encounters of care making kin in arcadian mountain forests
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zoë papadopoulos master in architecture amsterdam academy of architecture
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graduation project developed under the supervision of Benjamin Groothuijse (mentor) Berte Daan Laura van Santen 2024-2026 5
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“Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.” Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
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over the last forty years, the villages around mount mainalo in arcadia have lost more than half of their population. when a mountain loses its people, it also loses the hands that maintain it: forests go uncleared and become vulnerable to fire, while timber and milk leave the mountain to be processed elsewhere. at the same time, these landscapes are increasingly treated as empty peripheries, available for large-scale energy infrastructure.
from these existing conditions, a speculative scenario is constructed: a fictional programme through which people of greek descent return to mainalo to work in its forests. the scenario is not a proposal for policy but a way of thinking. it gives rise to three architectural instances, each following a different rhythm of time: a communal house in vytina, shaped by departure and return; a sawmill in chrysovitsi, shaped by the long time of the forest; and a cheese vault near libovisi, shaped by the seasons of pastoralism.
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abstract
this project argues for maintenance rather than preservation. instead of introducing a new economy, it looks at what is already there: forests, shepherds, villages, local knowledge, and a diaspora that keeps returning, and asks how architecture might reconnect relationships that have weakened.
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prologue 15
context 19-49
productive landscape 53-83
forest 85-97
departure and return 99-107
built heritage 109-125
tectonics of deep time 127-131
forest maintenance as a collective ritual 135-151
instances 155-223
afterword 227-231
selected bibliography 233
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this book takes you to the mountains of arcadia. wood grows over decades. milk becomes cheese over weeks. work on the mountain changes with the seasons. the project began by asking what it means to design for these different rhythms at the same time.
over the last forty years, the villages around mount mainalo have lost more than half of their population. when the mountain loses its people, it also loses the hands that used to maintain it. the answer, then, is not to preserve this landscape as something static or untouched. but neither is this a story in which architecture arrives to save the mountain. the mountain does not need a hero. it already holds forests, shepherds, villages, knowledge,
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how can a network of small-scale productive infrastructures help sustain a commons-based mountain economy in mainalo, reconnecting depopulated communities, forest resources and pastoral production? the book moves between research and speculation. the first chapters describe existing conditions: depopulation, forestry, pastoralism, migration and the changing governance of the mountain. from these, a speculative scenario is constructed, not as a future that should happen, but as a way of thinking through how people, resources, buildings and territory might relate differently. the scenario leads to three architectural instances: a communal house, a sawmill and a cheese vault. each responds to an activity already present on the mountain, and each follows its own rhythm of time.
prologue
it is about a return to a productive mountain landscape. it is about maintenance rather than preservation. it is about strengthening the relationships between people, resources and land, rather than introducing another economy disconnected from them. and above all, it asks how architecture can take part in these relationships.
migration, seasonal movement and forms of collective life. what interested me was how some of these relationships have weakened, disappeared or lost touch with one another.
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context
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project location
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in the mountainous heart of greece, in the peloponnese, the project finds its home in arcadia, high on the slopes of the mainalo mountain.
the project focuses on the part of the range where these settlements and fir forests meet and where that relationship is most legible.
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context
the mainalo range covers roughly 80,000 hectares of extensive forest, varied ecosystems and a rich diversity of flora and fauna. its character is defined by dense fir forests, the densest and most extensive in the peloponnese, along with traditional mountain settlements and open pastures: a landscape shaped over centuries by forestry, herding, craft and movement.
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arcadia
Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State, ca. 1834. New-York Historical Society. Image: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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pausanias, the 2nd-century greek traveller whose ‘description of greece’ recorded the sanctuaries, monuments and local traditions he encountered across the country, wrote that those living around the mountain claimed to hear pan playing his pipes. it is still said that if you walk mainalo and listen closely enough, you can hear him somewhere among the trees.
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context
arcadia occupies a distinctive place in greek mythology and roman cultural memory, symbolizing pastoral purity and unspoiled natural world. in the roman imagination especially, it became a land of simplicity and untouched beauty: a mountain refuge of shepherds and nymphs, and the home of pan, god of flocks, forests and rustic music. mainalo was held to be especially sacred to him.
merchants and craftsmen
but the landscape was never truly untouched. Its forests were cut and maintained, its pastures grazed, its streams harnessed to drive mills and workshops. people moved constantly between villages, mountains and towns. arcadia matters here not as a landscape outside production, but precisely because of its long relationship with it. under ottoman rule, many mountain communities thrived because of their access to the variety of resources such as forests, streams, gorges, pastures, and water-powered energy. they developed mixed economies that combined farming and herding with small-scale industry, trade and an almost urban commercial life. unlike the plains, which were held under tighter control, these mountain areas enjoyed considerable selfgovernance, so long as their taxes were paid.
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context
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merchants and craftsmen
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context
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merchants and craftsmen
craft villages
forestry villages
husbandry/agriculture/tree crops villages
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context
over time, those small scatered settlements in arcadia grew into busy craft villages, each known for its own trade. stemnitsa became renowned for its metalworkers and silversmiths, dimitsana for its gunpowder mills and tanneries, langadia for the stonemasons who travelled far beyond the region to build and vytina for its timber and woodwork. some of these villages developed into commercial hubs, and through trade networks reaching across the peloponnese, the aegean and constantinople and in northern greece as far as vienna and leipzig, they gave rise to a prosperous and educated greek bourgeoisie.
greek revolution 1821-1832
exposure to western european ideas of liberalism and nationalism fuelled growing aspirations for autonomy and, eventually, independence. these same communities played a key role in the greek war of independence, lending both their social and economic capital to the cause. arcadia stood at the centre of the early struggle: dimitsana’s waterpowered mills supplied gunpowder to the revolutionary forces and the fall of nearby tripolitsa in 1821 marked one of the war’s first major victories. in the decades that followed, many people left the mountains for cities such as athens, helping to drive urban growth and industrial development, while large waves of emigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries carried arcadians as far as the united states.
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context
Panagiotis Zografos and sons, under the direction of General Makriyannis, The Battle of Tripolitsa and the Surrounding Villages, c. 1836–39. Colour lithograph after the original painting (plate 8). Private collection / Bridgeman Images.
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emergence tourism
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tourism began to emerge in the 1920s as a new opportunity for the mountain regions. by the 1950s, as their traditional social and economic structures were fading, these areas were being reimagined as peaceful retreats for city dwellers in search of nature, folklore and religious heritage.
yet greece’s deeper integration into global markets, and above all the financial crisis of 2008 and the debt crisis that followed, hit these regions hard. austerity and recession brought poverty, political instability and a new wave of emigration, deepening the marginalisation of the mountain areas.
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context
by the 1990s, arcadia, and villages such as dimitsana, stemnitsa, langadia and vytina in particular, had become popular winter and alternative destinations, promoted as easy escapes from athens.
peripheralisation and flattening
in 2010, at the height of the greek debt crisis and alongside the first bailout agreement with the imf and european partners, the pasok government under prime minister george papandreou introduced the kallikratis plan, one of the most far-reaching administrative reforms in modern greece. passed that year and in force from january 2011, it redrew the country’s local government almost entirely. presented as a remedy for an overcentralised and costly state, the reform merged municipalities, reorganised local government and scaled back public services, particularly in peripheral areas. over 1,000 municipalities and communities were consolidated into 325, and the old prefectures gave way to 13 regions. vytina, once a municipality in its own right, was absorbed into the municipality of tripoli, its administration now based in the city below the mountain. in the years that followed, ‘kallikratis’ became shorthand for large-scale restructuring and the marginalisation of rural greece. by simplifying and consolidating complex territorial units, the reform also treated vast mountain and island areas as administratively “flat”, erasing the topographic and regional diversity that had long shaped how these places were governed.
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kallikratis plan 201139
context
kapodistrias plan 1997-2011
peripheralisation and flattening
kapodistrias plan 1997-2011
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context
kallikratis plan 2011-
mountain municipalities
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flat municipalities
peripheralisation and flattening
until 2019, most land in mainalo had never been formally mapped or registered. it remained divided into small plots that reflect family histories, inheritance across generations and a pattern of smallholding inherited from the ottoman period. ownership is often difficult to prove, resting on wills, old contracts and local memory.
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context
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peripheralisation and flattening
under evalutation
production license
operational license
rejected license 44
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context
as the national cadastre reached these areas, plots that families could not prove were theirs, along with much of the forest and mountain land, often passed to the state by default. today, these state-managed peripheral lands are being claimed for “green” energy projects and handed to private developers in the name of climate action. vast landscapes once open to local communities are being reshaped as sites for energy infrastructure, while the households around them face rising electricity costs. the region’s long history of fragmented, informally held land thus leads directly into today’s debates over energy, development and access.
peripheralisation and flattening
forest fires 1
forest neglect
continuation of neglect
transformation of landscape
alienation 3
wind park 2
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lack of funding: no maintenance deregulated forests no/poor value
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cheap and cleared land no environmental studies international skateholders: highest energy bill in greece no benefits for local population local population has no rights of vote
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rural depopulation / population displacement loss of livelihood invisibilisation of the social character of the forest privatisation and rising prices of forest, agricultural, beekeeping and livestock land economic disparities between local communities and energy investors land and habitat fragmentation biodiversity loss: bird and bee fatalities noise and visual pollution
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context
protest against wind turbine development on mainalo. local communities contest the use of mountain land for energy infrastructure. mainalo mountain refuge, 2024.
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1453-1821: ottoman rule recognition of prevailing land-owning models (byzantine empire) communal and monastic forests
1821-1832: greek revolution / formation of greek nation-state indepedence recognised in 1830; kingdom in 1832 unification of territory erasing traces of orientalism in mountainous regions 1836: forest law and service regulated access and use ≠ traditional practices establishment of scientific forestry management industrialisation goals
1929: forest code codifies forest administration state sawmills 1935: forestry service revival centralisation and optimisation of forest exploitation reforestation and protection efforts (war on goats) 1940-1949: wwii and civil war burned villages and forests, displacements 1950-70: mass rural exodus to cities and abroad 1969-1975: forest code, art. 24 constitutional forest protection 1980: greece joins the eec economical development and stewardship ambitions cap subsidies, eu forest funds 1995-1998: kapodistrias plan firefighting moves to fire service
2007: peloponnese fires major loss of life and forest 2010-2011: kallikratis plan debt crisis, austerity, brain drain state streamlining forest maps law
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context
land loss
forest fires
us
rural exod
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productive landscape
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forestry
view on the former sawmill, today disused forestry museum chrysovitsi, august 2024
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naoussa skoteina morna skoteina kalabaka pertouli fourna
chrysovitsi artemisia
productive landscape
forestry in mainalo began in 1836, when the newly founded greek state established a forest service. the gortynia forest district unit, based in dimitsana, was one of the 32 forest district units that began operating in the liberated part of the country, as much of present-day greece was still part of the ottoman empire at the time. in 1896, the school of forestry and agriculture was founded in vytina, funded by panagiotis triantafyllidis. it was the country’s first training centre for forestry technicians. 55
over four decades later, in 1939, the first state-owned wood processing plant was established in chrysovitsi, arcadia. it was part of a nationwide network of sawmills designed to protect and develop the country’s public forest resources, and it operated until 1974. today, it is a disused forestry museum.
forestry
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productive landscape
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forestry
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an extensive network of forest roads was built, and the forest was divided into 159 compartments to organise its harvesting.
productive landscape
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forest map of the peloponnese
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forestry
the sawmill complex covered around 3,000 square meters. at its centre stood a stone building housing the milling machinery, a saw-filing room and offices. around it were timber sheds for drying, a forge, workers’ lodgings, a water tank and timber stores.
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productive landscape
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forestry
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productive landscape
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forestry
beams 35x55mm / 45x65mm / 45x95mm / 65x65mm / 75x75mm / 100x2000mm boards 12-18x80-200mm / 1800x4000mm planks 38-48-58-68x100mm / 300x1800-4000mm
the sawmill processed 20–25 m³ of timber a day, roughly 150 logs 3–5 metres long with diameters of 30–55 cm, producing beams, boards and planks in a range of sizes.
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productive landscape
inside the former sawmil chrysovitsi, august 2024
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forestry
cleaning works near vytina, february 2026
cleaning works near vytina, august 2024
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the fir forests of the mountain can produce 25,000 m³ of timber a year, yet only 5,000 m³ is currently harvested. this under-harvesting allows biomass to build up, making the forest more vulnerable to wildfire. once harvested, the timber is transported to sawmills in and around athens for processing.
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productive landscape
today, the forest is still actively managed through selective cutting for timber production, but the capacity to maintain it has shrunk considerably. just 34 forestry employees oversee the roughly 800,000 stremmata (80,000 hectares) of mainalo, and only 2 sections are cleaned each year, compared with 30 in the past.
forestry
forest sections years
30 sections managed per year
forest sections
years
2 sections managed per year
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low biomass
productive landscape
moderate biomass
high biomass accumulation
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pastoralism
mainalo also has a long tradition of pastoralism, shaped by its terrain, its climate and the local economy. steep slopes, thin soils and long winters left little room for large-scale farming but the high meadows, forest clearings and abundant springs offered rich grazing for sheep and goats, animals well suited to rough mountain ground. herding has been part of life here since antiquity: it is no coincidence that arcadia was the home of pan, god of shepherds and flocks. for centuries it formed one strand of the mixed mountain economy, alongside small-scale farming, forestry and craft, providing milk, cheese, meat, wool and hides for the household and for trade with the towns below.
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productive landscape
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pastoralism
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productive landscape
herding here followed the pattern of transhumance: the seasonal movement of flocks between winter pastures in the lowlands and summer pastures in the mountains. the practice shaped rural life for centuries, so much so that villages in the valleys were often named after the mountain villages the herders had come from.
pastoralism
in spring and summer, the flocks move up to higher ground, where cooler temperatures and rich mountain pastures improve the quality of their milk. in autumn, they descend to the lower valleys, where forage is more plentiful through the winter. during the summer months, shepherds lived on the mountain in temporary stone shelters and huts, often built with dry-stone walls and roofed with timber, branches or thatch. around them stood stone folds for penning the flocks at night and milking pens, where the animals were milked each morning and evening. much of the cheese-making also took place here: milk was curdled and pressed on site and the cheeses were salted and left to mature in cool, shaded stores before being carried down to the villages at the end of the season.
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productive landscape
dry-stone wall, in ruins near libovisi, august 2024
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pastoralism
shepherd camp near stemnitsa, august 2024
shepherd camp near the mountain refuge, august 2024
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productive landscape
today, livestock herding continues on mainalo, though the long seasonal journeys of transhumance have largely disappeared. shepherds still set up simple shelters on the mountain in summer and tend their flocks daily, guiding them from pasture to pasture. their work goes beyond feeding and protecting the animals: they maintain paths and produce cheese, yoghurt and other dairy products, sustaining a culture that has endured for generations despite rural depopulation and an ageing shepherding community.
pastoralism
1. morning milking: 6:00am – 7:00 am. the day begins before dawn. the goats and sheep are gathered into a wooden enclosure called a mandra (μάντρα μάντρα)). milking is traditionally done by hand requiring speed and endurance. 2. daily grazing: 6:00 am – 4:00 pm. the shepherd leads the animals into the mountains to graze on wild herbs like thyme, oregano, and mountain tea. this specific diet gives greek goat and sheep milk its distinct aromatic flavor profile. 3. evening milking: 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm. the herd returns to the enclosure for the second milking session of the day before being corralled safely for the night. a flock of 100-200 animals can take 1 to 3 hours to milk. 4. roadside drop-off: immediate postmilking. fresh from the morning/evening milking, the milk is poured into heavy aluminum cans. sometimes, high-altitude camps are inaccessible to heavy vehicles, the shepherds transport these cans down rugged dirt tracks with 4x4 trucks to designated platforms on the main road. there, refrigerated dairy trucks weave through the winding mountain routes twice a day, swiftly collecting the cans.
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+1,614m
productive landscape the routine: life at the stani (στάνη) is completely off-grid and isolated. the shepherds rely heavily on their greek shepherd dogs essential for protecting the flock from wolves.
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pastoralism
dairy factory near levidi, august 2024
shepherd at work near rados, may 2025
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a goat gives one to three litres of milk a day at its peak, over a lactation of 150 to 250 days, adding up to roughly 100 to 400 litres a year. a ewe gives less, around half a litre to a litre and a half a day over 150 to 200 days, but her richer milk yields more cheese per litre. most of the milk comes in spring and early summer, when the mountain pastures are at their best.
graviera is aged for at least three months, often much longer, at cool, steady temperatures of around 12 to 18°C and high humidity, while the wheels are regularly turned, brushed and salted. s full season’s production therefore depends on a space that can hold these conditions for months: a cool, stable and humid store set into the mountain.
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productive landscape
a shepherd collecting around 100 litres a day is milking somewhere between 80 and 150 animals. with eight to ten litres needed for a kilo of graviera, the hard, nutty cheese traditionally made from sheep’s milk, that day’s milk becomes about 11 kilos of cheese, or roughly a tonne and a half over a season. even the leftover whey is used, reheated to make myzithra, a soft whey cheese.
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forest
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land use
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coniferous forest broad-leaved forest mixed forest transitional woodland-shrub
forest
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vegetation
a descent in vegetation between dimitsana and stemnitsa, august 2024
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forest
inside the forest near libovisi, august 2024
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cephalonian fir
greek fir / cephalonian fir abies cephalonica native range: mountainous regions of greece and kefalonia altitude range: 400-1800m height: 25-40m tall diameter: 800 - 1200mm age: 150-250 years needles: dark green, stiff and sharp-pointed shape: dense, symmetrical, conical crown cones: cylindrical, 10-20cm long, disintegrate when mature to release seeds soil: well-drained, adapted to dry, rocky mountain conditions heat: drought-tolerant understory: abies cephalonica seedlings, prickly juniper (juniperus oxycedrus), holly (ilex aquifolium), hawthorn (crataegus monogyna), barberry (berberis cretica), cyclamen hederifolium, wood sorrel (oxalis acetosella), common elderberry (sambucus nigra) 90
forest
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black pine
black pine / european black pine pinus nigra native range: southern/central europe, balkans altitude range: 300-1800m height: 20-40m tall diameter: 800 - 1200mm age: 150-500 years needles: long dark deep green, arranged in pairs, sharp-pointed shape: conical crown, dense branching, deeply fissured bark cones: ovoid to cylindrical, 5-10cm long, open to release winged seeds after ripening soil: well-drained, limestone and sandy soils, rocky slopes heat: drought-tolerant understory: pinus nigra seedlings, prickly juniper (juniperus oxycedrus), mdeiterranean oak (quercus pubescens), maples (acer tataricum), bracken fern (pteridium aquilinum) 92
forest
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tonewood
on the lower slopes of mainalo, near the villages, some trees grow slowly enough to keep their sound. they aren’t trees of the high fir forest. they grow at the edges of fields and gardens, along terraces and in ravines, close to the people who planted and tended them. their wood is dense and even, with fine, regular rings formed over decades of cold winters and dry summers and it carries a vibration cleanly from one end to the other. this is tonewood: the material of lutes, lyras, violins and guitars. each species has its own time: cypress is ready between 40 and 80
years. it is light and resinous, and its bright, quick voice has long made it the wood of the flamenco guitar. wild cherry, ready between 30 and 80 years, is warm-toned and easy to work, and it suits backs, sides and necks. black mulberry, ready between 30 and 60 years, is the traditional wood of the cretan lyra and of the bouzouki’s ribbed bowl, a wood instrument makers have played for generations. walnut (60–100 years) is darker and heavier, and it gives depth to the backs of instruments. sycamore maple (60–100 years) has a pale, flamed grain and is the classic back of the violin family. 94
forest
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hiking trails
following the trail between dimitsana and stemnitsa, august 2024
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mainalo is crossed by a dense network of footpaths, many of them old mule tracks and shepherds’ routes that once linked villages, pastures, mills and monasteries. the best known is the menalon trail, a long mountain route that runs through the lousios river gorge, the western slopes of mainalo, the valley of the mylaon river and the northeastern gortynian mountains.
along the way, walkers pass stone bridges, springs, watermills and monasteries, tracing the same paths that once carried people, flocks and goods across the mountain.
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forest
covering 75 km, it passes through the traditional villages of stemnitsa, dimitsana, zygovitsi, elati, vytina, nymfasia, magouliana, valtesiniko and lagkadia. it was created by volunteers from eastern gortynia, with the club of arcadian mountaineers and ecologists and the support of the municipality of gortynia, and was the first trail in greece to be certified as a “leading quality trail – best of europe”.
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departure and return
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migrations
following the war of independence, the creation of the greek nation-state triggered the first wave of migration from the mountains to the fertile plains. state-controlled “national lands”, formerly ottoman agricultural estates, and the rise of olive and currant monocultures on the plains transformed agriculture and drew seasonal labour down from the highlands. when the currant market collapsed in the 1890s, however, it set off mass emigration to the united states, with hundreds of thousands of greeks leaving in the decades that followed. 100
departure and return
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greek diaspora
in the century that followed, greeks kept leaving, not for lack of attachment to their homeland but because economic hardship, upheaval and opportunities elsewhere repeatedly pushed them outward. land fragmentation and rural poverty, two world wars, the asia minor catastrophe, the civil war, the post-war demand for labour in western europe and australia, and most recently the debt crisis each set off new departures. today, the oldest and largest greek communities abroad are in the united states, canada and australia, with historic communities in the middle east and a more recent diaspora across europe. among arcadians, the largest community abroad remains in the united states. 102
departure and return
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greek diaspora
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departure and return
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movements
movement has always been part of life in arcadia and around mainalo. shepherds came and went with the seasons; craftsmen and merchants left their villages to work in other regions and returned for the winter; much later, seasonal workers arrived to help in the fields around the mountain. above all, members of the diaspora still return, especially in summer, to reconnect with family homes, local culture and memory. mainalo was never truly isolated: it has always been connected through a quiet but constant rhythm of departures and returns. 106
departure and return
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built heritage
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chrysovitsi sawmill
+1,067m
chrysovitsi
1:2000
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built heritage
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school of forestry and agriculture
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built heritage
+1,011m
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vytina
1:2000
woodworking workshop
+1,152m
elati
1:2000
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built heritage
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mountain refuge
+1,570m
levidi
1:2000
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built heritage
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traditional vernacular architecture
arcadia's vernacular architecture grew directly out of the mountain and its materials. houses were built of local stone, with thick load-bearing walls, small openings to keep out the winter cold, and floors and roofs framed in fir and other local timber. timber beams were often laid into the masonry to tie the walls together and help them withstand earthquakes. roofs were covered in clay tiles or, in higher villages, heavy stone slabs. in villages such as dimitsana and stemnitsa, tall, compact houses climb the steep slopes, often with a ground floor for storage, animals or workshops and living quarters above, opening onto wooden balconies. this was the craft of the region's own builders, above all the travelling stonemasons of lagkadia, whose skills carried arcadian building traditions across greece. alongside the houses stood a wider landscape of working structures: watermills, bridges, dry-stone walls, sheepfolds and shepherds' shelters, all built from the same stone and timber, and all part of the same economy.
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built heritage
church entrance valtesiniko, august 2024
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traditional vernacular architecture
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built heritage
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traditional vernacular architecture
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built heritage
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traditional vernacular architecture
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built heritage
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tectonics of deep time
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geotectonic zones of greece
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reddish limestone soil/terra rossa – cephalonian fir grey flysch and schist soil – black pine tectonics of deep time
limestone and flysch
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schematic section
1500 - 1980m zone 4 subalpine grasslands
limestone
800 - 1700m zone 3 coniferous forest
800 - 1000m zone 2 deciduous broadleaf forest
lime
sparse fir trees forest / grassland transition zone
800m zone 1 evergreen shrublands
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limestone and chasmophytic vegetation
tectonics of deep time
estone, flysch
limestone, flysch
limestone
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forest maintenance as a collective ritual
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making kin
today, the greek diaspora is estimated to number between 5 and 10 million people worldwide. yet in the most recent elections, fewer than 20,000 greeks living abroad cast a vote, suggesting that many no longer keep active civic ties with greece. at the same time, a growing number of people of greek descent are looking to reconnect with the country their families came from. this is driven partly by political instability and a declining quality of life where they live, and partly by a wish to reconnect with their family history and culture. eurostat data from 2023 showed that, for the first time since the economic crisis, more greeks returned to greece than left it, a notable shift in migration patterns. some are choosing to live in greece while working remotely for employers abroad, combining foreign salaries with a lower cost of living and
closer ties to family and community. this has led to calls for more active engagement programs from the greek government, and for greater involvement from well-established diaspora communities abroad. with the right support, investment, and institutional openness, the diaspora could make a contribution to greece’s economic, social, and cultural life. this potential is especially relevant at the local level. given the declining care of the mountain and its forest, an ageing local population, and the threat the planned wind park poses to a distinctive and historic landscape, the question arises: can the diaspora participate in protecting and revitalizing this heritage?
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Metaxia Markaki, Expropriation and Extended Citizenship. The Peripheralisation of Arcadia
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forest maintenance as a collective ritual
‘‘How does peripheralisation open new alternative possibilities for processes of appropriation, interaction, and networking-can it become a socioecological project in itself? Exploring peripheralisation as a process of extended urbanisation allows the investigation of multiple scales and dimensions through a consistent relational lens. [...] lastly, and most importantly, it opens new imaginaries and a new sensorium for seeing and including the full potential and socioecological role of long-marginalised places while seeking subversive modalities and emancipatory potential.’’
making kin
up to this point, everything described is an existing condition. from here, the book begins to speculate. the hellenic forest guardian citizenship programme does not exist. it is not a government initiative, and it is not proposed as a policy. it is a narrative device, a fiction that creates a situation in which architectural questions can be asked. the programme imagines that people of greek descent could return to mainalo for several years to take part in the maintenance of its forests, opening a path towards a renewed relationship with greece. descent is only the way in. what the scenario is interested in is what comes after: how people who arrive through a family history become kin to the mountain, and to those already living on it, through shared work, a shared house and time spent alongside foresters and shepherds. here kinship is not inherited. it is made.
if people return to work in the forest, where do they live? if forest maintenance produces more timber, where is it processed? if shepherds already produce resources on the mountain, how could more of that production stay connected to the territory? which spaces could be shared? and what relationships might form between those who live on the mountain and those who return to it? the scenario becomes a framework through which these relationships can become architectural. it leads to three instances. the communal house explores return, labour and dwelling. the sawmill explores forest, material production, time and culture. the cheese vault explores pastoralism, climate, seasonality and exchange. the three buildings do not form a masterplan for saving mainalo. they are three ways of testing how architecture can take part in a larger territorial relationship.
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Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
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forest maintenance as a collective ritual
“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”
civic service
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forest maintenance as a collective ritual
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how can a netwo productive infrastru a commons-based m in mainalo, reconne communities, fore pastoral pr
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ork of small-scale uctures reconstruct mountain economy ecting depopulated est resources, and roduction?
reconnecting built heritage, territory and local resources
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forest work peloponnese, circa 1950
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archive picture vytina, 1959
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living, eating and gathering happen collectively
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ordinary day in vytina may 2025
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stone houses and a winding street in vytina february 2026
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forest road near valtesiniko, august 2024
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timber wait, slowly becoming sound
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Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State, ca. 1834. New-York Historical Society. Image: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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where the mountain keeps the cold, time makes the cheese
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hikers setting up their tents near the mountain refuge, may 2025
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former pastures on mainalo near libovisi, august 2024
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afterword
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these three buildings are not a solution for mainalo. they are a way of thinking through relationships that already exist on the mountain: between forest and labour, migration and return, shepherding and seasonality, production and culture, buildings and territory. the speculative story allows these relationships to become architectural, and treats the mountain not as a relic of the past but as a living site of return and collective production. the communal house asks what return might require, and how living might once again be tied to the cycles of work. the sawmill asks how maintaining a forest could also produce material, knowledge, collective space and culture. the cheese vault asks how production could remain connected to the climate and territory that make it possible. each building follows its own rhythm. the house follows departure and return. the sawmill follows the long time of the forest, from the growth of the tree to timber, to the slow ageing of tonewood, and eventually to music. the vault follows pastoralism, maturation and the seasons. together they form a set of shared systems in which architecture and governance meet.
by tracing the parallel flows of wood, milk, labour and people, architecture becomes both container and cadence: it holds these processes and gives them their rhythm. the project is not about recreating an idealised image of the traditional mountain village, nor about proposing one complete future for arcadia. rather than imitating history, it asks how vernacular economies might continue under contemporary conditions. those who return may bring knowledge from elsewhere. forestry may use contemporary machines. a sawmill may become a concert hall when its saws fall silent. timber may spend years ageing before it becomes an instrument. a shepherds’ building may become a hikers’ refuge once the flocks descend. what matters is not whether these exact events happen, but what they allow us to think about. how can living and working become connected again? how can production generate collective space rather than only commodities? how can a resource stay connected to the place it comes from? and how can architecture take part in caring for a territory without
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pretending to control or save it? wood grows over decades. tonewood ages over years. milk becomes cheese over weeks. labour follows the seasons. architecture cannot make these processes faster, and it should not try to. instead, it can give them space: a room where timber can wait, a vault where cheese can mature, a house where people can return, a log yard that can fall silent long enough to hear music again.
before asking how a landscape can be developed, preserved or saved, perhaps we should first ask how we want to relate to it.
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afterword
the legend of pan asks us to walk through the forest and listen carefully. this project asks for something similar: to look at the mountain carefully enough to recognise what is already there, its resources, its knowledge, its people, its stories and its rhythms.
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Paul Andersen, Jayne Kelley and Paul Preissner (eds.), American Framing. The Same Something for Everyone, Park Books, 2021. Niklas Fanelsa, Schémas de mises en commun dans les campagnes, Centre Canadien d’Architecture, 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2023, from https:// www.cca.qc.ca/fr/articles/issues/26/retour-sur-laprovince/74210/schemas-de-mises-en-commun-dansles-campagnes Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, 2016. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Ignota Books, 2019.
Milica Topalovic, Metaxia Markaki, Karoline Kostka, Fabian Kiepenheuer and Lukas Wolfensberger (eds.), Arcadia. Architecture of Territory: European Countryside, ETH Zurich D-ARCH Architecture of Territory, 2017. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton University Press, 2015. Πάνος Γρίσπος, Δασική ιστορία της νεωτέρας Ελλάδος από του ΙΕ΄ αιώνος μέχρι του 1971, Υπουργείο Γεωργίας, 1973. Πέτρος Η. Κοντός, Δάση και κτηνοτροφία εις την Ελλάδα. Από οικονομικής και πολιτικής απόψεως, 1932.
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selected bibliography
Metaxia Markaki, Expropriation and Extended Citizenship. The Peripheralisation of Arcadia, in Christian Schmid and Milica Topalovic (eds.), Extended Urbanisation. Tracing Planetary Struggles, Birkhäuser, 2023, pp. 197-234.
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this project owes a great deal to my committee, my external advisors, and my family and friends, who were essential at every stage of the process. thank you all for your curiosity, your support and the time and attention you so generously gave me. with deep gratitude. committee, for believing in this project from the very beginning, for your profound enthusiasm and for continuing to inspire me throughout the process: Benjamin Groothuijse, architect (mentor) Berte Daan, landscape architect Laura van Santen, architect external advisors, for generously sharing your knowledge of the mountain and its many secrets and for helping me understand it more deeply: Metaxia Markaki (researcher, ETH Zurich) Dimitris Lyras (forester, Arcadia) Ioannis Lagos (local expert) Grigoris Koutropoulos (Boulouki) Panagiotis Panagopoulos (Explore Mainalo) Aris Giannoukos (Mainalo mountain refuge) Vytina Forest Service Arcadia Forest Service SOS Mainalo Kizi Studio to my family, for their encouragement and constant support: my mother and my sister Delphine, for their company during the field trips, my father, for instilling in me a love of the outdoors. to my friends, who contributed to this project and have been such wonderful company through all these years at the academy, thank you for being part of it: Anna Zań Artem Belogurov Daria Agranovskaya David Vaca Cartagena Edoardo Seconi Jurgi Cinta Livia Portoveco Mindy Li Nancy Dantese Sander Gijsen Sarah van der Schildren Spiros Mastoras Stephane Ndoundo 237
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