meeting

The utopia – meeting

The meeting in a place, creates a time that temporarily emerges from the different identities of the people involved. People tell their stories, testimonials, from the journey, the borders, their stay in a place. Usually we carve the stories of these journeys on maps, we discover, we map the routes of “before and after” (where we came from and where we want to go, the routes of family, friends, the routes of the neighborhood).

For a few hours, an ephemeral community is created with very different people, who permanently or temporarily are on the same place but would not have met otherwise. The borders of gender, race, religion, economic status tend to disappear through the meeting. Gifts are exchanged such as the ephemeral sculpted bread that was offered in the beginning of the action “the Good will come from the sea.” The meeting is a utopia for the community to come. Utopia becomes action in the doorstep of diversity.

Εργαστήριο “Ανοικτό Σπίτι” Φαντασιακή κατοίκηση και πολλαπλό ανήκειν

Spatial imaginary and multiple belonging. The Open House project.

01/06/2008

Location: Byzantine Museum

The “unbuilt” may be understood as something akin to Arjun Appadurai’s “imaginary” that harbors the potential to form new social realities that are envisioned by individuals or groups. A workshop stationed at the Byzantine Museum will aim to explore the” imaginary” dimension of inhabitation in the case of diasporic communities constituted across national borders, focusing on the agency of women. Populations today link themselves to wider constituencies of religious, ethnic or gender affiliation beyond national borders, and various diasporic public spheres become the crucibles of a postnational order. In fact, Saskia Sassen claims that it is precisely within the condition of globalization that disparate experiences of immigrant women acquire a “presence,” obtaining the potential for new cross-bordered collectivities to emerge. If homes, neighborhoods, cities, and nations have conventionally been spatial realms of identification and belonging, such relations are now becoming unstable, and new types of consciousness, realms of operation and allegiance are being sought.

Ένα κενό οικόπεδο αφορμή διαλόγου, κατασκευής, ενεργοποίησης . πλατεία Κουλούρη,Γκαζοχώρι

An empty plot, a reason for dialogue, construction, activation

10/06/2006

Location: Koulouri Square, Gazohori

Along with the children of 87^th intercultural primary school, a playground was designed in an empty plot across the main square which belongs to the municipality. Construction –action was implemented with soil, ropes, nets etc. Before the action we made collage designs and maquettes inside the school along with the children during the entire school year.

Ένας ύμνος στον Άπολι. Στους τόπους που ζουν οι άπολεις.

A hymn to the Apolis (citiless)… to the places where the citiless live

12/04/2006

Location: reception Centre of asylum seekers in Lavrio

The apolis (citiless) keep increasing in the modern metropolis as more and more people leaving their place of origin. Without papers, refugees, immigrants, unemployed, homeless, marginalized groups, live as exiles in the postmodern metropolis, in its gaps. These cut-out environments are scattered, changing and fluid, as they are produced by the city itself and its transformations. Vacant spaces in the state of the right and generally in the idea of belonging. In such spaces that function as shelters within the city, the architect’s opinion is canceled and another opinion is formed, that of the fleeting, fluid, physical habitation. During this habitation features of community life are created- and these sites create another network that extends from the heart of the city up to the distant periphery.
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Σας ικετεύω μην κατεδαφίζετε τον κόσμο μου. Yikma dujamiyalvaririm. Πλατεία Κουλούρη Γκαζοχώρι

I beg you not to tear down my world. Yikma dujamiyalvaririm.

21/06/2005

Location: Koulouri Square, Gazohori

It began from an anthropological and experiential research-study of the Gazohori area. The title “I beg you not to tear down my world,” came from the graffiti of a child written in the local Turkish dialect. Our goal was the involvement in community life, the understanding of its dynamics as well as the understanding of how the capital penetration affects daily life.