The ddw2014 diary full edition

IORDANIS STYLIDIS

DDW2014 the Ser-re(s) modern UNIVERSITY of THESSALYHELLAS, FREDERICK UNIVERSITYCYPRUS MSA UNIVERSITYEGYPT, UACAGBULGARIA

26 06 2014 - 02 07 2014

6 days, 13 episodes, 7 projects

full edition + hypotheses (7 projects)

The diary of a meditative and communal initiative and the related educational discipline developed in a mountain camp up on the mountains of Northern Greece. Reading and designing possible and vital reformation propositions for the eastern limit of the city of Serres.

HABITATS • LANDSCAPE • CULTURE • POSSIBILITIES a multi - discipline workshop about life

eutopia

photography : Christos Paschoudis / Iordanis Stylidis

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

commons • diversity • ambient • proximity

DDW2014

eutopia

introducing concepts hypotheses • stochasmos • phenomena • as found

DDW2014 THE SERRES WORKSHOP

towards

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

intro

i

INTRODUCTION

The DDW2014 workshop took place at the mountain camp Chrysopigi situated at the Serres prefecture territory. It was the 12th initiative since 2005.

The workshop was activated and run under the auspice of the Municipality of Serres, the Serres association of architects and the University of Thessaly.

The DDW2014 (12) workshop invite departments of architecture from the universities of Sofia (U.A.G.A.C)–Bulgaria, Cairo (M.S.A.)-Egypt and Nicosia (FREDERICK)–Cyprus. The main educational purpose of the workshop was the overall experience of young participants/students to join and form a collective and multitask cluster of groups in order to survey, create an archive, analyze, administer, design and propose an answer or a set of answers for a site specific spatial-environmental questions. This time these questions were given by the municipality of Serres in accordance with the local association of architects. The content of this overall act include a set of natural and cultural properties (monuments, industrial leftovers, natural formations and plateaus) being still active or neutral, situated along the valley at the east front of the city.

The DDW2014 workshop provide and establish, through lectures given by the directors, the participate academic staff and the invited speakers, a conceptual and theoretical matrix, a faculty, in order to activate and develop an intensive and vigorous dialogue between and into the groups of the students and the academics. The terrain surveillance and the constant site-to-desk activity produce expert and brilliant studies, activate multiple opportunities to configure and defend the practice of mutuality, experiencing the communal life within an ideal natural environment.

The established set of ideas, theory and practices, configuring the identity of the workshop after almost 10 years of academic and stochastic exercise are the demanding and vital voyage to the surface of the planet, the devotion and enthusiasm to the academic disciplines, the creation of a time-space pocket of communal life, the exercise of self to the act of managing and constituting a systematically and thoroughly build creation of reason in the form of a text.

DDW2014 THE SERRES WORKSHOP

towards

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

concept

2

EXPLAINING the concept EUTOPIA

TheUTOPIAconcept Within the archives of narrated Utopias contained and criticaly examined in the books of Lewis Mumford ‘’The History of Utopias’’ and Maria Luisa Bernieri ‘’A Journey through Utopia’’ we can easily detect a variety of concept properties forming the field of acts and ideology where these time-space pockets are standing. Sustaining the written territory of these two and many more essays aiming to a precise description of such political phenomena of criticism.

The spatial relationship (somewhere, far away, hidden, mythical), the time relationship (within a time pocket into a present, a past or a future, eternal, short, repeated) and, especially, their established multitude* relationship, their social and anthropological positions and connections.

Additionally, Utopias, narrated as spatial and social phenomena are demanding a distand to be traveled (thus, the discipline of a journey), a cultural entity (a city, a town, a constellation of cities, an economy*), a bedrock of sustainable life (enough food, protection and sheltering against weather), a faculty of intellectual exercise and discipline (seeking, creating knowledge, exercising meditation and self-reconnaissance) and a robust core of knowledge uniformly upload and dispersed regarding the correlation of humans (a group of ‘’stochastes’’*) with nature (self-defined or hetero-defined*).

Each and every part of this sets of presuppositions were always verified and accurately described within and because of the risky educational venture of their creators and writters. Although Utopias are burst ideas filling the minds of their readers and followers they are also rapidly loose their power and disappear into the territory of their written narration.

TheEUTOPIAconcept Eutopia, to the contrary, become true and operational whenever a group of people (the ‘’stochastes’’) start seeking and creating a mental and physical field in order to constitute a temporal or long-term territory of existence and relations. The group and each individual respectively respond to a mutual working and behavior model, travel a distance, unite into a faculty of meditation and acts, and, thus, enter to a constantly changing communal territory of a unique civilization model, the Eutopia.

It is an exceptional and inspiring mental and physical gesture that we (every time a different number, constituting a flexible and liquid multitude of idiosynchratic* personalities) can and do define a pocket of

Multitude : Is a term used to describe the physical and the political/social existence and behavior, within a historical frame, of a large number of human beings gradually or radically transformed to a political body, the people, thus create, possess and exercise political power against an authority.

The term was and is under a scrutinized focus by political philosophers such as Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Antonio Negri, Sylvere Lotringer and Paolo Virno.

Economy : Is a term referring to a set of active laws being created and precisely followed for the well being of a community.

From the Greek ‘’oikonomia‘’ ‘the household management’, from oikos ‘’house’’ + nemein ‘’manage’’.

Stochastes : The people who exercise stochasmos, meaning to ‘’…randomly determined, having a random propability distribution or pattern that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely….’’ From the Greek ‘’stokhazasthai‘’ aim at, guess , from stohos ‘’aim’’ Hetero-defined : Being under the influence of a set of ideas and doctrines determining the perspective of living and thinking, created and proposed by others.

These sets of ideas are constantly used as a reference and orientation method. The opposite of self-defined. From the Greek ‘’heteros’’ ‘the other’ ,

Idiosynchratic : Is a term referring to a mode of behavior or peculiar thought to an individual. From the Greek ‘’idiosynkrasia ‘’, from idios ’own, private’ + syn ’with’ + krasis ’mixture’.

DDW2014 THE SERRES WORKSHOP

towards

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

concept

c

space and time, leave our ordinary living contition (become another self), create and accept a name for this pocket, approache it, arrive and live within. theWEconcept We have already travell the distance following our desire to meet. Rapidly approaching to this far away place, totally abstracted from all certainties. We are immediately organize our collective existence, prepare the way we are going to live together and meditate, orient ourselves to a constant and insisting detection using all our efforts. Aiming to reexamine, to comprehend, to manifest and reform the conditions of the civilized, the social, the technical and the natural within our growing pocket. We are already have compose a synthesis of units and classes folded tightly together.

Eutopia is emerging either because of the acts of mature exceptional personalities or the will of brave emerging trainees taking the risk and the burden of exploring their overall territory, the ‘’outside’’, including self, the ‘’inside’’, and its multiple connections with it. Collect, examine and operate on all facts and ideas detected or provided enforcing the possibility of creating the Eutopia phenomenon* . Examine all and every property ‘’as found’’* conveying or representing a critical sequence towards the verification or the failure, the diversion or the intrigue systemic peculiarity of its existence. Regulating its possible conceptual and actual collapse.

Phenomenon : the object of a person’s perception, what is been noticed with the mind through senses. From the Greek ‘’phainomenon‘’ ’appearing to view’’, from phainein ‘’to show’’.

As found : A phrase being the title of a book referring to a set of ideas and acts of great importance. ‘’…Works of art were created in the England of the 50s and 60s which are of extraordinary topicality today.

This applies particularly to the Independent Group which included artists, photographers as well as architects. Its members strove to achieve an authenticity close to the grass roots of life, to discover the essence of the everyday, to arouse a sensitivity to life in the raw as against a touchedup version of reality, to bring out both its hardships and its charm.

The book is about architecture and art and photography. It seeks rather to show the unmediated impact and direct appeal of a refractory aesthetics…’’

http://www.amazon.com/Found-Discovery-Architecture-Brutalism-Independent/dp/3907078438

DDW2014 THE SERRES WORKSHOP

the diary

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

d 2014

the diary+new entries το ημερολόγιο

+7 projects http://www.arch.uth.gr/DDW2014/journal.php at the MENIKION MOUNTAIN the STREAM RECONNAISSANCE Knowledge, the ‘‘WE’’ content Nature, the ‘‘IT’’ content Containers Near by Identities the HOW and the WHY Community Into and Beyond it Entering and Exit from cities Layer As Found, the Island and the Missing Bridge hypotheses

p. 09 - 10 p. 11 - 12 p. 13 - 14 p. 15 - 16 p. 17 - 18 p. 19 - 20 p. 21 - 22 p. 23 - 24 p. 25 - 26 p. 27 - 28 p. 29 - 30 p. 31 - 32 p. 33 -34 p. 37 - 50

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 .

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

12

at the MENIKION MOUNTAIN The morning came and already passed over the slopes of the Menikion Mountain, still covered by a thin layer of fog that will soon flow over the far away valleys. The sun is glaring while the falcons are writing their trails in the sky. I am standing under a huge tree looking at the horizon. Thinking of the incoming collective life period among visionary travelers coming to stay into this ideal environment. People who will instantly constitute a powerful team of habitants of eutopia. People who will instantly identify and call this place their long and desired home.

The area of Hrisopigi (‘’the Golden Spring’’) belongs to an ecosystem of communicating mountains at the already vanishing border line between two states standing against each other not long ago. But, now, we are only care to meet each other and work to fulfill a demand written into a given invitation. A request, coming by the people living at the city of Serres. For an ideal reform of their urban and natural space at the east front of their city. A vigorous and determined outcome that will be the result of multiple expressions derived by powerful multinational teams working to create their unique answer and, thus, produce a consecutive network of connected public spaces represented firmly, detailed and elaborately. Inviting the people of the city to comprehend and appropriate these ideas, stay for long into their virtual identity.

I am certain. I have seen it and experienced it again and again. People traveling and living under the discipline of self orientated tiny societies, somewhere at the planetary geography, for a short period of time –which is rapidly becoming a vast time length- and, thus, turn to furious active comrades. Achieving, once again, the same goal we are always seeking through all these years into multiple micro-environments. Bringing rapidly into existence multiple written and design proclamations of this common ability we all carrying.

The ability to unite, to create, to offer.

At the end, we are all expecting to take back with us this fortune of written and site-specific imagery of designs, describing and representing all ideas about the life of people living at the nearby area and far away too. Describing the common and the vital, the essential and the visionary, the local and the territorial. Tightly united to one and many final proposal(s) in order to prove that we are all search and create living conditions correlating to an always changing environment.

1

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

14

the STREAM The earth’s deep cut at the far east end of the city of Serres was once a limit of its territorial expansion. The stream has curved a deep natural track into the earth because of its power and the occasionally heavy floods. The water flow from the surrounding hills and mountains create this verdant narrow valley where leisure and recreation, the phenomena of a peaceful and nature oriented life, are constantly occur forming its identity. Up in the mountains a heavy storm is about to be burst transforming rapidly our tactics and behaviors of living in the open.

We will spent sometime looking in silence the heavy storm giving a name to these moments. We will stay under our heavy and shadowy shelter looking at the clusters of trees shaking violently and the water running to a nearby natural channel leading its flow to the valley far away. We do have a shelter.

We do have a community. We do create and are willing to sustain a network of collectively working visionaries aiming to create, to design, to illustrate one and many outcomes of our common ideas that will provoke people to rearrange their lives. To ask for more. To build new connections with the ongoing type of global civilization. A civilization standing firmly and respectfully to this new and well spread ideology of an equilibrium between the man made technical civilization and the overall environment.

We have already manage to write and design the first and the many words and sketches. Spread their meaning and their possibility to its other. We except. We unite.

2

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

16

RECONNAISSANCE reading the city and the environment The act of reconnaissance stands on, and demand a discipline of mature and bold discussions involving the profound phenomena and the everyday rituals constituting the urban life. A discussion about the equilibrium of that urban life with the surrounding natural environment. A discussion about the civilization layers found and scrutinized as to communicate all and each major and minor details. From these multiple tasks we are going to build a rigid common archive of information fully operational on demand. Including the slow walking under the shadows of the trees during an early morning stroll into the valley, the sound of the water and the running of children at the opposite side of the stream, the view of the remaining of a bridge after the last flood, the afternoon feasting into the coolness created by an air current coming down from the high mountains.

Our life in-between the powerful landscape we are living and working in, and the city we are looking at, is already transformed to a field of educational connections and interrelations. All common and collective cognitive tactics are mixed with the multiple varieties of conventional interpretations, thus, gradually producing and form a new and vivid map.

This mutual map of short time investigations, the temporary identity constructed of everything we have already acquire is the bedrock where we are going to build and defend our opinion and proposition. While being into this same time period, we are all detect and create a personal map of where and how we are standing and communicating with each other. A personal map of our relation with the close environment. The steep slopes and the hills of the mountain, the dense and thick vegetation of bushes and low trees.

The open areas of flowers and high grass. The far away peaks and the deep forest waiting our visit. We are constantly receive and offer details on how our lives change in order to follow this proposal and travel the distance. Create and sustain a network of personal and collective archive and thus transform our self to a mature and bold global citizen standing within the multiplicity of experience.

3

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

18

KNOWLEDGE the ‘‘WE’’ content We are already took the risk to search the properties of the city’s eastern front which is close enough and already familiar to refer to it as the area of investigation. In addition, we have already prepare ourselves to live into this mountainous environment at a high altitude, spent our days in conjunction with the temperature, the sounds, the wind, the fall of the night and the coming of a bright morning. We are going to upload and offer all information needed to our temporal but eventually close comrades.

We are and we will investigate this ‘’we’’ content. As soon as the first greetings will be given on our arrival. The first sentences containing the explanation of the origin of our names and surnames. The first walk under the powerful sun and the shadows welcoming our presence. Everything needed to seek our common goal is around us. The tables beside the heavy vegetation, the chairs and the benches to sustain our long working disciplines and the desired conversations. The vast hall to embrace our continuous exploration and the creation of pictures, notes, sentences designs and dialogues.

The extraordinary number of participants, these strangers who are already constitute the multitude of relations leading to the formation of our common identity. The morning came and lead our course into the valley. Noon came and the notebooks and cameras are full of possible and variable details of meaning. Along the rest of the day and the ongoing days of mutual collaboration a variety of answers and questions will be create, sustaining our presence.

The name of the young Egyptian woman became the name of that far away detail on the mountain peak. The name of the Cyprian man become the name of the path that lead us to the abandoned monastery near by. The name of the tree protecting our long afternoon discussions became the landmark of our proposal. The name of the valley became the word for our precious and priceless offer.

4

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

20

NATURE the ‘‘IT’’ content As we stand by the empty stream we can hear the sound of the birds and imagine of a design including their seasonal activity in the overall identity of the valley. As we strolling into the valley the wind become stronger and we are imaging of a design giving the opportunity to hear the variations of sounds produced by the trees and the bushes. As we stand by the old Ottoman monument we are imaging of a design that can eliminate all sounds and leave every visitor standing within the sound of History. The Silence.

As we detect the valley’s space and the in between variations of the soil, its close geo-morphological identity and the micro-environmental peculiarities, the clusters of rocks, the deposits of the last flood, the flowers and the grass covering the steep river banks, the variations of sun light beams penetrating the leafage and producing small and bigger bright traces we are imagine of a design that will not provoke this tranquility. Allowing us to create an archive of details, the vast catalogue of nature standing by and surrounding this small city. Comprehending this vast and growing collection of numerous details emerging and identifying the deep correlation between the viewer and visitor and the soft and mild demonstrations of nature we are thinking of standing back, not engage ourselves into the methodology and discipline of adding new forms, corrections and expansions, transforming the natural to cultural.

A set of old benches can be repaired and put to their last position. A fallen tree trunk can be transformed to a sitting place. The visitors may bring with them a chair and a table and take them back late nigh. A small electrical bus can carry people leaving some distance away. The public lighting network can be repaired and sustain overnight residency into the valley. Cars can be parked …somewhere else. We can also ask for the withdrawal of all the ‘’monuments’’ of heavy and hostile civilization, the coffee shops and restaurants, the kiosks and the cantinas, the ‘’sound of music’’. Nature have to upload its valuable properties into a tranquil and mild field of human dialogues and light stepping, water sound and twitting birds, the swish of the trees and the blow of the cool wind.

5

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

22

CONTAINERS As we gradually comprehend the variety of containers we found ourselves in, all familiar and distinctive features keeping us stable and secure to our personal reality blur and fade. We are already far away from our ordinary life.

Our urban and natural landscapes, the sound topographies, the early morning and the afternoon rituals.

The networks of friends and meetings, the ordinary and radical routes into our cities or, further more, to the nearby forests and seafronts. We have traveled a distance and met. Creating a unity, a collection, a meditative and active pocket of activists aiming to read this part of a far away city and create a set of thoroughly examined and designed ideas, the bedrock for a possible reformation of the city.

Our rooms, the prime containers we are now call homes are simple, minimal cases securing our demanding pass through this unique and extraordinary landscape. The working hall and the spacious terrace form another container, a stand were we all stare at that heavy storm over the mountain peaks in the first night. The surrounding mountain ridges and indentations constitute another container where the undisturbed natural identity is offered not just to our eyes but to our will to walk and identify its remarkable uniqueness. The multiple groups sustaining variations of expressions deployed and burst between and into their existence are containers too. Carrying all stochastic and meditative activity that will soon - and soon it was happened – transformed to accurate and powerful sets of ideas.

The brief discussions into the vast valley we’ve walk through, the feeling of being far away, the writing into the tranquility of the morning, the sheltering of the body into the shadow of a big tree, the staring of the birds while they are trying to build a nest ‌all recognizable patterns of behaviors and actions into this field of life.

6

Photography : Iordanis Stylidis

24

NEAR BY IDENTITIES Territories and habitation fields are not constituting accurate surface identity areas but, to the contrary, they are dynamic and open to interpretation mosaics of experience. Situated around that center of our meeting and exercise there are multiple examples of human and natural activity constituting an identity that varies depending on the path a visitor or an explorer can choose and follow. Thus, every adjacent meaning is a flexible and constantly shifting entity of values. The monastery of Timios Prodromos is an example of the human capability empowered by faith to a supernatural system of references. It stands on a steep slope of a mountain, rather difficult to be approached and, thus, it is a nucleus of an autonomous habitation. It is a sustainable unit of life preserving and irradiating the idea of will within and in correlation with nature. Being into and within nature.

Driving away after our visit to the monastery we have encountered with a flock of wild horses. This rare meeting orient our discussion and thoughts to a rather peculiar path as we were trying to verify, to redefine, the locality, the general and particular, the precious morphology of the place. Including a variety of elements such as the high tower for observation build and standing into the monastery which is not functional any more or the flock of horses. These horses that will soon cover the distance between this vast area of green hills and pastures lying between our residence and the monastery are carrying their naturalistic core of meaning although, it is possible, for a random visitor passing through this place to create and communicate a different and personal, flexible and powerful new meaning. A meaning that will soon be transformed to a digital archive transmittable to the web.

Containing the qualities and the properties of all we can understand and report as natural and naturalistic. Containing the equilibrium between the terms and the concepts carrying or shifting its core content to an every time new conceptual reference. Some time later we start walking into a vast and preserved dense forest of high trees creating a very dark surface bed. Because of that short walk into the forest we have create and sustain a new additional personal experience connecting tightly with the new properties exploding meaning all around us.

The tiny and bigger spots of bright sun light enabling colorful flowers to flourish, the dark spaces in between transmitting the values and the variety of dark green color, the high altitude cool breeze and the observation points we found to extend our view as far as our desire. The sounds of the tree trunks moving by the wind, the swish of the high grass and vegetation and the typology and morphology of the narrow or wide paths we were follow.

We found ourselves into tranquility, constantly collecting huge quantities of meaning. Abandoning the critical connections with the ordinary.

7

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

26

the HOW and the WHY From the multiplicity and the variety of scattered information we are going to set a pathway leading us to an accurate and functional chart of the How (the Technique) and the Why (the Thought) actions needed to achieve our common aim. In the field of certainties this chart is going to hold a layer of prime and secondary spatial and social current motivations will be add.

Another layer of cultural and natural inter-relations is going to indicate the processes and the morphology of structures need to be design and propose to upraise and accelerate the site specific and the overall entity of the valley.

The active and fundamental questions we are now have to confront with are the Why set of questions. Why are we proposing and following the design of a major and not a cluster of minor spatial gestures? Why are we investigating the valley as a unity and not as a set of minor and site relevant proclamations of the communal life?

It is certain that we are going to penetrate and examine the depth of meaning of these vital and important concept areas forming the identity of the place.

To create, to design and debate on both possibilities. Thus, it seems that the HOW and the WHY set of questions are not referring anymore to the spatial and the social bedrock of our area of interest but rather to the constant shifting of the variables producing new or reducing the viability of the already established questions.

Further more this HOW and WHY system of thinking can be applied and transform the equilibrium of references of the in between space of relations within each active group. This space, the comfortable hall we are all living in is the area of creation and criticism, of thinking and applying thoughts. The center of a possible and vital future reformation of the city of Serres.

8

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

28

COMMUNITY Through out history all transformations of common and plentiful urban and rural life were start and become operational and manageable because of an essential and accurate thought and the collective effort to demonstrate and verify the outcome of this though to society. The proposal and the construction of a bridge, the construction of a path network uniting a major and fortified city with all secondary habitations, the creation of clusters of microlandscapes within a city or a metropolitan urban morphology.

All these transformations were once expressed through sets of designs representing the content of long dialogues among people capable and able to handle and achieve the goal. The city of Serres stands on a powerful system of layers forming its historical identity. It is also situated within a thick natural ecosystem of cultures and plantations, of low hills and mountains. These carriers of meaning, the landscape, the urban grid and tissue, the history, the contemporary manifestations of life, become the field of a complete study, of a critical observation and long detailed dialogues among young students and their supervisors. The eastern front of the city was the area of our care and interest.

The multiple designs and the detailed notes, the photographs and the text descriptions, the projections and the rewriting of the territorial settings, the reformations, the reviews, the negotiations and the withdrawals of ideas were the stochastic elements and acts proving the importance and the significance of our community reading and writing the spatial possibilities of this far away and unknown city for many of us.

We are standing strong and powerful away of our ordinary academic and educational disciplines living into a well planed and desired field of meditation and action.

9

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

30

into it and beyond it There is always a moment when we have to pack our ideas, collect all experiences and leave. Prepare ourselves and follow a demanding possibility of exercising self expression or a new promising educational gain. That’s why we, everyone of us, are exchanging the final details of written and verbal outcomes and objects regarding the creation and the discipline of our common and flourished network of correlations.

Exchange photographs taken of a unique and handmade design conserving all properties of a proposal, return a book that was previously used as a guidance containing multiple information about the recent history of the place, ask for a piece of clothing that is now carrying a memory of a relationship that could carry on-although we are not sure about it-. We have a lot of pictures stored in our cameras. Withholding numerous details depicting this habitation pocket we’ve shared for this short but extended period. Evidences, facts and reports about the evenings and the mornings directing and fortifying our will to follow and clarify the content of a proposal, the cool and bright afternoons marking the written details and the gestures we have spent or give away with pleasure.

We are announcing in joy the next route planed to follow. The cities we are going to enter into again or recon for the first time. The roads, the new urban landscapes, the as-found details of landscapes, behaviors and expressions that will soon reform rapidly some stereotypes of our thinking.

This overall experience we are now leaving behind following new trajectories will, gradually, transform self to a kind of a global traveler, thinker and citizen.

The carrier of a radical and multi-oriented desire to follow and investigate the minor and the major aspects of all outcomes evolving and forming civilization, technique and expression within it. We are leaving this place amazed by the new perspectives forming the bedrock we will use to stand upon in order to evaluate all we are leaving behind.

10

Photography : Thess/Christos Paschoudis, Cairo/Iordanis Stylidis

32

ENTERING and EXIT CITIES Somehow, at any given time, we can create and follow a particular ritual in order to enter, to comprehend and then, some time after, express and spread on demand the variety of formal and peculiar experiences regarding our entrances and exits to cities. We are living in consecutive segments of cities because we are constantly moving for short or longer periods of time through multiple cities. We are citizens of this mentally constructed variety, this ‘’rhizomatic’’ adventitious memory link of multiple cities. Living into and understanding only fragments of their spatial and social existence, accumulating quantities of fragile and merged urban information which is usual erased shortly.

So, this idea of entering or leaving a city is actually a way to make coherent and compatible to our perspective the process of a new introduction of multi-sensitive information we are once more receiving, already living into the environment that produce it, and thus extending the overall dynamic and multi-layered personal map of our on going experience about being.

I do, as every one of us, remember many details that form the field of ideas containing elements from a common experience of living into the Cairo city some time ago. I do remember many vivid and powerful details of the city of Alexandria. I can recall and narrate some exact and enlighten spatial facts about my life in my hometown, Thessaloniki. I am keeping powerful memories from Istanbul, Zurich, Venice, Muscat, the landscape and the medieval cities in Tuscany, the primary and the secondary roadways of Berlin, the strip of Las Vegas, the Menikion mountain and the camp where we’ve had an extended and demanding communal life searching and investigating some vital possible connections addressing the correlations between the urban and the natural.

I can recall and narrate some scattered, randomly assembled and archived behavioral tactics and manifestations regarding the autonomous and important gathering containing and accelerating numerous short range attractions emerged within the life pocket I created, directed and follow a month ago.

I remember exactly a walk through a forest, a stroll by a water canal, a short time residency into a room, a long afternoon discussion around a table. In Kerala-India, into the cultivations forming the landscape at the Hellenic-Turkish borders, in Geneva, waiting to fly to the United states, in the spacious terrace and the overall complex at a mountainous summer campus called chrysopigi in the city of Serres-Northern Greece.

I remember faces and dialogues tightly connected with all these spatial references. I have already collect and possess designs and writings. The idea of the city and the place, every city and every place is gradually loosing power transforming to an abstractive plateau where these mixture of details are waiting to be connected as vital, essential segments of a glorious narration about life.

11

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

34

LAYER The white textile sheet was set to be a temporary screen for a short presentation. Then, some time later, starting probably from the next morning, it transformed to a signifier. Conveying or detaching information, transmitting or redirecting instructions. A barrier protecting the ritual and the outcome of a fruitful conversation. A blank front page preparing the reader to meet a new and demanding chapter to enter to. If seeing from the far end of that roofed terrace we use as our permanent working area it looks as if someone deliberately blocked the perspective towards the near landscape in order to concentrate self to a hard discipline followed from early morning to the fall of the day light.

There are already multiple educational and meditative incidents forming and declaring the properties of this tiny spatial entity composed of meetings, gestures, and dialogues. Appearing and disappearing body gestures. This screen of possibilities is rapidly becoming a vivid surface attracting life either close or to the far opposite side of its existence. While a long discussion or a solo network surveillance was coming to a result a glance towards that wavy screen generator of thoughts could simulate the action of writing a note in order to memorize or stabilize its content.

Some times, attending to an improvised or spontaneous discussion taking place in front of it, the idea that the words and ideas spoken will be instantly written on the white surface and, thus, the outcome will be preserved enough in order to be a reservoir of thoughts available to everyone, was charming to be though to.

During a long and demanding afternoon the wind repeatedly push the sheet upwards revealing a teacher and a student talking. Exercising, engaging their desire into a ritual of constant flow of questions. Creating and protecting a chart their systematic thought was formed to share and revise. The wind keep blowing and, thus, consequently, another partner was appeared and disappeared, a body gesture was thought to manifest a meaning and then lost its value, a book was opened and a piece of paper was put into its pages.

The white textile sheet was hanged from a wire with colorful clothespins for two days or more and then was taken away. The near landscape entity and forceful details conquer our thoughts again.

12

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

36

AS FOUND. The ISLAND and the MISSING BRIDGE It is the enthusiasm*1 and the uplifting properties of our common acts and agreements that evoke and stimulate all minor and major *2 we are constantly create, observe and debate for. Looking at a pile of stones gathered from the banks of the stream and put at the center of this artificial lake, already dry, expecting the coming fall, we can agree, make notes and indicate that such a gesture can create, erupt, a sequence of meditative dialogues about the correlations between nature’s mechanisms and the human will to give a birth to a meaning because of an as found peculiarity. The stones were moved by the power of the water flowing down from the nearby mountains.

The water flow that cause their move and their transformation, curved the surface of the stones while scattering them along the banks of the stream until they were gathered and situated together. This stone gathering and the formation of the pile triggered our will to investigate and produce a long and demanding paragraph declaring a possible short term translation of that enigma lying in front of us. Can this be a symbolic depiction of our own will to unite into this short time pocket and produce a unique and forceful meaning standing against a time flow? Can this be a possible ideological bedrock of the human effort to create and centralize a unique meaning in the center of a field of ‘’flat surface’’ neutrality?

Meanwhile, at a short distance, there are visual remains of a bridge destroyed some time before because of a heavy flood occurred by an enduring storm burst at the high altitude landscapes. This gap over the stream that was some time before a connection passage is also an indicator and a short term reference containing a meaning constantly bridging reality with symbolism, thus, a territory of investigation of a possible combination of concepts able to represent and navigate our common initiative. As we can observe, already active in constructing the primary field of a mutual meditation archive, the remaining structures standing on the two sides are already have the shape of a stare preparing and leading the observer to write or design the first notices about a coming restoration of a broken and collapsed meaning. To form a bridge made of heavy and powerful words narrating and fortifying an appropriate but circumstantial paragraph of meaning, thus, enable people pass safely over this stream being some time before the barrier of the city.

We are now traveling back to our familiar urban and physical landscapes, our powerful local fields of customs and rituals. Already being transformed entirely by this and many more exercises evoke and activate our mentality to this multiple advanced technique of building and collapsing meaning, creating, reforming or uniting a given field of concepts into a temporary autonomous and circumstantial context.

1. enthusiasm : intense and eager enjoyment, interest or approval.

From Greek enthousiasmos, from enthous ‘‘possessed by a god, inspired’’, based on theos ‘‘god’’ 2. enigma : puzzling and difficult to understand. From Greek ainigma, from ainissesthai ‘‘ speak allusively, from ainos ‘‘fable’’.

13

Photography : Christos Paschoudis

38

hypotheses*

*

a supposition or proposed explanation made on the

basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. A proposal made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth.

From Greek Hypothesis ‘‘foundation’’, from hypo ‘‘under’’ + thesis ‘‘placing’’

40

HYPOTHESIS 1

a cultural pathway

Dows Ali Katsaros Lefteris Nguen Shon Peev Georgi

GR, U.Th, Volos - Hellas GR, U.Th, Volos - Hellas BG, U.A.C.E.G., Sofia - Bulgaria BG, U.A.C.E.G., Sofia - Bulgaria

This proposal is standing on the idea of a continuous pathway ‘‘flowing’’ beside the stream producing an organic correlation with it and the overall cultural identity of the bilateral urban fabric where it is gradualy penetrate.

The pathway is passing through the existing flora areas or generate new vital pockets of vegetation. It ends up to the area of the mosque where a circular spatial formation of multiple functions is bringing the monument into the focus of the citizens and the visitors. Additional architectural elements and arrangements, such as the bridge and the minor structures around the Mosque, completing and fortifying the proposal, inherit their form mainly from the as-found morfological details of the Mosque and the near by urban building typologies. I.S.

1

42

HYPOTHESIS 2

everything flows, everything changes

Aya Abou El Dahab Mohamed Yehia Shedid Tarek Hatem Al-Rimawi Mousa Yara Dimitrov Hristo Andreou Panagiota Perikleous Avgi

EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt GR, U.Th, Volos - Hellas BG, U.A.C.E.G., Sofia - Bulgaria CY, FREDERICK, Nicosia - Cyprus CY, FREDERICK, Nicosia - Cyprus

The proposal is taking strongly into consideration the existing recreational bedrock of the valley and propose a series of formations, processes and structures to strengthen it aiming to attract the most of the population of the city. A new set of bridges constructed to interact (rise up or sledge) accordingly during a possible flood can also sustain meetings and assemblies of a limited number of citizens at their suspension ends. A bike lane together with a new wak way at the opposite side of the stream can support the surplus population of visitors. At the south end of the valley, the area of the MehmetBey Mosque, an area-field that can support multiple typologies of communal actions is proposed, such as a market of clothes or flowers, over a grid of constantly changing number of ciosks. I.S.

2

44

HYPOTHESIS 3

rectifying the unbalance

Lili Efi

Papastergiou Xenia Charalambidou Athina Kadry Ahmad

Rafic Mohamed

GR, A.U.Th., Thessaloniki - Hellas GR, A.U.Th., Thessaloniki - Hellas GR, A.U.Th., Thessaloniki - Hellas EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt

The proposal is standing uppon a thorough and detailed analysis of the macro-landscape (the length of the valley) on both sides of the stream and the indication of series of separated nodes of emerging activities involving the traditional and the contemporary religion, leizure and recreational identities forming the present properties of the area. The overall synthesis and navigation reading of the structure is based on a constant succession of a geometrical pattern and a set of variable materials involving herbs and flowers. This geometrical typology is applied also for the creation of the form of the bridges/connections and the regeneration of minor or major water tanks (public water sources) and ritual supports (the sabil). I.S.

3

46

HYPOTHESIS 4

sensing the valley

Mavromati Efpraxia Evlogiev Martin Zaykova Denitsa Higazi Hala

Mekkawy Asmaa

Elsherif Alaa

GR, A.U.Th., Thessaloniki - Hellas BG, U.A.C.E.G., Sofia - Bulgaria BG, U.A.C.E.G., Sofia - Bulgaria EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt

The proposal is an attempt to achieve an ideal synthesis on the basic variables forming the present identity of the valley and the promicing contemporary interventions. The revival of the MehmetBey Mosque area, the enrichment/enhancement of the vegetation, the maintenance of the existing and the acceptance of the proposed crossing network, the protection of the bilateral areas of the stream endangered by a sudden powerful flooding.

The intention is to transform the valley to a green recreation axis attracting the citizens to be and stay for long, to maintain and fortyfying its overall natural and civil identity, to rearrange and transform it to a spine of correlating, osmotic, urban and environmental elements assimilating to each other. I.S.

4

48

HYPOTHESIS 5

the flow, Emergence of meaning

Gkiaouri Despoina Markoulaki Irene

Triantafyllou Eirini El Shafei Aly

Mostafa Aly Abueishan Diyaa

GR, U.Th., Volos - Hellas GR, U.Th., Volos - Hellas GR, U.Th., Volos - Hellas EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt

This suggestion presents and propose the idea of an off local limits, huge, radical area masterplan that will ‘‘flood’’ the east side of the city where the valley is. It is a territory where the introduced ‘‘proper’’ monuments (observatory, culture mall, athletics) of a bigger city planning can be erect and function in terms of rythm and pause, local inpact and regional strategy. A snake-like elevated corridor can be identified as the urban connector and attractor aiming to receive and orientate the users towards each and every minor and major function. This pathway might itself be the contemporary monument of the city performing mainly and mostly as an observation belt either to the connected and exist urban elements or to the city as-it-is. I.S.

5

50

HYPOTHESIS 6

the oddity

Boulios Athanasios Kafantari Aimilia

Ashry Nourelhoda Awad Aya

Mostafa Mohamed

GR, U.Th., Volos - Hellas GR, U.Th., Volos - Hellas EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt EG, M.S.A., Cairo - Egypt

The proposal is standing uppon the denial of the existence of a perfect (functional) interpretation of nature and, further more, the uncertain linkage between the concepts (and their temporal realization) of artificial (here been active for the concept urban) and the natural (here been active for the concept rural).

The creation of a field of possibilities, a vast vertical strip against the flow of the stream and the orientation of the narrow valley, consisting of a rich typology of habitation pockets offering a variety of possibilities, is the gesture proposed to be the container and the spring of multiple behavioral ethics and social principles aiming to strongly reform the idea of residency into the valley for the length of a short or long time period. I.S.

6

52

HYPOTHESIS 7

Zig Zag

Hadjipetrou Savvas Neofytou Pygmalion Yasemis George

CY, FREDERICK, Nicosia - Cyprus CY, FREDERICK, Nicosia - Cyprus CY, FREDERICK, Nicosia - Cyprus

This proposal stands on a complete and detailed creation of an archive of all major and minor activities as-found in the existing condition of the valley’s performance and the addition, the implantation of new activities in between according to the detected or demanded urban needs. These consecutive groups of existing and proposed functions will form a tight net of visiting and living urban possibilities. Bridging each other can vitalise this system of multiple connectors filling the bilateral banks of the stream through the length of the valley. This irregular, thick, non formal system of bridges-promenades can be identified as the essential game-like morphology, a kind of an urban ‘‘toy’’ and a new monument accelerating mobility, bringing the sides of the valley to a unified, integrated field of relations.

I.S.

7

eutopia is the archive of our efforts to create a common, to work in order to achieve and manifest a new equilibrium of correlations, to accelerate the visual and the stochastic perspective of the citizens of Serres.

We’ve had a good time together.