is apolitical, so shared spaces lacked, per se, of a political agenda. It has been sometimes used as a political tool but as Aldo Rossi claims, form cannot be political per se, in fact, it can only be re-politicized again and again, over the course of time, in a never-ending, recurring cycle.

For instance, long before Kommunalki appeared in the Soviet Union, there was a time in New York, at the verge of the XIX C., when housing had also collective spaces and services. At that time the house was designed, not as a single entity, but as a set of connected fragments that could change depending on the need, on the demand. The kitchen was optional as the rest of the rooms and sometimes it was left apart, kitchenless. And in opposition to Kommunalki, this North American typology lacked of a political agenda but it had a pure commercial aim.

This typology between apartment and hotel was quite successful. It not only reduced significantly the costs of living but also eliminated the annoyance of housekeeping, and consequently redefined the role of women at home. Life in these new apartments, therefore, constituted at some point an alternative that had more to do with increasing comfort than lowering costs.

Fortunately, despite the decay of the newyorker kitchenless typology, the phenomena of communal services was not only an American trend. The typology has appeared in different contexts and answering to different needs in an incredible manner. In the midst of the actual global crisis, the rise of pooling-economies is having an impact in our domestic sphere as well, and collective cooking seems to have a renewed interest for different economical and political agendas.

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Thinning

Workshop with Ilias Papageorgiou (SO-IL) 8 – 26 May 2017

The studio will explore “thinning” as an urban and architectural strategy. By removing building mass, thinning will seek to transform the fabric of Athens and the polykatoikia—the city’s main housing typology—in order to address transformations that are taking place in the city and the domestic sphere.

Once the cornerstone of the economy, the infamous housing type of the polykatoikia was born during times of pressuring demand for housing and economic growth. A legal and political framework called the antiparohi (flats for land) allowed the tax free exchange of land for apartments and essentially transformed the residence into an instrument of financial speculation, thus cultivating an ethos of individualism.

This process not only produced housing buildings but it was also the process for the urbanization of Athens. The city’s fabric is an aggregation of polykatoikia, a thick carpet of concrete “domino” structures that covers every part of the city, ignoring natural elements and topography. The absence of central planning resulted in a scarcity of open and green spaces, poor urban infrastructure, and created suffocating conditions in several downtown areas. As a result, even before the recession, parts of the upper and middle class abandoned the downtown for the suburbs of Athens.

After eight years of recession, property ownership is considered a burden. The economic situation combined with the increased mobility of people and information has destabilized notions of dwelling, permanence, ownership, and identity. The population has become more mobile and diverse. Many Athenians have left their city in order to find opportunities elsewhere, while the city is experiencing a tremendous influx of immigrants and refugees. The emerging precarious lifestyles require new spaces with more flexibility, less privatized space, and more shared resources.

Conceived almost entirely around the aspirations and lifestyle of the nuclear family, the apartment units of the polykatoikia, with traditional layouts of specialized functions per room, created an insulated private sphere—a refuge for the family.

How can we rethink the typology of the polykatoikia in order to accommodate the new forms of cohabitation and the increasing demand for temporary city-dwellers? How can it transform in order to accommodate the increasing blurring of daily activities such as live and work?

In the current economic climate, addressing these transformations through the production of new buildings is unimaginable. Not only the construction activity has plunged in the recession years, but also recent studies suggest that the population of Greece is expected to decrease in the next 20 years. At the same time, there is an unprecedented number of vacant buildings in the downtown of Athens as the abandonment of the downtown has been further amplified during the years of recession.

Although architects are engaged with growth and creation of the new, perhaps in this context of excessive supply of buildings and space there is an opportunity to radically rethink the city and its models of dwelling through a process of removal. The studio will explore the possibility of reinventing the polykatoikia typology and the urban fabric of Athens through various strategies of “thinning.” By relieving the city of unnecessary fat, it will aim to find new spaces and redefine existing relationships between building and outdoors space, in order to transform the city and the polykatoikia apartment typology to accommodate the changing lifestyles of Athenians.

Rather than absence or urban destruction, thinning will be considered as an alternative artistic creation and form-making. Thinning might take place on multiple scales, from the scale of the block, building, or apartment, to surface and material as a strategy for “de-growth” in order to create new spaces, edges, and relationships between the voids and the remaining structures. As such, it can translate into various architectural and urban operations such as subtraction, extraction, cutting, and shaving; their deployment will consider outlines, shape, and geometry, similar to when erecting new structures. Parallel to this process of removal, strategies of addition and adjustments will be necessary to support the remaining structures and activate the new voids.

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Common Architecture

Workshop with Wilfried Kuehn (Kuehn Malvezzi Architects)

13 – 24 February 2017

The studio addresses housing in the very center of Athens. We are dealing with the dissolution of conventional divisions between residential and working space, both at the scale of the single flat and at the scale of the city fabric. We look at living space beyond the family dwelling and we look at working space beyond the office. Most of all, we look at the possibilities of common space to happen in-between specific activities, challenging our notions of private and public space.

In developing a concrete proposal for two empty and centrally located lots, we confront ourselves with the dense historical downtown fabric that undergoes deep transformations following the sharp fall in conventional office space demand and the downturn of classical shops at large scale. This crisis opens up possibilities of redefining our desires and requests in relation to the spaces we want to inhabit and allows for typological innovations based on a thorough analysis of historical typologies.

Common Architecture entails an engagement with the spaces that are neither private nor public but belong to all of us and tend to be overlooked by the market forces and city governments alike. Common Architecture deals with the transformation of historical typologies and morphologies into unexpected contemporary forms and patterns of use. Calling for a Common Architecture means to overcome the limits of object-oriented signature architecture and to engage with specific contexts in their everyday character.

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Image of the Athenian apartment

Seminar with Luca Galofaro 7 – 12 December 2016

Constructing models Montage as a tool for making architecture

This is not the time to accomplish something. This is the age of the fragments. — Marchel Duchamp

Reference and practice are fundamental to build their own vision of the world; Ettore Sottsass affirmed that in order to draw architecture other origins, information and catalogues that are necessary to obtain ideas and models. That's why every day, from my personal storage, I try to compose a catalogue of ideas to assemble from time to time; they are notes, possibilities which I called annotations. Annotations are abstract forms –figures without background– used to assimilate the real. They create an imaginary useful for undoing freedom of image. The imagination creates semiotic links not matching with the existent combination of images that are registered on a daily base.

In his Morphologie: City Metaphors (1982) Oswald Mathias Ungers proposes a way of thinking through metaphors and projects through analogies and images, showing the idea throughout figures that later compose a project. This school of thought and reflection goes along with every architect's work. Storing images goes in parallel with creating images, which are slowly transformed into something else, or –once compared– define working models linked to specific themes.

The model is an intellectual structure setting targets for our creative activities, just like the design of model-buildings, model-cities, model-communities, and other model conditions supposedly are setting directions for subsequent actions.

Images are the focal point of our culture; it is very important to read again the words of the German architect. His thesis opposes the functionalism of the period when it was written. To Ungers theory is one of the many ways of seeing and knowing the world. It is a theory that interprets reality, confers other meanings and signs. Architecture in this frame is an instrument that translates theory.

Concretely Ungers tries to simplify the project building process, for the same reason I believe is extremely important not to consider notes as a project formal reference but only as circumstances to reflect on specific themes, as instruments of thought. Images so conceived become models not describing but underlining resolute conceptual decisions on a specific theme. During the seminar the students will work around an image used as text to describe their idea of architecture.

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Art of Observing IV: Recommended readings & films

Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion and Selected Poems

Bruno Latour, Paris: Invisible City

Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny

Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty

Στρατής Δούκας, Ιστορία ενός Aιχμαλώτου

Viktor Shklovsky, Art as Technique

Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking

Δημήτρης Πικιώνης, Ανοικοδόμηση και Παράδοση

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self

Chris Marker, La Jetée

(image via Boglio)

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3 scenarios for an apartment in Athens

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Cityhome

Workshop with Ron Walkey 10 October – 4 November 2016

The problems with apartments in central Athens include wide spread vacancies, increasing dilapidation and the pressure to accommodate and integrate new immigrants. Yet there is a problem more serious, one that is not limited to Athens.

The contemporary world lets us see an atomization of life, the isolation of each person from the other. Individuals are spending most of their lives in closed rooms glued to screens, unaware of other types of life. The apartment cubicle becomes a refuge, an escape into privacy. It is a privacy without neighbours, only strangers, or threats. The decline in communal awareness, in collective understanding and mutual respect is a new challenge to an ever-changing urban life. We need to address this situation if civic life is to continue.

Neo-classical Athens expressed an adopted sense of 'we,' a collective pubic statement of belonging to place. It was exhibited in the facades, the entrances and the floor plans of these buildings. This public coherence was continued with creative elegance into the apartments of the 'mesopolemo'. During the post war years the city was transformed as Greek families from villages poured into the city with no social connections either to their neighbours or to the existing city. There they set up homes in faceless 'units' — the perfect modernist city as Kenneth Frampton once said — and this has led not only to the near total neglect of the wider public realm but to never-ending 'wars' within each polikatoikia that continue to this day.

There are both social and economic reasons for this condition. We address the architectural issues. As architects and urban planners we must recognize and articulate this loss of public coherence then suggest new forms of dwelling that can encourage the 'interaction between the edges of difference' which is critical to any sense of community. If all life is defined by the edges of the organism, then it's the 'membranes' of our buildings that count: Do they welcome integration, or deny it? How do they prescribe integration?

Despite the current economic problems, the empty buildings of central Athens offer a unique opportunity to experiment with accommodating other activities in new forms and spaces that foster inclusion. If it's urban negotiation, not just form that is the essential ingredient in shaping a different type of pubic life can we suggest built situations where social boundaries are continually negotiable?

(gif via .∑†*e!^:(.)

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Image from Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language (1977). Some of the patterns are examined at the workshop Cityhome, in order to propose critical interventions to the public realm of Florinis Street in Athens.

133: Staircase is a Stage 136: Couple's Ream 137: Children's Realm 142: Sequence of Sitting Spaces 143: Bed Cluster 179: Alcoves 180: Window Place 181: The Fire 185: Sitting Circle 186: Communal Sleeping 187: Marriage Bed 188: Bed Alcove 189: Dressing Room 190: Ceiling Height Variety 191: The Shape of Indoor Space 192: Windows Overlooking LIfe 193: Half-Open Wall 194: Interior Windows 196: Corner Doors 197: Thick Walls 211: Thickening of Outer Walls 222: Low Sill 223: Deep Reveals 235: Frames at Thickened Edges

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Polypartment

Seminar with AREA 3 – 7 October 2016

The once successful economic model of reconstruction in Athens, which began with the system of "antiparohi" and led entire generations of families to simultaneously act as designers, owners and consumers of the space of the "polykatoikia", has now collapsed. The ownership of aged apartments in the city center is now offset by unbearable taxation. The real estate and rental market is virtually non-existent, and an over-abundance of apartments remains abandoned. A new, bottom-up approach is necessary at the level of the individual apartment, in order to renew the machinery of the polykatoikia both economically and socially. Although until recently the desires and dreams of middle-class families took shape within the confines of private ownership, ultimately leading to alienation and individualism, today it is apparent that a much more socially extroverted model of cohabitation is needed. The rental of apartments through services such as Airbnb, new forms of cohabitation and live/work arrangements, are but a few developments that have, little by little, allowed the typology of the apartment to remain sustainable.

During the workshop we will examine a typical floor plan of an Athenian polykatoikia, submitting it to transformations of extreme extroversion. New, hybrid programs will act as a tool to challenge the relationship between private and "common" space, the open and the closed, converting outmoded apartments into self-sufficient, lively and open systems.

The method we will follow is that of the cadavre exquis, whereby each apartment will initially be addressed as a fragment, by way of existing elements, and in disregard of neighboring boundaries. Subsequently, the whole will be reconstituted as an "exquisite corpse", taking on new life through its function as a single entity. The boundaries between different appartments or programs will constitute zones of negotiation between design participants. Working in teams will define new areas of exploration and lead to the discovery of even richer residential senarios. The goal will be to move from a polykatoikia of autonomous apartments to a collection of parts in common: the Poly-partment.

Το άλλοτε επιτυχημένο οικονομικό μοντέλο της ανοικοδόμησης της Αθήνας που ξεκίνησε από το σύστημα της αντιπαροχής και οδήγησε ολόκληρες γενεές οικογενειών να είναι συγχρόνως δημιουργοί, ιδιοκτήτες και καταναλωτές του χώρου της πολυκατοικίας έχει πλέον καταρεύσει. Η ιδιοκτησία παλαιωμένων πλέον διαμερισμάτων στο κέντρο της πόλης ισοδυναμεί με αβάστακτη φορολογία. Παράλληλα η αγορά πωλήσεων και ενοικιάσεων είναι σχεδόν ανύπαρκτη και πληθώρα διαμερισμάτων εγκαταλείπεται. Μία νέα από κάτω προς τα πάνω διαδικασία είναι αναγκαίo να βρεθεί από το επίπεδο της μονάδας του διαμερίσματος έτσι ώστε η μηχανή της αθηναϊκής πολυκατοικίας να ανανεωθεί τόσο οικονομικά όσο και κοινωνικά. Ενώ μέχρι πρότεινος μέσα στα όρια της ιδιοκτησίας του κάθε διαμερίσματος μετουσιώνονταν οι επιθυμίες και τα όνειρα της μεσοαστικής οικογένειας οδηγώντας σε αποξένωση και ακραίο ατομικισμό σήμερα διαφαίνεται ότι ένας πολύ πιο εξωστρεφής κοινωνικά τρόπος κατοίκησης είναι απαραίτητος. Ενοικίαση διαμερισμάτων μέσω υπηρεσιών τύπου airbnb, νέα μοντέλα συγκατοίκησης ή συνδυασμός εργασίας και κατοικίας είναι μερικά μόνο από τα σενάρια που σιγά σιγά αναπτύσσονται καθιστώντας την τυπολογία του διαμερίσματος ακόμη βιώσιμη.

Στο εργαστήριο θα εξετάσουμε έναν τέτοιο τυπικό όροφο αθηναϊκής πολυκατοικίας υποβάλλοντάς τον σε μία παράλλαξη ακραίας εξωστρέφειας. Θα προταθούν νέες υβριδικές χρήσεις δημιουργώντας νέες σχέσεις ανάμεσα στα όρια ιδιωτικού - κοινόχρηστου, ανοιχτού - κλειστού μετατρέποντας τα υποβαθμισμένα διαμερίσματα σε αυτάρκης ζωντανούς ανοιχτούς οργανισμούς.

Η μέθοδος που θα ακουλουθηθεί είναι αυτή του cadavre exquis όπου κάθε διαμέρισμα θα δουλευτεί καταρχάς αποσπασματικά, μέσα από το υπάρχον, αγνοώντας την ύπαρξη γειτόνων. Σε δεύτερη φάση το σύνολο θα επανασυντεθεί και το «εξαίσιο πτώμα» που θα έχει δημιουργηθεί θα πρέπει να πάρει ζωή λειτουργώντας συνολικά. Τα όρια μεταξύ των διαφορετικών διαμερισμάτων / χρήσεων θα αποτελέσουν ζώνες διαπραγμάτευσης ανάμεσα στους σχεδιαστές. Δουλεύοντας ομαδικά θα βρεθούν νέοι τόποι εξερεύνησης και εξεύρεσης ακόμη πλουσιότερων σεναρίων κατοίκησης. Ζητούμενο είναι το πέρασμα από την χωρισμένη σε πολλά αυτόνομα διαμερίσματα πολυκατοικία σε μία ενιαία οντότητα που αποτελείται από διαφορετικά μέρη, το poly-partment.

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Piraeus & Athens - parallel works to existing structures

Ερευνητικό θέμα για το πρόγραμμα του 2016-2017

Το πρόγραμμα INSTEAD (Παραποιήσεις) επιμένει σε εξειδικευμένες μελέτες που αφορούν σε περιοχές μεγαλων αστικων κέντρων που καταδεικνύουν συνθήκες έντονων μεταβολών. Στα τελευταία χρόνια το μεταπτυχιακό πρόγραμμα επικέντρωσε το ενδιαφέρον του στην περιοχή του Φραγκομαχαλά στη Θεσσαλονίκη, στην οδό Ευριπίδου στο ιστορικό τρίγωνο των Αθηνών και σε μια σειρά μεγάλης κλίμακας εγκατελειμμένων οικοδομών στο κέντρο του Πειραιά. Η φετινή προσέγγιση επικεντρώνεται σε μια διερεύνηση επιλεγμένων σημείων των Αθηνών.

Η Αθήνα αναζητά τον προσδιορισμό της στο παγκόσμιο αστικό γίγνεσθαι ως πόλη που συμπυκνώνει χαρακτηριστικά μιας μετα-δυτικής πόλης. Οι εκφάνσεις της παρακμής φαίνεται να επιζητούν κάποιο νέο είδος απάντησης σχετικής με το ερώτημα του εγκατελειμένου κέντρου της αλλά στις παρυφές και στα όρια της πόλης, όπου μπορεί να εντοπίσει κανείς διαφορετικές δυναμικές μεταβολής. Η Αθήνα καλείται να επανεξετάσει εκ νέου τις περιοχές της όχι μόνο για να βρει σε αυτές τα σημάδια της εγκατάλειψης αλλά για να ανιχνεύσει τις διαφορετικές της δυναμικές. Στην ποικιλία μερικών από αυτές και στην διασπορά τους σε παρατηρήσεις σε διαφορετικές κλίμακες επικεντρώνεται φέτος το ενδιαφέρον του μεταπτυχιακού προγράμματος. Το νέο οικονομικό περιβάλλον αναζητά ακόμη λύσεις για τα υπολείμματα των αστικών θεσμών που λειτουργούσαν μέχρι σήμερα με την βοήθεια του κράτους και σήμερα φαίνονται εγκατελειμμένοι και ασθενείς. Σημαιακά κομμάτια του μοντέρνου ιστού της πόλης, το παρελθόν του υποχωρούντος χονδρεμπορίου και της βιοτεχνίας ή της μικροβιομηχανίας παράγουν ένα μωσαϊκό από δυσλειτουργούντες χώρους και ένα σύνθετο τοπίο έρευνας όπου αναπτύσσονται εναλλακτικές στρατηγικές παρατήρησεων και επεμβάσεων.

Η σύνθετη περιοχή μελέτης συγκεντρώνει πολλά κρίσιμα χαρακτηριστικά της αθηναϊκής κατάστασης που καθιστούν την εξέταση του σύγχρονου αστικού μορφώματος της Αθήνας και του Πειραιά, συμβολικό πεδίο που η σκέψη για αυτό, η έρευνα για τις ζωντανές καταστάσεις του, οι διαφορετικές κλίμακες που εισάγει και η διαμόρφωσή του αποτελούν πολλαπλό πορτρέτο της σημερινής πρωτεύουσας. Καθώς το μεταπτυχιακό πρόγραμμα οργανώνεται πάντοτε πάνω σε συγκεκριμένα πεδία το άθροισμα των υπό εξέταση περιοχών δεν εξετάζεται απλά μέσα στο εσωτερικό ενός συνολικού ακαθόριστου σχήματος (masterplan): η μελέτη των αποσπασμάτων οδηγεί σε τυπικές λύσεις επί επιλεγμένων σημείων.

Εκτός των εργαστηρίων σχεδιασμού η agenda του προγράμματος περιλαμβάνει εργαστήρια ή σεμινάρια και διαλέξεις σχετικά με πρόχειρες χρηστικές κατασκευές σε κλίμακα ενα προς ενα,δημιουργία συνθηκών ή συμβάντων στην δημόσια σφαίρα. Προσεγγίζονται επίσης οι τέχνες της παρατήρησης με καταγραφές, αναπαραστάσεις ή επαναλήψεις γεγονότων, κατασκευές ηχοτοπίων και αστικών λεπτομερειών, έρευνα ιστορικών η άλλων αρχείων ενώ ενθαρύνεται η επιτόπια έρευνα γύρω απο τις διαδικασίες που διαμορφώνουν την αστική καθημερινότητα.

Το πρόγραμμα του 2016 όπως και αυτά των τριών τελευταίων ετών περιλαμβάνουν εργαστήρια, σεμινάρια και μαθήματα που παρέχονται από ειδικούς καθηγητές από την Ελλάδα και το εξωτερικό. Ειδικά για το 2016-17 συνεχίζεται η νομαδική συνθήκη μετακίνησης του εργαστηρίου που θα έχει ως κέντρο το τμήμα αρχιτεκτόνων του Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλίας αλλά η παρακολούθηση των περισσότερων εργαστηρίων του θα γίνουν in situ στην Αθήνα, σε συνεννόηση με φορείς συνεργαζόμενους με το πρόγραμμα στην Αθήνα. Αναφέρεται ενδεικτικά ότι πέρυσι το μεταπτυχιακό πρόγραμμα διαδραματίστηκε σε ένα σύστημα χώρων όπως το Πανεπιστήμιο Πειραιώς, Η Ανωτάτη Σχολή Καλών Τεχνών, το Τμήμα Αρχιτεκτόνων μηχανικών του Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλίας. Σημειώνεται ότι δύο εβδομαδιαία σεμινάρια του προγράμματος έλαβαν χώρα στο εξωτερικό σε συνεργασία με το Frei Universitaet του Βερολίνου και με την Architectural Association του Λονδίνου.

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Knowing How: Extrastatecraft

Seminar with Keller Easterling 30 May – 3 June 2016

Repeatable formulas like spatial products and free zone cities make most of the space in the world, and some of the world’s most radical changes are being written in the language of this almost infrastructural spatial matrix. Administered by mixtures of state and non-state players and driven by profound irrationalities, infrastructure space generates de facto, undeclared forms of polity that can outpace law. It is the secret weapon of some of the world’s most powerful players. Even at a moment of ubiquitous computing, infrastructure space is itself an information system with the power and currency of software—a spatial operating system for shaping the city. As unlikely as it may seem, this matrix space potentially brings to our art another relevance with different aesthetic pleasures and political capacities. The expanded techniques of form-making and political activism—the means to hack the operating system—often rely not only on “know that” but also on “knowing how.”

Each of the six sessions will expand on the six segments of the book Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. That book alternates between evidentiary and contemplative segments. So on each of the six session will also alternate between considering evidence and engaging in a contemplation of new practices and habits of mind. Each session will begin with a short talk, and, since the readings are largely familiar, they will only serve as touchstones. The seminar sessions will be treated as something more like rehearsals for encountering and manipulating global infrastructure space.

Session One: Zone

Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: the Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), “Introduction, and Zone,” 11-69.

Aihwa Ong, Liberalism as Exception (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), “A Biocartography: Maids, Neoslavery and NGOs” 195-217.

Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3-25.

Rosalind Williams, “Cultural Origins and Environmental Impacts of Large Technical Systems,” Science in Context 6, 2(1993), 377-403.

(Recommended) Georgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), “The Camp as Nomos of the Modern” 166-180.

Session Two: Active Form and Disposition

Extrastatecraft: the Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), “Disposition,” 71-94.

Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), "Form, Substance and Difference," 448-468.

Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949),“Knowing How and Knowing That,” 25-61.

Keller Easterling, “IIRS,” e-flux, April, 2015, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/iirs/

(Recommended) The Action is the Form: Victor Hugo's TED Talk (Strelka Press, 2012). Ebook.

Session Three: Broadband

Extrastatecraft: the Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), “Broadband,” 95-136.

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 27-47.

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005), 43-52.

Armand Mattelart, Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3-52.

Armand Mattelart, Networking the World 1794-2000 (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 1-22, 49-57.

Session Four: Extrastatecraft

Extrastatecraft: the Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014), Quality, 211-241.

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1990), 136-152.

Jacques Rancière, “The Art of the Possible: Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey in Conversation with Jacques Rancière,” Artforum International 45, no. 7 (2007), 256–60.

Keller Easterling, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 185-196

Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1959), 141–66.

(Recommended) Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2004), 12-45, with particular attention to 12-19.

(Recommended) Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), "Making Do: Uses and Tactics" 29-44.

Session Five: Workshop Presentation

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Visual Narratives

Seminar with Elina Axioti Location: Freie Universität Berlin 22 March – 1 April 2016

Workshop with Aristide Antonas, Elina Axioti, Zoe Ηatziyannaki Studio hours: 22/3-24/3 & 29/3-31/3, 10am - 2pm Freie Universität Berlin

Talks & discussions with Elina Axioti (HU Berlin), Aristide Antonas (UTH), Christina Dimitriadis (NYU Berlin), Zoe Ηatziyannaki, Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest (Uni Stuttgart), Miltos Pechlivanos (FU Berlin) meetings in co-working spaces: 25-26/3, 11am-5pm, Westberlin, Friedrichstraße 215, 10969 Berlin 27/3, 10-12am, St. Oberholz, Rosenthaler Str. 72A, 10119 Berlin 28/3, 10am-1pm, Betahaus, Prinzessinnenstraße 19-20, 10969 Berlin

Studio visits 23/3, 2pm, Raumlabor, Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin 23/3, 6pm, Kuehn Malvezzi Architects, Heidestraße 50, 10557 Berlin 24/3, 5pm, Studio Tomas Saraceno, Hauptstrasse 11/12, 10317 Berlin 27/3, 5pm, Studio Armin Linke, Axel-Springer-Str 39 10969 Berlin

Events, exhibition visits & tours 22/3, 6pm, DEMO:POLIS: The Right to Public Space, Akademie der Künste 26/3, 2-4pm, Building the Future: Berlin’s Hansa district, Bauhaus Archiv 27/3, 1-3pm, Julian Rosefeldt. Manifesto, Hamburger Bahnhof 28/3, 11am-7pm, Nervous Systems, HKW 28/3, city walk with Anette Grube around Bergmannstr., Chamissoplatz and the Admiralsbrücke 29/3, 2pm, private tour at Boros Collection 30/3, 5-8pm, Motto Distribution 31/3, 6pm, Secret Surface, guided tour, KW Institute for Contemporary Art 31/3, 9pm, Hito Steyerl, Rabih Mroué, Probable Title: Zero Probability (2012), HAU1 Hebbel am Ufer

The seminar Visual Narratives is curated by Elina Axioti and it is realized with the collaboration of the Architecture Syndicate and the Centrum Modernes Griechenland (CeMoG), Freie Universität Berlin.

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Piraeus Tower Shelter

Workshop with Sophia Vyzoviti 29 February – 18 March 2016

The project captures the dynamics of the overwhelming in magnitude flow of refugees through Greece on the basis of reports on the events happening in March 2016. Acknowledging the conflicting complexities of the endeavor as an impossible compromise between the fear of Islamization of Europe and the humanitarian idealization of refugees (Žižek 2016) architectural aspects of an inclusive emergency shelter are explored. Forensic evidence of refugee resettlement typologies in Greece distinguish three modes of operation; the rapidly assembled and military operated camp sites in the major reception points known as Hot Spots, the reorganization of existing infrastructures into rub halls operated by civic institutions, and the informal autogenous settlements created spontaneously by the refugees and supported by volunteer organizations. Considering remedial strategies through the reconfiguration of the available urban resources the currently redundant building stock provides opportunities for immediate solutions. Small scale reconfigurations of existing structures may prove reciprocally beneficial. Attending to urgent spatial necessities can become an initiative for their gradual upgrade. In this framework Piraeus Tower which has been abandoned since its completion in 1983 serves as an urban paradigm. The building has the capacity to facilitate more than 8000 people in 20 floors. The project speculates on variable occupancy models and the minimum necessary architectural operations that could activate the redundant structure as a refugee shelter with an outlook to local vulnerable social groups.

[image via matthen]

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Piraeus Tower Hotel

Workshop with Point Supreme 15 – 26 February 2016

Piraeus Tower is the only tall building at the Port of Piraeus, one of the bigger ports of Mediterranean on the coast of Athens. Never completed and abandoned for more than 30 years it is nicknamed "the sleeping giant". The port undergoes a dynamic growth the last decades; there are now approximately 4 million cruise tourists that arrive at Piraeus every year. They face an ugly view and are presented with no reason to stay over.

The continuous rise of cruise ship arrivals offers tremendous potential for tourism and has to be met with a visionary business plan. The tower offers the possibility to create an iconic hotel of significant scale that could extend the cruise ship program to include an unforgettable overnight stay inland. The image of the Tower Hotel would change the whole perception and image of the port to everyone arriving to the port. It would showcase a new face for Piraeus; contemporary, exciting, ambitious. The Tower has the potential to become one of the most important landmarks for the whole city of Athens. This project aims to start a public discussion regarding the neglected value of Piraeus Tower and to propose a realizable scenario.

The workshop will take off with a study of hotel typologies and scale comparisons to unveil the potential of the existing volume, a feasibility study, a specific programmatic and façade design proposal, a presentation of the spatial effects in the area and a commercial presentation of the building to the mayor of Piraeus.

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Petros Babasikas with Konstantinos Pantazis and Marianna Rentzou at Point Supreme workshop.