Altan avci

The Enclosure and the Threshold in Hellenic Athens

HTS Term 2 Tutor: Fabrizio Ballabio Student: Altan Sanin Jurca Avci

The act of enclosing space is one of the most archaic gestures humans have used to make a spatial statement. It is by defining an area of ground, a single spatial unit, that a space is made distinct from its surroundings. This simple gesture has evolved and developed, manifesting differently in various cultures and societies over time.

An enclosure is imbued with powerful social, political and symbolic significance, this being defined by the intention behind its construction. It may be to protect, to divide, to bring together, to exclude or to include. It may be for religious purposes or militaristic purposes, symbolic or political, social, moral or aesthetic.

The walls of a city establish the territory the city inhabits, just as the walls of a house define the borders of a family’s home. The space within these walls becomes distinct from the space without them. A dichotomy is made between these two spatial realms: the inside and the outside.

The space in between acts as a threshold and it is the significance of the enclosed space within that determines what kind of architectural expression this threshold will take. Crossing the boundary between two spaces, leaving one and entering the other, the threshold mediates this passage. The architectural elements within the threshold have the power to influence one’s experience of this passage.

The first high civilizations of Mesopotamia designed gigantic palaces, temples and tombs with monumental entrances. Through this monumentality, Giedion writes, the autocratic monarch rulers of these societies asserted their power and dominion over their people and land. In the architecture of Ancient Greece, however, we can see a much more delicate and spatially developed manifestation of the threshold, which not only reflects the Greeks’ aesthetic awareness and artistic prowess, but also the influence of their democratic institutions, through which the values of individual freedom and collective participation in governance emerged.

These values are expressed in a shift in importance from buildings associated with monarchs to spaces where people could gather and build on their social cohesion, such as the Agora or the Temenos (Giedion 1971).

Different enclosures manifest at vastly different scales and within different urban contexts. The following pages will explore these manifestations and their corresponding thresholds at three scales within the context of Classical Athens: the walls of the city, the walls of the sanctuary, the Acropolis, and the walls of the temple, the Parthenon. Three enclosures constructed for different purposes and three different thresholds between the interior and exterior spaces of these enclosures. In addressing the architectural detail within each of these thresholds I wish to understand better how the Greeks’ sensitivity to spatial organisation was articulated by their democratic institutions.

The Walls of the City City walls operate at the scale of the territory, enclosing a large piece of land for political purposes.

But the walls of Hellenic Athens had a very particular role, one that was not merely defensive but primarily symbolic. The polis, as the political model that defined the Ancient Greeks, was more than a dense urban dwelling. It was a political community, a group of citizens united by a common constitution. The city walls were that which defined the boundary and sphere of influence this constitution held. They defined an enclosure of space, an area of ground, a territory separate and distinct from its surrounding environment where a very specific political institution operated and very specific modes of behavior had to be respected. Their strong physical presence protected the inhabitants within the internal space, but it was the symbolism in their power to enclose that expressed autonomy of the institution that was the polis.

The intention of the Athenian walls was thus multifaceted; they were there for militaristic, social, political and symbolic purpose. Thomas Oles (2015) additionally suggests their significance as a mode of exchange. Despite their defensive function, the walls of Athens were very permeable with multiple openings at ground level appearing throughout their circumference.These openings were separate from the formal city gates, smaller in size and significance. Between the internal and external space of these openings there stood no doors. These posterns are believed to have had some militaristic value, but Oles suggests their role was much more meaningful in times of peace than in times of war. The permeability they allowed facilitated a constant potential for exchange and communication between the internal environment of the polis’ walls and its external territory, its chora. The walls of Athens were, therefore, not built to isolate the city from its surroundings, “but rather to set the terms of exchange with the people and groups outside them.” (p. 58) This openness facilitated the constant state of economic, social and cultural exchange upon which Athens’ vitality depended on.

On the north-western side of the walls stood the Dipylon Gates, the city’s main formal entrance point. They were thus the largest and most elaborate of the Athens’ city gates. Before actually passing through them you enter a forecourt, a space of ambiguity where you have neither completely left the open territory behind you, nor have you entered the city in front. You are in between, passing through the threshold that is the Dipylon Gate and penetrating into the city of Athens, suddenly exposed to the life within that was previously invisible. The gates open up to the Panathenaic Way, upon which the Panathenaic procession, an annual ritual in honor of the goddess Athena, made its way to the Parthenon via the Agora. It is between the Dipylon and Sacred gates, at the Pompeion, a rectangular building with an interior peristyle courtyard, that the Procession gathered at dawn and later also ate the sacrificial meat.

Sacred sites such as the Acropolis and numerous other sanctuaries within the city walls allowed the political constitution of the city to uphold itself, as religion and politics were tightly bound together. It was in the repetition of civic and religious rituals that social cohesion was upheld. The Panatheniac Way, passing through many sites of social gathering, the Agora and ending at the Acropolis, demonstrates how the Greeks organized space as means to bring citizens together, to affirm and practice their democratic political constitution.

Athens - Territory

Gates of Dipylon 1: 1000

The Walls of the Sanctuary A Temenos is a sacred enclosure, one which separates the profane from the sacred; it is a sanctuary. The enclosure is marked by walls or stones and it is entered through the propylon, the gates. Within this space very specific modes of behaviour must be followed. You can only enter the sanctuary in a state of purity. All pollutants must be left behind, this being enforced with prohibitions in anything relating the sexual intercourse, birth, death and murder. Once you enter you are in the dominion of the Gods. (Tzonis; Giannisi, 2004) Within the city of Athens there are multiple sanctuaries, each one standing independently and autonomously from the others. Already inside the enclosure of the city walls, entering any one of the sanctuaries requires the passage into an enclosure of a smaller scale, yet of no smaller significance. Of course, the importance of different sanctuaries varied, and this was clearly visible in the monumentality of their entrance gates. The Acropolis of Athens was the city’s religious centre, its gates, the Propylaea, clearly expressing this. Standing at west side of the hill, it is only through the Propylaea that one can enter the Acropolis.

Walking upon the Panathenaic Way from the Dipylon gates, the Acropolis is constantly within sight. At the foot of the hill, as you start the ascent, you are already leaving the city behind you, yet it is only from the top of the hill, in front of the Propylaea, that the full breadth of the city below opens up to you. From this position, Giedion writes, the eyes can fall upon all the most important centres of the city’s community life. The Pnyx, where the Athenian assembly met, the Agora, the city’s civic centre, and the Gates, the proud entrance, all fall within one field of vision (Giedion 1971). It is at this point, in front of the Propylaea, that the passage into the temenos begins.

Ascending further up the windy path, leaving the city behind and looking upon the monumental structure in front, faced with six magnificent Doric columns prostyle. In plan we can see how, at the point right before the passage into the colonnade, there stand columns to front, of the main structure, and to both sides, of the two side-wings. Isolating us from the city behind and drawing us in to the passage in front. Entering the colonnade of Ionic columns, we are in a state of transition between the two worlds, the profane and the sacred. Passing through further, the statue of Athena and different buildings of the Acropolis all come into view at once, and gradually we are incorporated into spatial realm of the sanctuary.Towards the end of the passage, after penetrating the largest of five doorways made up of six Doric columns, we enter.

Athens - City Walls

Propylaea 1:500

The Walls of the Temple The Parthenon, the most magnificent temple of the Acropolis, is building one does not enter.

Entrance was limited only to priests It is a temple, the house of the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens and beyond come to worship and give offerings. The building is, therefore, only experienced from without. It must be noted that the Parthenon represented more than a goddess. As Athens’ economic and political influence over mainland Greece grew, the temple was (re)built as a symbol of the glory of Athens the city, for its military, its artists, its wealth and political power. This accounts for the intricately embellished entablature, covered in sculpture like no other Greek temple had been before. The sculpture work, imbued with symbolism, narrative and reference to battles, contributed to the external experience of the building itself. Within the central enclosure of the structure, the cella, there stood a lavishly decorated statue of Athena, with offering to her sides Passing through the Propylaea, the Parthenon comes into the same field of vision as the statue of Athena and the Erechtheion. As the enclosure we now confronted with is one we can gain no entrance to, the nature of the threshold changed. It is no longer about the passage through, from one space to another with an intermediate space in between. It is about the approach, the direct confrontation and the unattainable potential for entrance. Approached from the Propylaea, the Parthenon is viewed from its corner. The building can thus be seen and experienced in its full proportion, its peristyle Doric colonnade winding around its sides. The cella is visible to us, but its contents are not, concealed by walls of stone and, furthermore, keeping us to a distance, the colonnade of eight by seventeen Doric columns. Between the cella door and the front seven columns there stand six more columns prostyle on a porch. Finally, the building is on a raised platform, separating us from its platform by a series of steps. The people of Athens could only stand in reverence in front of the temple, never able to fully pass through the threshold in front.

The passage from the external to the internal could, in this case, only be a mental endeavor. When standing in front of the Parthenon, one is given plenty of material to feed upon to construct this experience. Today, however, we are able to walk in between the walls of the cella and colonnade.

Entering the central space, the threshold is a passage from one layer to the next, a centripetal movement, passing one row of columns, then the next and finally through the main doorway.

Athens - Acropolis

Parthenon 1:200

Bibliography: A. W. Lawrence. Greek Architecture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996.

Giedion, S. Architecture and the Phenomena of Transition. Cambridge and Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Oles, Thomas. Walls: Enclosures & Ethics in the Modern Landscape. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Tzonis, Alexander, Giannisi Pheobe. Classical Greek Architecture:The Construction of the Modern.

Paris: Flammarion, 2004.