Archi-pelago: the territory of exceptions : Eleni Tzavellou

Archi-Pelago: the territory of exceptions

HTS Commanding Architecture: Between Life and Government Tutor: Thanos Zartaloudis Academic Year: 2014-2015 Eleni Tzavellou Gavala Diploma 4 1

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Contents

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Introduction

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Part 1: State of exception Chora: the space beyond The Archipelago

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Part 2: Carving the conditions Composing a landscape with exceptions Case A: The Hellinikon Case B: The un-built laws & how much does the coastline cost?

A territory in transformation: forming a new Archipelago

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Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Introduction

Inspired by the theory of the state of exception, this essay is examining the making of a new space, the landscape of exception in a country, where during the last years exceptions have become rules.

It is that state of exception, that is topographically decoded and is read as architecture throughout the essay. This state of exception is, not itself a kind of space, but rather a technique of government, that produces a topographical juridical-territorial order by determining the inside and the outside of law.1 The state of exception produces material effects, even when it remains virtual.2 And the materiality of these effects is what, I am attempting to discuss.

Lost and found among theorists and architects, such as Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, Plato, Peter Eisenman, Jacques Derrida, Rem Koolhaas, Mathias Ungers, Pier Vitorio Aureli, Massimo Cacciari, GiIles Deluze, Slavoi Zizek, I will challenge the making of a new space.

I will try to connect discontinuities. Territorial fragments that result from the state of exception will preoccupy my thinking. Along with the methodical and territorial understanding and unification of these fragments, I am arguing, that can be driven from the notion of the archipelago. Where the archipelago is conceived as the space that brings together all the spaces of beyond. Connecting bits and pieces of life, the supreme of all goods, forms and conserves that archipelago.

Throughout the essay the moments that architecture will appear noiseless the argument will still be architectural, because I believe that Architecture is present in all aspects of our life. It is the way we activate or de-activate a territory. It is the way we choose to inhabit and to govern our Polis, our world.

An inhabitation and governance, that when in crises, spatial configurations are directly affected. Cases will be drawn, framed and discussed from what I believe is currently happening across the Greek landscape, at the edge of the European Peninsula.

1 Belcher, Oliver, Lauren Martin, Anna Secor, Stephanie Simon and Tommy Wilson, Everywhere and Nowhere: The Exception and the Topological Challenge to Geography, Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA, in Antipode Vol.40 No 4, p 501 2

Ibid, p. 500

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PART 1: State of exception

A “state of exception” is a complex and ambiguous condition, since it is located at the verge of law and politics. According to a widespread conception, the state of exception would be the process of suspension of the rule of law by governments in the name of a precise cause, issue or threat. It is the moment that the state grants to the executive authority more decisional power than the existing juridical order. It is when somebody decides to disrupt the laws, thus the existing order, intending to reach another form of order. Such periods are periods of crisis, where the terrain of politics enfolds the legal or constitutional topography. In the past, the advent of a war justified the state of exception or the martial law. In our days, the increasing penetration of the logic of exception into the international, as well as domestic politics of many western countries has been justified after the 9/11.1 In the context of Carl Schmitt’s writings “a state in exception includes any kind of severe economic or political disturbance that requires the application of extraordinary measures. Whereas an exception presupposes a constitutional order that provides guidelines on how to comfort crises in order to reestablish order and stability, a state of emergency need not have an existing order as a reference point.”

2 What is an exception? For Schmitt, exception “can be characterized as a case of extreme peril, a danger to the existence of the state, or the like.”3 But, as exception is not and cannot be codified in the existing juridical order, it demands a decision.

The question now is who is authorized for such decision-making? “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”4 Schmitt’s concept implies that the government can decide to declare a state of exception, and suspend the existing juridical order.

Thus, any action is justified and there is no limit to what the sovereign can do.

Based on Agamben’s diagnosis that the “state in which we live” is characterized, legally and politically, by an extensive state of exception,5 the essay will examine this state of exception under a political prism that affects a spatial condition.

1 Minca, Claudio, The return of the Camp, Progress in Human Geography 29, 4 (2005), p.406 2 Schwab, Georges, The challenge of the exception, Berlin, 1970, p.7, 42 3 Schmitt, Carl. 1922 (2005). Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. George Schwab (translation). Chicago: University of Chicago, p.6 4 Ibid, p.5.

5 Zartaloudis, Thanos, Giorgio Agamben: Power, Law and the Uses of Criticism (Nomikoi Critical Legal Thinkers), Routledge, 2010, p. preface xi

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Chora: the space beyond

The term derives from the ancient Greek “χώρα” (chora) and means a place or a receptacle, or an interval. In antiquity it was often use to describe the land outside the Polis (city’s-state) wall. The manifested form of the Polis was ending along the city’s wall, but diverse activities of citizens would also take place beyond the strict borders of the wall, giving area at “chora” to occur and to exist. Plato describes it, as neither being nor nonbeing, but a pause. A receptacle, were occurrences take place.

He positions it as “formless”.1 For Gilles Derrida although it has no fixed meaning, he attempts to describe it within a spatial context along with Peter Eisenman in “Chora L Works”.

He portrays it as something between the sensible and the insensible, “spacing, which is the condition for everything to take place, for everything to be inscribed”2 and among others he states that: “The chora, which is neither “sensible” nor “intelligible,” belongs to a “third genus” (triton genos). “One cannot even say of it that it is neither this nor that or that it is both this and that.”3 Gilles Derrida is not claiming to attain a definition, on the contrary: “We will never claim to propose the mot juste (correct word) for chora, nor to name it, itself, over and above all the turns and detours of rhetoric, nor finally to approach it, itself, for what it will have been, outside of any point of view, outside of any anachronistic/anachronous perspective.”4 So, their work lacks a precise demarcation, exactly because of the particularity of the term. One could argue that the point here is simply not to avoid discussing the non-demarcated, the vast, the exception, since underneath this immeasurable more of the truths are buried.

The reason why, I chose “chora” to follow the unfolding of the state of exception is because I see it as a mediator to pass from a ‘state’ to a space. If “chora” is space, it is the space of beyond, thus it becomes a literal exception on its own. Being the space of beyond, it has no stable borders apart from tangible boundary of the city’s wall. A wall placed to separate the inside or else the sovereign to the outside. This outside in “chora’s” case is not the unknown. On the contrary, the sovereign decision-makers of the inside leave it deliberately outside. It still remains part of the territory, but the walls are there to remind us that it is simultaneously being governed as an exception.

Formless “chora” has a transformative identity and its existence is a product of continuous fluidity that suits as a prerequisite to the notion of any exception.

1 Plato, “Dialogues of Plato” p.50, 51 2 Derrida, Jacques and Peter, Eisenman, “Chora LWorks”, New York, The Monacelli Press, 1997, p. 17/18 3 Ibid p.15 4 Ibid p.16-17

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The Archipelago

Lets start with the word “Pelagos” (πέλαγοs) used by the ancient Greeks to describe the open sea. Defined as “open, flat, salted, water surface”1 it is usually part of a broader sea. According to mythology Pelagos, son of Gea, was one of the sea gods. Then, “archi” is a starting point, the principal. The verb archo (άρχω) is to lead, to initiate, to govern or to rule.2 Those words, when adjacent, craft the Latin term Archipelago. It derives from the Greek ‘αρχιπελαγος’ that could be translated as the ‘principal sea’ and is nowadays used to describe a chain, cluster or network of islands.3 In the past the word was used as the proper name of the Aegean Sea. This network of islands has created in antiquity a commonwealth of free states-islands connected by navigation.

I perceive “archipelago,” as the word to describe the multiple ‘kosmoi’ (worlds) that infinitely find their way, to coexist, to cohabitate, to interact. Simple matter composes these worlds: land and water. One surrounds the other; they compliment each other to a level that they become one. This Archipelago is a group of islands set in a sea that simultaneously unites and divides them.

For Massimo Cacciari, in “L’ Archipel”, each island has an equal voice with the rest materializing polyphony. Alongside each keeps its own identity, its own individuality. “The logos of the Archipelago is developed as a dia-logos”4 (dialogue) among these various individualities that inhabit space. This inner search of each island to shape and maintain its own identity is of great importance for the being of each unit, ‘know thyself’ comes first. But at the height of these distinctions, relationships arise.5 Additionally, Pier Vittorio Aureli, in his book “The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture” notes that: “The more different the values celebrated by each island, the more united and total the grid or the sea that surrounds them.”6 Forming after all, an equality of differences and shaping the unity of the multiple.

“In the Archipelago, truly individual cities, truly autonomous, truly free, sail forever toward each other – to explore, to combat, but always and in all cases within a distinction that goes along with their inseparability.” 7 1 Babiniotis, The Sea in our language 2 http://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/ancient_greek/tools/ lexicon/lemma.html? id=43 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archipelago 4 Cacciari, Massimo, “L’Archipel”, Revue Etudes, tome 384,no 3, mars 1996, p. 360 5 Ibid, p. 362 6 Aureli, Pier Vitorio, “The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture”, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011,p. 24 7 Cacciari, Massimo, “L’Archipel, Revue Etudes, tome 384,no 3, mars 1996, p.360

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Image: Das Aegaeische Meer Heute der Archipelagus oder das InselMeer. Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly (*1766 - †1820), Vienna, 1789.

Hand coloured copper engraved map of the Aegean Sea, showing the Sea between Athens and Izmir. © http://www.vintage-maps.com/en/Antique-Maps/Europe/Greece/ReillyGreece-Aegean-Sea-Aigaio-Pelagos-1789::356.html

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These distinctions together with their inseparability is what for me makes a set of exceptions bound to coexist and to navigate within the same territory, within that same ‘pelagos’. So, if an exception can be ‘spattialized’, as attempted earlier borrowing the shapeless form of the “chora”, it can also create a network and structure a territory. Evidently the territory that acquires the most unstructured form is no other than an archipelago.

Interdisciplinary theorists several times trying to examine an existing phenomenon of scarcity and exceptions and attempting to connect discontinuities have borrowed the notion of the archipelago. An example in the field of architecture is the endeavor of Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas to grasp the reality and the spatial conditions of one of the most traumatized cities in the previous century: not other than Berlin.

“The City in the City – Berlin: A Green Archipelago,”1 (1977) authored by Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas, was a proposal to revitalize a city which was split by a wall and was facing serious social conflicts, Berlin. The project introduced the concept of the shrinking city, the notion of an archipelago in the urban design sphere, and the contemporary phenomenon of urban de-growth.

Ungers developed the concept of the city made by islands that are held together by a green field condition. The project proposed a polycentric urban landscape, a selection of a series of city islands with strong and distinct characteristics that had to be self-organized. The city was imagined as isolated pieces floating within a green archipelago and as independent parts networking in a dialectical relationship among them. Each part of the city is meant to act as an urban composition in a microscale, but encompass the complexity of the city as a whole. “It is the infinite green forest between the city islands, which – by separating them from each otherdefines the structure of the city within the city and explains the metaphor of the green Archipelago.”2

Even though the theories of what is an ‘exception’ and who decides upon it, that preoccupies Schmitt and Agamben, the ungraspable ‘chora’ embodying the spatial formlessness that has managed to be slipping away from Plato’s hands to Derrida and Eisenman along with the spatial configuration of the archipelago used from Antiquity to today and from Cacciari to Koolhaas and Ungers seems discontinues. I am arguing that within their discontinuity, relationships and connections are found.

Following my intuition to jump from theory to space: Chora, as a shapeless beyond, but also a teritorializable entity is an application of the conscious decision making of what to include and what to exclude. It is the space governed, as an exception by the sovereign. But, from a notion of space to reach a structured territory I need the glue that brings distinctions together, and I am using the sea. My way of establishing multiple exceptions is to shape an Archipelago that instantaneously joins and separates them.

The archipelago, this whole created by exceptions is configured in the exact same way that life is structuring itself. Since, life is nothing more than distinctions and discontinuities networking in the strangest ways to reach a point of unity. And within life it is natural that crises will arise that will require all sorts of decision making momentums.

The above associations will become my tool to decode and interpret from my spatial comprehension and my architectural point of view a contemporary, financial, political and social crisis. Where crises is directly interrelated with space in all its possible forms. My cases will be drawn and explored from within the territory of the original archipelago and it’s surrounding, Greece.

The City in the City – Berlin: A Green Archipelago © http://relationalthought.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/385/

1 Ungers, Mathias, “The City in the City – Berlin: A Green Archipelago”, A manifesto by Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas with Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Arthur Ovaska, Lars Muller Publishers, 1977 2 http://www.raumbureau.ch/de/projects/urbanism/Urbanism--8620.html

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PART 2: Carving the conditions

During the economic crisis of recent years, it can be argued that the regime imposed in Greece resembles to what Giorgio Agamben has described as the “state of exception,” where necessity, either needed or invented, has converted the exception into rule. The executive has to suspend ratified laws and implement new state rules, evoking a situation of emergency, which requires exceptional measures in order to save the country.

Greek government, being in a feeble economic position, became subordinate to international decisional centers and economic control. The political authority was perceived by international creditors, as a managerial tool, with no proper political role and has to delegate to external agents the governance.

This is what Slavoi Zizek defines, as “the ultimate sign of post-politics in all Western countries” and argues that this is apparent by “the growth of a managerial approach to government: government is reconceived as a managerial function, deprived of its proper political dimension.”1 Therefore, the role of the local government has been contracted in a simple administrative apparatus and the international scene is implementing the main policies. However, the constitutional legality base of such inflicted “recipes” rest on doubts, since they have not been subject to public contest and debate.

Three major agreements have been signed between Greece and its creditors, the Troika2 in the 2010–2012 period, that has become law of the state: Memorandum I3, the Mid Term Fiscal Strategy4, and Memorandum II5, accompanied by the debt restructuring agreement.

The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) was established and a committee, the Troika, would supervise the implementation of the measures and the agreed reforms.

Therefore, the government evoking a state of exception has to apply imposed rules and to operate through decrees, the so-called “acts of legislative content.” The acts of legislative content issued in 2012 were ratified by the parliament within few months, through fast track procedures and vital issues of the state have been arranged by these acts.

Massive sell-outs of public assets and enterprises, shrinking of the welfare and strict austerity measures were adopted under that state of exception.

However, a critical issue is emerging, the (dis) association of democracy and a state of exception.

Based on “ neccessitas legem non habet, “necessity has no law,”which is interpreted in two opposing ways: “necessity does not recognize any law” and “necessity creates its own law,”1 the government tried to establish a state of emergency by creating its own law, the acts of legislative content, and by overcoming the existing juridical order. But, when the state of exception tends to become the rule, the borderline between democracy and authoritarianism is imprecise and nebulous. “The transformation of a provisional and exceptional measure into a technique of government threatens radically to alter the structure and meaning of the traditional distinction between constitutional forms.”2 Agamben depicts the state of exception “as a threshold of indeterminacy between democracy and absolutism.”3

1 Zizek, Slavoj, “Revolution at the Gates: Zizek on Lenin: The 1917 Writings (Essential Zizek)” Verso, London, 2011, p.303 2 Troika: European Commission-International Monetary FundCentral Bank 3 “Memorandum of Fiscal and Economic Policies” and “Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality,” incorporated in Law 3845, 6 May 2010 4 “Mid-Term Fiscal Strategy,” incorporated in Law 4024, 27 October 2011 5 “Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality,” incorporated in Law 4046, 14 February 2012

1 Agamben, Giorgio, State of Exception, Homo Sacer, Attell Kevin (trans), The University of Chicago Press, 2005, p.24 2 Ibid, p.2 3 Ibid, p.3

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Composing a landscape with exceptions

National Airport © http://www.taiped.com

The scale of the Greek crisis has paved the way for the plans of international institutions, enforcing a highly controversial privatization program on the country.1 The government through privatizations anticipates to reach bailout targets that are key to the country’s debt sustainability and the basic pre-requisite for the country’s return to global capital markets. Thus, a privatization procedure, the Hellenic Republic’s Privatization Program was implemented, under the weight of necessity, aiming in attracting direct investments in infrastructure, energy, transportation, real estate and other fields.

Here, I am quoting the Governing Law and Jurisdiction, article 14, paragraph 5 of the Memorandum of Understanding2 mentioned above: “….the borrowers here by irrevocably and unconditionally waives all immunity to which it is or may become entitled, in respect of itself or it assets”

Poros Marina © http://www.taiped.com

But, what does the word “assets” mean here? Assets are public properties including land, corporate and infrastructure projects3 that have been transferred to the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) in order to be sold. It is the collection of public plots governed through private law. The HRADF has a “sole mission to maximize the proceeds of the Hellenic Republic from the development and/or sale of assets.”4 Up to today, I estimate that the collection of these plots cover 3% of the country’s area.

These assets are what I perceive, as the composition of exceptions. Many of the transferred assets have been for many years inactive and abandoned by the Greek state, which was failing to develop or even to manage them. In 2009 out of the 80.000 public properties only 630 properties were under lease.5 The rest were stagnant. A flagrant example is no other, than the Hellinikon case.

Olympia Motorway © http://www.taiped.com

1 Minton Anna, Agora Phobia: Athen’s privatization of Hellinikon, The Architectural Review, 8 November 2014 http://www.architecturalreview.com/comment-and-opinion/overview/agora-phobia-athens-privatisation-of-hellinikon/8671653.article?contentID=10998 2 Memorandum of Understanding, article 14, para 5 http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2010/en/act/pub/0007/sched2.html 3 http://www.hradf.com/en/portfolio 4 http://www.hradf.com/en/the-fund/mission 5 Interview with a former CEO of KED, Public Properties Company

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Nea Irakleitsa, Kavala © http://www.taiped.com

© http://www.hradf.com

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From Public Properies Co. to the Fund Transfer: Completed Transfer: Rolling ahead

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Case A: Hellinikon

Here, the enfeebled Greek state is forced not only to sell, but has to pay in a long term to accomplish this sale. This is a case where the decision-making on a state of exception does not end at the borderline of the territory of that exception. On the contrary, it intervenes and relates to the non-exception on a direct base rising doubts on the achieving of the intended general stability. I argue, that whatever happened to the Hellinikon sale, bringing in as much income as expected or not, it will help determining whether Greece’s long term privatization strategy is on track, or if the country is selling the “family jewels” for less than their true worth are justified.

What, if Hellinikon privatization was only a beginning for the waterfronts in Attica?

The site of Hellinikon, the old airport of Athens, is a waterfront property, 8 km southwest of the center of Athens. Hellinikon was one of the last available, publicly owned, large-scale and prime urban coastal sites of Europe. It has been presented as “the largest planned real estate development project in Greece” and it was promoted for privatization as the “largest urban development project of Europe.”1 Following a prolonged trajectory with submissions of interests and withdrawals, only one company submitted a final proposal. HRADF announced in 31 March 2014 that the only bidder acquiring the 100% of the share capital of “HELLINIKO S.A.” was the Greek company, Lamda Development. “… after the technical councilors recommendation, the Lamda Development bid for the Hellenikon project is in accordance with the prerequisites of the contest and the relevant legal development framework and as such, it is accepted”.2 I find necessary to comment that a space of ambiguity and discontinuity exists between the announced international competition to the actual direct appointment without any second competitor.

Was it a good deal? Could the state earn more? The first offer, which was not publicized, was proposing 69 euros/m2; the second and final one established the offer at a price of 146 euros/m2, proving the large gain margin that the bidder had. Moreover, when comparing the bidder’s last offer with the prices of the adjacent properties that are ranging between 1700 euros/m2 to 2700 euros/m2 the final price can be considered as relatively low. Also, the fact that the agreement stipulates that only the 30% of the total amount will be deposit immediately to the state and the rest in ten years, proves that the final real amount received is evidently reduced.

Taking into consideration that any payment to the HRADF goes directly for the repayment of the debt, thus to the international creditors and not the country’s public sector, together with all the promises that the state had to give to the investor to complete the deal, I see no much space for profit. The relocation of all the current facilities within the site3 as well as the procurement of water, sewage system and electricity will derive from the normal state’s budget.

Furthermore, new infrastructure projects, new roads and underground passages must be undertaken once again from the state’s budget to meet the investor’s requirements.

1 http://www.hradf.com/en/portfolio/hellinikon 2 http://www.hradf.com/en/news/20140331-press-releasehellinikon 3 The Hellenic National Meteorological Service, the Civil Aviation Authority, the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, the Athens Urban Transport Organization depot, cultural, social welfare institutions.

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The aim of the company Attic Coastal Front1 is to regenerate the coastal front of a length of 45 km and is already disposed for drafting the decrees for the transfer to the company of several coastal estates.

When clarified, Greek and foreign stakeholders will be invited to invest in that coastal front, known also as the “Athenian Riviera”.

These plots could have in the future the same handling as the Hellinikon property, as they were transferred to HRADF2 in 2014. However, “coalition government’s controversial development plans for the Attic coastline are seemingly being abandoned as a number of real estate assets are to be taken back from the asset development fund TAIPED.”3 The transfer of these assets has been attributed to an “error” and actually the whole project seems to be placed aside.

The transferring and re-transferring of those plots, no matter the reasons, proves how rashly the entire system, described, operates. And what makes the situation relevant to architecture and need’s to be stated and emphasized from an architectural point of view is that those numbers-assets that go so easily back and forth are actual spaces with all the complexity that they possess. I am arguing, that anything that relates to a place, to the city, to the way we inhabit and live should be dealt with every other manner, apart from rush.

I read the collection of such plots as a process of forced transformation under the state of exception.

It is the making of a new landscape that emerges, which is located on the same lands, but is governed by new rules. Such landscape is formed through brutal and clumsy moves. It is a procedure directly related and affecting spatial conditions. Connecting and opening up spaces allows a new reading of the once forgotten spaces. These thinned out territories are now recruited to mobilize their stableness and are sacrificed for the country’s dept. These new spaces, that are formed, are crucial and become the new locus of the geopolitical, become the new locus of necessity, the landscapes of exception.

A locus prepared to be conquered and controlled by those who have the actual power to act. As Smith states, the power to act under circumstances of exception is attributed to the sovereign,4 in our case the international creditors of the Greek government.

1 The structure of the public limited company “Attic Coastal Front”, set up in 2012 was created under the supervision of the Minister of Finance, Development, Infrastructure, Transport and Networks with a lifetime of 99 years for the purpose of management, administration and use of public and private coastal facilities.

2 http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=602500 3 http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=602877 4 Schmitt, Carl. 1922 (2005). Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. George Schwab (translation). Chicago: University of Chicago, p.5.

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HRADF Assets: Last update - 30 May 2014 Progress status: In progress Progress status: Completed

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Case B: The un-built laws & how much does the coastline cost?

The policies affecting the privatization sector exemplify the broader approach of rule that has been practiced under the Memorandums and can be considered enacting under a typical state of exception. Greece has been obliged to pass new laws and regulations regarding spatial and urban planning, in order to attract investments, at any cost, and thus to shrink its external debt.

The Law 3986/11 The Law 3986/11 transfers private state property to the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund stating that their development and or sale is “exclusively for the payment of the public debt of the country” (n.3986/11, Article1, Paragraph 2) and has been ratified by the Parliament. The plots after being transferred to the fund are not any more under the general Rules and Regulations of the rest of the country, but form an exception that follows this new law of building regulation. This develops a new legal status of land use. The aim is to ensure the maximum flexibility to accommodate the largest possible variety of business plans.

The increased building factor combined with practically unlimited coverage (50% of the total area - Ν.3986/11, Αrt.11Γ, Para. 2) and the possibility of exceeding the highest possible amount set by building regulations, if the ‘architecture or other technical study documented the derogation” “(N.3986/11, Art.11Γ, Para.3), is leaving considerable autonomy in the design of new developments. An autonomy that does not seem to take into consideration any environmental issues, spatial configurations and the distinct characteristics of each region. Shaping a direct contrast with the previous law. This law, although being very beneficial to the investor has not been applied to any project, since privatization process is going rather slowly.

What makes these new regulations extremely interesting from an architectural point of view is exactly the reason that at present we have no projects that have been designed under this new system of planning. What we only have is imposed rules and regulations dealing directly with land, space and architecture. Being un-build, we don’t know how it will look like, when implemented. We don’t know how the surrounding will affect and will be affected.

We don’t know how our lives will be changed. We can only envision. This is what, I perceive, as laws of exception. Here, the exception is framed in the exact

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vague and formless way that the term chora has been demarcated. Currently, these new spaces that require new architectures are positioned as something beyond, materializing a tangible chora. And the law is formed to make sure that the exceptions will always be treated as exceptions and is not giving space to the possibility of a reunification with the surrounding territory.

The Law 2971/2001 The Law 2971/2001 for the “The delimitation, management and protection of the Greek shoreline” is valid today, which was from the beginning very bureaucratic and inefficient and has already undergone several amendments (mainly with the laws 3057 / 02, 3105 / 03, 3153 / 03, 3207 / 03, 3270 / 04, 3468 / 06, 3851/10, 3978/11 and 3986/11).

The Ministry of Finance proposed in 2014 a new draft law on coasts to be voted by the parliament changing the protected and open access coastline status to an investment friendlier model. This draft law was included in the economic program, as a commitment by Greece towards its creditors. The aim of the proposed law was to further simplify the management and utilization of coastal, littoral and riverine communal land for implementing projects necessary for the national economy recovery.

Regarding the coastlines, large-scale investments were permitted, altering the proper characteristics of the country. Most importantly the privatization and the economic exploitation of the coastline could interrupt the free access to the seashore. This brings the law in contradiction with the Constitution itself that clearly indicates the free access and use of the coastlines.1 The announcement by the Ministry of Finance of a draft law regarding building regulations and environmental issues is the least we could say, odd.

Proving once again that governance is taking place within a state of exception, as under normal conditions, such a decision would be outside the jurisdiction of a Ministry of Finance.

The unspoiled environment of Greece is unique and invaluable. Greece’s target should be a development in the long run, not only a short-term collection of money for the creditors, as mentioned in the Memorandum ‘at any cost’. As expected, it has fueled strong reactions of anger and disagreement, that the draft of law was withdrawn.

These examples indicate how new laws occur, forming an archipelago of un-built laws. These laws create inaccuracies; ambiguities, contrasts and many uncertainties are hidden behind their legal status. Some are contrasting with the previous ones, others are in conflict with the Constitution itself, some are ratified and some other rapidly withdrawn, but all of them compose a new reality. A reality that makes the landscape of exception confusing, lost within bureaucracy and legitimacy. “The concept of politics under a persistent regime of crisis proves to be an a-political and anti-social management of exceptions, rather than a valued, political and constitutional governance.”2 1 Greek Constitution, Protection of the Environment, article 24, para. 4.

2 Zartaloudis, Thanos, Draft of Article on the Privatisation of Coasts in Greece (with Papanagiotou) in http://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Privatisation_Of_Public_Space

High land fragmentation and (arbitrary) residential development

Urbanisation of the area with the law: 2508/1997 Within town planning zone: buildings and blocks Outside town planning zone: a new generation arbitrary buildings.

Seeks to protect certain areas (hills, coastline, etc.) from urban expansion.

Urbanisation of the area with the law: 3986/2011 First phase of development, urbanizing the most privileged areas in terms of land

Urbanisation of the area with the law: 3986/2011 Second phase of development 21

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A territory in transformation: Forming a new Archipelago

All these fragmented laws, governed as exceptions along with the direct intervention of the international actors to the internal governance of Greece are currently transforming the territory itself. This territory of transformation results to the making of a new space, the landscape of exception. The process is complex, ambiguous and is being implemented in a fierce way resulting in fragments.

All these fragmented territories, undependably how they are formed, coexist in the same geopolitical area; the same ‘pelagos’, but always remain islands.

In Deleuze’s words, “continental islands”1, shaped by processes of erosion and fragmentation. Gilles Deleuze in his text “Desert Islands” divides them into two main categories, the “continental” and the “oceanic”. “Oceanic islands are originary, essential islands.”2 They are the islands that occur by a creative emergence from underwater eruptions. Continental are the islands that happen through processes of separation, detachment and fragmentation from the main land, the continent. “Continental islands are accidental, derived islands.”3 Stepping on the “accidental”, the “derived,” I am observing that this is the result of the current processes in Greece that have been exploring. And, if we assume that the privatizations will produce accidental spaces, Architecture is who should have a say. I find essential to visualize and discuss that all the distinct islands, being a result of an accidentof an exception will always be part of something bigger. In Deleuze’s words: “The island is what the sea surrounds and what we travel around”4 Derived to surround the initial Greek archipelago that is nothing more than multiple layers and trajectories of clusters of fragments. Intersection of geology, intersection of history, intersection of the geopolitical, intersection of trade roads, intersections of cultures and civilizations, intersections of continents, intersection of seas forms a whole space that is nowadays called Greece. Scanning from beneath the small tectonic plate, located in between two huge ones, the Eurasian and the African is the sole evidence that this territory is one. But, it is also what causes the seismic and volcanic activity, what causes the spatial fragmentation. Through centuries, it has been a place of geopolitical cross roads and a territory of desire. Being the passage that unites and divides three continents and two seas, various cultures and civilizations have passed and left theirs traces.

So, if Greece is entirely made from fragments, we are in that moment, that one more detachment is taking place. One more intersection is in the process of making within the archipelago. The argument here seen from my eyes is that in today’s Greece, besides numbers and politics predominantly discussed, on the shadows space is crafted. An archipelago within an archipelago.

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1 Deleuze, Gillles, “Desert Islands: and Other Texts, 1953-1974”, Semiotext(e), The MIT Press, 2004, p.9 2 Ibid, p.9 3 Ibid, p.9 4 Ibid, p.11

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Conclusion

In a post-political configuration, where the political has failed, space is recruited to pay a debt. Spaces baptized with the word ‘assets’. But, the exact moment the territory is pushed to solve a crises, spatial understanding and therefore planning has been marginalized from all acting forces. The state of exception does not take in consideration architecture on the same way that Architecture fails to grasp the particularities of the crises and to propose solutions through space. However, a political, economical and social recovery is closely connected to space in my opinion.

A territory in transformation is being de-composed, composed and re-composed. This territory is the translation of the state of exception into a space of exception.1 A space defined by the suspension of the existing norms and the application of new norms that might be in contradiction, even with the constitutional law. It is a space between order and disorder,2 a space in an ambiguous situation. We could perceive this territory of transformation, as a new fragmented space, which, I delimit as an archipelago under formation.

They are fragmented plots in a sea of exceptions.

They do not become a continent, a solution. In contrary, these islands intensify the fragmentation of the already suffering political and spatial scene.

The post–political absence of the state, as described above, becomes an attack to space itself. A country that is facing such fragmentations, a country that is literally and metaphorically a fragmented archipelago needs solutions, not only economic recipes or implemented legislation, that have been failing the past five years, but also spatial approaches.

The task is to rebuild and to rejoin that ‘chora’. Within this framework, Architecture is required to overcome its inactivation, to drastically revise the conditions of its production and to contribute in developing new ways of management of the newly created landscape, the landscapes of exception. Principally, Architecture is required to recover its reflective vigilance and to confront critically, with its spatial voice, the evolving transformations. Different trajectories need to find their way to coexist and to co-navigate in the same sea, which forms and preserves the archipelago, because above all the transformations are territorial and the archipelago is space. It is the duty of Architecture to combat for its salvation.

1 Minca, Claudio, The return of the Camp, Progress in Human Geography 29, 4 (2005), p.406 2 Ibid, p.406

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Internet sources

http://www.asprilexi.com/? cid=133 http://www.greeklanguage.gr/greekLang/ancient_ greek/tools/lexicon/lemma.html? id=43 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archipelago http://www.raumbureau.ch/de/projects/urbanism/ Urbanism--8620.html http://www.architectural-review.com/commentand-opinion/overview/agora-phobia-athensprivatisation-of-hellinikon/8671653.article? contentID=10998 http://www.hradf.com/en/the-fund/mission http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2010/en/act/ pub/0007/sched2.html http://www.hradf.com/en/portfolio http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=602877 http://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/ Privatisation_Of_Public_Space http://www.hradf.com/en/the-fund/mission http://www.hradf.com/en/portfolio/hellinikon http://www.hradf.com/en/news/20140331-pressrelease-hellinikon http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=602500

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