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Desmos

Introduction


In 2011 McKinsey presented results of their economic study for Greece, Greece 10 years ahead. It revealed many of the economic weaknesses of the nation and proposed solutions to the ongoing economic crisis. In line with the media, the country was differentiated against the powerful northern nations which stand as exemplars. Many findings in the study were valid, yet suggestions such as expanding tourism with all inclusive resorts and the creation of bigger, more efficient companies are transplanted ideals that fail to reveal potentials of Greek citizens (Adelman 2012, 9-25).


In comparison with other European Nations, Greece has by far the highest concentration of small 0-9 employee business, constituting thirty percent of all businesses. Even second place does not come close at nineteen percent (Portugal) while Germany has the lowest percentage of small businesses at less than five percent (Adelman 2012, 19). Statistics as such allude to the small scale character of Greece. 

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(data from Adelman 2012, 19)

With the economic downturn of 2009, Athens is witnessing a new type of growth. As unemployment is currently an all time high of twenty-seven percent (Euronews 2013) the number of self employed professionals is increasing and desires for collectives and shared workspaces is growing. It is a pattern which moves away from the desires of the EU governing body, proving that Greece does not fit the imperial model.

 

The need for change in Athens is non-disputable, but it is during these times that it becomes important to reflect on the tendencies and forces of the citizens, re-thinking architecture to more accurate curate the city’s activities. In 1973, E. F. Schumacher released the first edition of Small is beautiful, promoting the human-scale of economics. It was considered ground-breaking for its recrimination of the modern “bigger is better” mentality that was (and still is) present in most economic models. The philosophy resonates well with Greece’s small business culture and its relevance can not be more timely as the country transitions from economic crisis to economic recovery. Schumacher states that small businesses bring their own energy and allow a much higher quality product to be brought forward, something mass production can never achieve. By doing so, value can be added to products that would normally be sold for a much lower rate. Three points he considers to be fundamental in function of work are: give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.  They are principles reinforcing the necessity for people to create a work culture as a product of their lives. The Indian philosopher and economist J.C. Kumarappa summarizes it well:
If the nature of the work is properly appreciated and applied, it will stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the physical body. It nourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges him to produce the best he is capable of. It directs his free will along the proper course and disciplines the animal in him into progressive channels. It furnishes an excellent background for man to display his scale of values and develop his personality. (Schumacher 2010, 59)


Empowerment of people and exposing their strengths should not be underestimated and is at the root of innovation and the discussion on innovation can not be more timely. Athens is home to one-third of Greece’s population, stands as the political center for the country and attracts roughly 6 millions international visitors annually. As the country is now entering year five of recession, we are now contemplating the built environment’s role in recovery and more specifically on innovation.


This thesis seeks to understand what it means to innovate by understanding and revealing the potentials of the city.  It seeks to evolve the architectural discourse towards an emphasis on the workplace and its intersection with public space. Doing so demands a curation of Athens at all scales; understanding why the city expresses the present urban form and how the urban form can evolve, not as a “lets start over” approach, but rather what are the interventions we can build upon the current urban form. The proposal takes lessons from the past and tries to understand current patterns of Athens to create a sequence of micro-agoras within city blocks of Athens’ informal sector.


Today’s economic crisis brings light to the long standing urban crisis. Greece as a small nation needs to produce better exports rather than more products. Services by the city need to be more useful not more plentiful and therefore Athens must be better, not bigger. Such traction is spreading through smaller communities in Greece, where public squares still create a heart, uniting communities which the Greeks call Desmos. Strong unity encourages collaboration and reinforces an understanding that we are part of a system. Transposing such an ideal back into Athens translates the city from a compartmentalized individualistic centric structure, into a collection of community nodes, encouraging progress and innovation.

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(data from Adelman 2012, 19)

Planning for Athens


Athens’ history of settlement dates back further than any other capital in Europe yet is also considered one of Europe’s youngest cities. Until Approximately the 1820s, Athens adapted a medieval structure. The first documented city plan was designed by the Engineer Goubault in the early 1800s but was quickly superseded by a more formal strategy. The plan was released by the architects Gustav Eduard Schaubert of Prussia and Stamatios Kleanthes of Greece in 1834 as new modern strategy aimed at enlarging the population of Athens from about 4000 to 10,000 people (Tung 2001, 256-60). By 1875, the population had already swelled to 44,000 residents and the urban form had already diverted back to a less formal, bottom up approach. The frequency of urban change, partly attributed to the geographical location has branded Athens as a city in constant transition. The period surrounding the civil war of 1949 gave rise to a entirely new Athens once again. In the course of a couple decades, Athens transformed from a small urban center to a vast dense metropolis (Aesopos 2012, 44).

shifts in athen's urban form (traulos, 2005)

Polykatikia Athens: A New Type of City


Shortly after the civil war, small quaint homes and shops were gradually demolished in favour of dense Greek versions of Modernist apartment buildings coined Polykatikias (translating to “multi-dwelling”). This polykatikia extended across the city with minimal variations from building to building, constituting to this day, Athens’ “urban unit” (Aureli 2012). 


Non-coincidently, this new form of density spread across the entire Attica basin shortly after the debut of CIAM’s fourth conference, “Functional City,” at the National Technical University of Athens in August 3rd 1933 (Mumford 2000, 81). Modernism was greeted with open arms by Greece and its then current Prime Minister (who inaugurated CIAM’s conference) and seeked to re-interpret and extrapolate lessons towards Athens’ rapid population influx. The first wave of immigration into Athens was a result of an obligatory population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, followed by an influx of residents from villages whose homes were destroyed in WWII (Katrini 2009,1). Influx of residents into Athens continued after Greece’s civil war of 1949 and through the dictator Georgos Papadopoulos regime from 1967-1974. But while construction slowed down during the 1980s, the polykatikia continues to be built today with little adaptations but tweaks to the building envelope.


Athens, the once neoclassical city, quickly became a city of Polykatikias by the 1970s. The homogeneity at the scale of the city resulted in a blanket of concrete for as far as the eye can see. Open spaces and plazas ceased to be designed. 


It was a paradigm shift for the city where the previous model based on a rhythm of private and public outdoor spaces was displaced for a fetish on tectonic form. Accommodating for public spaces was considered a luxury and therefore displaced by the necessity to build for the bourgeois nuclear family. Although considered as a viable solution, It became an urban crisis in the making. With time to reflect, we must now consider outdoor spaces as social connecting tissue and how they can be integrated back into the city, within a culture of polykatikias.

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athens from a distance, 2012

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Corbusier’s Maison Dom-ino of 1914 (Aureli 2012)

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An unfinished polykatikia in Metaxourgio, revealing its free plan, 2011 

This new typology of the polykatikia was raw and honest, expressing a modern feel which reflected the presence of a new age population immigrating into Athens. The simplicity of the concrete post and beam construction allowed for maximum flexibility and the same structural system could then be repeated across the city and easily adapted by each specific program after the construction. Construction therefore progressed efficiently by developing a workforce that specialized in the polykatikia typology. Manipulation for program would then occur independently from the erection of structure, resulting in a Fordist system of development at the scale of the city (Aureli 2012). The construction industry emerged strong, providing as much as 60 percent of employment, transforming the city into a factory and bypassing the need for Athens to develop a strong industrial sector.


Corbusier’s Dom-ino typology forms the predecessor to the radical polykatikia and inherently shares its benefits. Both building systems were designed to maximize possibilities of production in the interior (Aureli 2012) -  a design that would allow the typology to evolve overtime, adjusting for unforeseen developments. With floor plans relatively constant from floor to floor, the section is as homogeneous as the plan is flexible. 


The flexible polykatikia would then evolve after construction, where its surroundings dictate programmatic use. A vibrant Mediterranean street culture makes the ground floor of polykatikias most valuable to restaurants, bars and shops. The top three floors are setback 1.5-2m from each preceding floor, which allows for light to penetrate down into the street. The setbacks create ideal balconies while being elevated above the city permits views towards the Acropolis, both significant factors for being used as housing. The middle section (about 2-3 floors) became the least valuable real estate and is used for offices and workshops, or is transformed into more affordable housing by extending balconies outwards. 

The former is the case in downtown Athens, while the later occurs as you move away from the center of Athens. Over time, building bylaws mandated a stoa to be accommodated at the ground floor for protecting pedestrians from the strong Mediterranean sun, a modification that pushed the Maison Dom-ino inspired typology even further towards the polykatikia vernacular we know today. The capitalist ideals dictated a desire for private ownership with a lack of communal public spaces. Such spaces are still absent from the building program today, presenting a challenge in the configuration of polykatikias. The streets absorb much of this function, yet they are far too narrow to fulfill requirements of public nodes at the city block scale.


The need for rapid construction resulted in the bottom-up urban planning strategy called Antiparochi. Antiparochi was a building contract strategy put in place by the city which motivated Athenians to sell their small properties to contractors in favour of receiving a percentage of the newly built polykatikia (Katrini 2009, 1). Because it was difficult to convince multiple property owners to sell concurrently, the polykatikia became very small in footprint - resulting the polykatikia to become Europe’s smallest modernist building in a city already home to one of Europe’s smallest city blocks. For the city,  Antiparochi seemed like a miracle to the need for rapid urbanization where time consuming top-down master planning was bypassed, allowing the contractor to dictate building siting (Aureli 2012). The repetition resulted in a “layered cake” condition, a result of homogenous horizontal distribution of program. Over multiple buildings, the striations are expressed clearly, contributing to a layer of residential life at the top floors and roofs - segregated from the street by a layer of in-between floors.

These in-between floors which were once office spaces, workshops and storage are now increasing in vacancy, further isolating the top and bottom layers of the polykatikia. The only hope of communication is via circulation cores, but those have been paired down to such minimum dimensions that they fail to provide interaction between floors that polykatikias now demand.

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 the polykatikia, 2013

Chapter 4: Informal Athens

Since the 1800s, desires for a strong, powerful capital resulted in establishing a series of boulevards of large monumental interventions between Omonia Square to the North and the Parliament to the South East. Consequently, areas outside this “city center” zone were of little interest to the city allowing for a far more informal, bottom up construction and occupation. Today an informal city core coexists with the political and commercial city center, separated by a not so invisible line, Athinas Street. It is this informal area which is most eclectic, features the widest demographic and is most condensed in terms of programmatic diversity and therefore has the most potential for new ideas to emerge. Informal Athens is expressed in three districts; Metaxourgio, Gerani and Psiri.

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city center of athens, revealing the abandonded properties of psiri and metaxourgio

New Forces in the City


Despite the economic crisis forcing many Athenians to smaller rural communities, the core of Athens has maintained its vibrancy. Stephania Xydia talks about the organization “Brain Gain”, a movement for those returning to Athens despite challenges in the city (Xydia, 2013). Such young professionals are moving as close as they can to the center of Athens. They are seeking to form collaborations and cross-professional networks in order to create new employment opportunities for themselves. These tendencies in Athens are therefore increasing the number of self-employed workers. In addition, workshops are still operating, artists are emerging and taverns are still full of life. Yet such character is not expressed at the scale of boulevards, but rather this energy is concealed deep within the city block. 


The Athens biennale has recognized these potentials and had based the third biennale (Monodrome) on revealing the character embedded deep within informal Athens. For 2013’s fourth biennale (AB4:AGORA), the venues are active workshops. The intention is to establish a communication network for small businesses and spark interest from Athens’ visitors. Eleanna Pontikaki, assistant curator for the biennale discussed with me how the current biennale’s theme was based on a forward looking direction for the city. In 2012, the exhibition, followed by the publication “Made in Athens” was presented at the Venice Biennale showcasing architectural projects, thoughts and theories which have emerged from young Athenian talent.

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drawing illustrating various cultural activites in psiri and metaxourgio

Amogst a movement of professionals seeking to express the character of Athens is SARCHA (School of Architecture for all), an underground architecture collective of architects, urban planners, writers and other professionals whom take interest in the built environment (SARCHA 2010, 6). The intentions of SARCHA is to become a platform for dialogue amongst professionals and seeks to propose feasible built works for urban regeneration.


The influence and notice SARCHA has received from other European countries stands as an example of how bottom-up collectives are gaining traction in Athens. It is a movement that considers that ideas need to emerge from the people, not just through legislature, therefore re-building Athens from the informal sector inwards towards the “government centric” center is critical to the health of the city. It is a strategy that is not meant to attack the current political system, but one that is meant to alleviate pressures from the larger “democratic” system. The most recent package to the ministry of culture by SARCHA suggests a series of interventions for a better Athens within this informal city. Simple suggestions such as benches and garbage disposal brings light to the lack of seating and garbage bins along street-scapes. The issues of quality paving is also raised - claiming that damaged, unaligned and tall curbs make navigating this part of Athens unpleasant and inhibits a pace of leisurely strolling - necessary for encouraging mixing of Athenians through the streets (SARCHA 2010). Stoas are also an element of the Athenian street and have been integrated through the polykatikia typology. But its poor quality space in terms of materiality and articulation have many people dismissing them as unsuccessful. Architect Eleni Tzirtzilaki defends these stoas, claiming their protection from the sun and refuge from automobiles has immense value and we should focus on improving the space underneath. In parallel to improving their material quality, Eleni suggests we utilize the voids of Athens to create nodes of exterior spaces along the stoa (SARCHA, 2010). Street vendors and pedestrians can continue to use these stoas, while exterior spaces can act as rest points to escape the dense concrete centric city. The abuse of concrete in the city has led to an even greater challenge - unbearably warm summers. In the most extreme months of July and August, temperatures reach highs of 42 degrees Celsius and it is during these months that most residents choose to escape to the country side. The conditions result in a very unpopulated Athens during the summers with many people returning in September. The landscape of concrete radiates heat from the already hot sun and with little soft landscape to regulate the heat, the green house effect generated is of serious concern. Outside, full shade is sought under retractable canopies. The stoas provide some protection while traveling, but they are un-continuos and many find walking under tree lined streets to be much more comfortable.

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a shoemaker working from his studio in psiri, 2012

The Agora


The successes of innovative thought in classical Athens can be attributed to the Agora (Market). A system that embraced the notion of desmos, encouraging cross-disciplinary interactions as opposed to the compartmentalized polykatikia. The Agora of modern times is based on buying and selling of products, but in contrast, the ancient Agora was based on knowledge. However the terminology still translates into the contemporary market place. In the present day, when you are actively listening to someone, you would say “I am buying (agorazo) knowledge.”


The attributes to the Agora which contributed to its success can be broken down to three key features. Stoas provided relief from the strong Mediterranean sun. As opposed to the stoas of polykatikias which are for traveling, Stoas of the Agora were fragmented extensions of interior program and treated as nodes in which to converse. The second feature is location. The Agora was constructed at the intersection between converging streets. It was essential that the intersected arteries would lead to significant public nodes at each direction, preventing “dead end” streets. The third critical feature was the creation of a platea, functioning as the node along arteries it intersected. The collage of buildings is nothing but scattered pieces without the platea to bind them together.

People’s tendencies towards a more collective and collaborative environment makes the Agora more relevant than ever before. As the urban discourse for Athens needs to be diverted from specialized large scale infrastructure towards interventions which impact the everyday routine, it becomes important to take lessons from the Agora and apply them to the Athenian city block. Interestingly, traces of the Agora are present in contemporary Athens. Stoas, although mismanaged appear along streets. Open spaces exist and the flexibility of the polykatikia’s concrete frame has potential to be re-adapted towards more collective nodes for exchange in expertise. 


This thesis proposes careful injection of common work spaces, public nodes and revised circulation systems. These three elements are orchestrated by the lessons learned from the ancient Agora, re-imagining the Athens’ city block as a micro-agora in the city.

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Victorian etching from the 19th Century looking Southwest  depicting the Agora of Athens during the era of 338-86 b.c.

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School of Athens, Raphael (1509-1511)
Located as a fresco in the Vatican’s Stanza della Segnatura, “the Scool of Athens” was painted to portray Philosophy. The fresco is a collage of moments and philosophers used to represent the Ancient Greek Agora and its impacts.

Urban Composition of Athens


By looking at Informal Athens in its entirety, we can distinguish specificities in character for each block which make each city block unique from its neighbour. In addition, by knowing what the public nodes are and where people congregate, we can ensure the intervention at the scale of the city block still relates to the city scale. Monastiraki square is the intersection between international visitors and local Athenians seeking to experience the city. To the north lies the public market and in between is the district of Psiri. The thesis challenges a city block deep within Psiri and attempts to intersect the two aforementioned public squares. The case study block is at the corner of Pallados and Miaouli streets not only embodies all the prototypical characteristics of Athens, but is also at close proximity to other public nodes of the city.

City Scale Circulation


The street and the way one moves through it is the city’s lifeblood. Its flow informs who meets who, when people cross when, and most importantly what you find where. While in motion, you are exposed to the greatest range of events and people. The coincidences, the exchange of information and encounters will happen during the unexpected. The act of moving through the city is therefore a force much larger than the building components that attach to it. By moving through Athens, the destination can be less important than what happens along the way. The street drives not only movement of people but also acts as a platform for selling, trading, meeting and communication, its dynamic nature make peripato (περίπατο), or leisurely strolling, one of Athens’ greatest past times.
The most successful circulation systems are those which have no clear end or start, but rather are loops through the city. To integrate the micro-agora into the system of the city, Figure 39 reveals pedestrian circular loops of travel and seeks to intersect these existing loop patterns of the city with movement through the city block.

Re-designing a City Block


Architectural Framework


As we begin to re-imagine spaces in the city, it becomes important to be critical about proposing new structural technologies. With every modification on familiar construction methods comes the need for more time to invest in research and leads to potentials for added costs in transporting materials and knowledge from foreign sources. Structurally, few changes have been made to the polykatikia’s concrete post and beam construction system since the 1960s, resulting in a local expertise of this building type. 


As the thesis is about creating spaces and circulation systems, it is also important we do not limit ourselves to the existing structure. Yet a series of studies (see Figures 125-148) revealed that we do not need a new structural technology to create the desired spaces - the possibilities of the polykatikia have not been exhausted.
Not only does the thesis use the familiar concrete post and beam construction, but typical brick plastered walls are also maintained as part of the architectural palate. The play on spaces occurs by re-arranging floor slabs and walls to articulate new relationships between inside and out. Once we start thinking about the structure, walls, floors and stairs as a kit of parts, we can mold these elements to work more organically with the forces and ecology of the site.

striping the skin, revealing the structure and rebuilding a new circulation system which frees itself from the polykatikia

Circulation in the City Block


Not only is it important to plug architecture into the circulation system, but it is important to extend circulation loops from the city scale into the city block. Multiple passages create redundancy in circulation, encouraging exploration of the city block. The thesis designs paths through the platea and between polykatikias. The circulation networks within the architecture and platea are designed in parallel and are intersected with the street network to allow public engagement with the activities of the block.


Three interventions have been designed to form a more networked city block. The aim is not only to link the program horizontally, but also vertically, helping reduce the “layered cake” effect of the city. The bridge links the NE and NW polykatikias. The Tower links the W, SW and SE polykatikia. The creation of the platea in the center forms a hinge between the Tower and Bridge intervention, providing a central node for the users of the block at the point of converging paths.

how a shift in the porosity of the city block can change its function

Proposed Program


The thesis does not seek to displace the existing demographic, nor their existing workplaces. Their personal spaces are part of the worker’s identity and take enormous pride in their workshops. Instead it is about introducing additional common workspaces which link the existing workshops through a new circulation network. The approach is to think of the city block in terms of served and service zones. Currently the compartmentalized nature of the workplaces creates a system of almost exclusively served zones. In other words, the city block is an amalgamation of private workspaces for each worker without any common service spaces to be shared amongst the users of the city block, inhibiting desires for resource sharing. The new program seeks to fill the void of service zones by providing ares such as bookstacks, print shops, meeting rooms etc. These new spaces serve the existing demographic at the scale of the city block.

Additionally, Athens today is growing in a different way than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. The extreme rise in unemployment is forcing many Athenians to seek self-employment. The second form of programmatic intervention provides open workplaces injected between the newly built service quarters and abandoned layers of polykatikias. These new workplaces allows Athens to absorb the new self employed professionals. By providing spaces in an already dynamic system, the users benefit from working along side a myriad of professionals all within a compact system. Resources are shared and ideas are exchanged, providing framework for a new type of exchange network.


The new interventions target the users of the site, yet their public nature provides opportunities for public to enter. The platea is most public, and the newly built spaces can be accessed by the public during exhibitions and events.

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targeted additions to the city block intersected with a new way of moving through spaces

Program Studies


Designing shared workspaces began with studies at the scale of a room. The number of people working in a desk, the circulation through the space, the rhythm between served and service spaces and the presence of exterior spaces were all factors of the study.

exploring relationships between different working configurations

Merging New and Old Program


The design is based on harmonizing new workplaces with the existing. Proposed program is treated as if it is a second phase to the current program, supplementing the existing system based on its current needs rather than displacing people and workplaces that already exist. The preceding studies provided the principles for creating new spaces while the design takes lessons learned and merges the desired workplaces with structure and circulation needs. The desires for blurring boundaries between what is new and what is old allows for a more natural adaptation of the new spaces and ensures the spaces are accessible to the users of the city block. The plan expresses activity of the streets and restaurants and illustrates the activities of the new program with the same graphic language as the old.

Architectural Expression


The architecture is not a an imposition of form onto the site, but rather it manifests and heightens the conditions already present. Their relatively low construction quality has made people fearless in adapting their physical environment. Walls are painted over, facades are removed and informal structures are built on the rooftop, all attempts at disintegrate the monolithic building expression. Heightening the tendencies that are already present, the design transforms the tectonic expression from monolithic to planar. Occupying the architecture that occurs between planes, rather than confined inside volumes. The composition of planes expresses occupied volumes. Double height planes reference double height spaces and single height spaces are contained behind single height planes. The planes, in typical Athenian fashion are expressed as a series of canvases. Allowing for artists to express their thoughts and professionals to disseminate their ideas.
Beyond stronger connections between inside and outside, the expression of walls as planes rather that solids allows for greater light control. The majority of the opaque planar surfaces are positioned along the south, while the north has the most glazing. By combining planes of different angles, natural sunlight can be deflected against walls to provide a softer, more uniform interior lighting.

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the  urban fabric is unintentionally used as a canvus, why not design it as such from the beginning?

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striping the polykatoikia down to its skeleton

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the addition of canvus like walls to the existing polykatoikia

the new courtyard of the city block

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the addition of canvus like walls to the existing polykatoikia

Conclusion


We often think of great architecture as specialized destinations intended to be glowing beacons for the city. Places targeting activities outside people’s daily routines. Spaces in excess of minimal requirements for the functionality of a city. They are places in which culture allows to flourish and are imperative in maintaining people’s pschological integrity. No one doubts its importance, yet when an economic crisis arises, excessiveness is questioned. Do we need more public spaces? Should we even be building? What happens when we revert to a purely functionalist state of mind, does it yield stagnation in the road to economic recovery? Assuming so, the question became, what do we create in excess? and which parts of the city need to be thought in such terms not only to benefit the turbulent times of Athens, but for evolving the urban fabric?


This thesis challenges the notion of excessiveness in the workplace. It reflects on resources and facilities available to those in bigger companies and strategized on a program aiming at resource sharing. As such, it provides spaces of larger companies while still allowing small scale businesses to operate autonomously, a model which closely resembles that of the ancient Agora. The necessity for sharing facilities and ideas amongst young professionals sparked a design which provided service spaces such as workshops, print labs, meeting spaces and social spaces, woven together with a circulation network in excess of minimal requirements. It was an injection of collaborative based workplaces into the already vibrant informal center’s city blocks, where the high energy and presence of people with a myriad of expertise makes the architecture worth investing in. It positions architecture within underutilized voids, allowing Athens to make better use of its spaces and therefore become a much smarter urban center. Flexibility of the polykatikia’s concrete post and beam construction served as framework to the new system. Here, adapting the old structure was not an intention for the thesis, but rather a vehicle for a structural solution which avoided the need for testing and investing time in new structural technology. Focus could then be diverted towards creating spaces and designing circulation networks, superimposed onto the existing system of Athens.


Since my research began in Athens, the city transformed from a platform for protests, to a place with a degrading social center, to now, an urban center with a focus on low cost community activities - transformations that have reflected Athenian’s psychological state and has resulted in a city of constant change. The current tendencies have proved that resource sharing and collaborations are not a fad, but mechanisms for survival. They are fundamental principles of desmos which holds a special place in Greek culture. Therefore evolving Athens based on desmos not only fosters economic recovery, but becomes an opportunity to re-design the built environment reflecting Greece’s cultural tendencies. By focusing on the workplace and the spaces that interconnect them, the discourse of Athens can evolve from the previous focus of dwelling towards innovating based on what the culture of Athens has to offer from within.
 

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