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WORK SAMPLES KONSTANTINOS ALEXOPOULOS MArch Architectural Design Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Diploma in Architecture Engineering University of Patras, Department of Architecture kaleksopoulos@gmail.com
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H.O.R.T.U.S. Astana BioTechHUT Core Installation Astana Future Energy EXPO2017 May 2017 Project Designer, ecoLogicStudio
Layer Overlapping Density Calculation
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1300 MetaBall Threshold Evolution
The H.O.R.T.U.S. (Hydro Organisms Responsive to Urban Stimuli) installation engages the notion of Urbansphere as an augmented biosphere. The synthesis of renewable energy and nutrients for human consumption is reconsidered as an urban practice enabled by a novel bio-digital gardening prototype; the apparatus is a high-density photo-bioreactor able to connect in space and time human metabolism to the proliferation of life within micro-algal ecologies such as cianobacteria cultures. Flows of Energy [light radiation], Matter[proteins, CO2] and Information [data-feeds] are processed and fed back in real-time, stimulating the emergence of multiple mechanisms of self-regulation and evolving novel forms of hybrid self-organisation.Visitors turned cyber-gardeners are invited to engage directly 4
with H.O.R.T.U.S enriching their material experience of bio-digital micro-ecologies and embodying future urban cyber-gardening practices, by producing oxygen bubbles in 700 meters of glass tubing. The sculpture is adapted to the exhibition space, elaborating on the concept of convolutedness; the part facing the entrance of the room is smooth while the side facing the facade and hence the natural light, is becoming more intricate, maximizing the photobioreactor’s area for natural light. Top Right: Installation Overall View Bottom Right: Interior Installation Scape Photography: NAARO
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Anthropocene Island bioTallinn TAB - 2017 Tallinn Architecture Bienal September 2017 Project Designer, ecoLogicStudio
The Paljassaare Peninsula is shaped by two forms of conflicting ideology, environmentalism that strives to maintain the site as it is in a state of illusionary wilderness, and commercial development that envision its transformation into a ideal green city. Despite appearances both ideals are deeply conservative. The proposal challenges such conservative sentiments with a large scale masterplan intended to promote a new urban morphogenesis whereby Tallinn’s urban wastewater infrastructure deeply affects the biotic substratum of the peninsula. The resulting “contamination� becomes a morphogenetic force, 6
inducing an artificial hyper-articulation of the landscape and its living systems which will evolve into a digestive apparatus or membrane. The urban biome of Tallinn and the marine biome of the Baltic recombine into a bio-informational Anthropocene Island.
P.6. 7.5x7.5km, 10m/res. Urban symbiosis. Network connecting each building of the city of Tallinn with a new district in the peninsula of Paljassaare, depending on filtration and decontamination capacity. P.8 Anthropocene Island. 1x1km @0.5m/res. Air. Clusters of Inhabitable Cells.
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ESA Wetness Contoured Datascape
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Wetness Tendency Lines
Minimun Paths by Length
Inhabitation-Metaballs of Wet Areas
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A Turbulent Urbanity: Biodigital Loire FRAC Centre Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans #1 Research Partner: Urban Morphogenesis Lab, Bartlett UCL October 2017 Project Designer, ecoLogicStudio
Loire River Masterplan. Turbulence Datascape Generating Flows
The project raises the question of how we can mobilize the Loire’s turbulent nature to trigger a novel form of distributed spatial memory; one that is embedded in its material substratum and that is projective about Orleans’ Metropolitan future rather than nostalgic about its past. UNESCO recommends that the Loire must be preserved as a ‘wild river’; we propose to turn such turbulent wilderness into a new model of urbanity, one that exists beyond the ideological struggle of natural conservation vs urban development. But how can we reconcile the need for movement and nonlinear self-organization, typical of a turbulent dynamical system such as the river Loire, with contemporary urbanity, built as it is on the ideology of balance and stability? The medium of choice is a computational grid, projected over a specific portion of the river Loire, facing the historical 10
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1. Flowlines Starting Grid. Number Indicates Length, 2. Flowlines 3. Indexical River Management, 4. Curvature
center of Orleans; the grid operates as a sieve, defining the resolution of the grain of information to be extrapolated. This spacetime indexing is rendered a visible information in a set of ‘operational field’; as these drawings are shared publicly they operate as the substratum of a distributed spatial memory, a new collective urban protocol for the management of the river Loire. The ‘operational fields’ themselves are purely computational entities but the emergent collective intelligence they mobilize is material and can sediment as a physical landscape. This landscape is bred by introducing bio-techniques which affect the sedimentation patterns of the river Loire by altering at the molecular level the aggregation of transported rock and soil particles within the river bed. The project deploys techniques of mineral deposition and crystallization, microbial aggregation and bacterial weaving.
Garden of Accretion
Garden of Crystallization
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Prosthetic Hybridscapes Honorable Mention in Architectural Competition Restoration of Patras Old Port Team: Nikos Spyrou, Anna Douka, Grigorios Koutropoulos, Ioanna Koulouri Principal Designer, May 2016
The old port of Patras which is currently neither a vivid accessible public space nor an active port, is awaiting to become actually inhabited by its citizens. The specific proposal is elaborating on new ways of prosthetic fabrics in the Mediterranean Coast for a new ecology of inhabitation of the 21st century, unlike energy consuming interventions. A new flexible landscape is proposed through new coastal-urban infrastructural interventions on port and piers as well as in the waterscape itself, responding to flows of citizens, vessels, vehicles and bicycles. New technologies, energy capture from physical forces as well as Patras’ need for green space are added to the existing port landscape, which is considered as an urban monument that is preserved and relieved from residual structures currently located there. The proposal consists of two infrastructural prosthetics: -- A coastal infrastructure which is composed by a hybrid structure, partly honeycomb for semi-transparent units, pots of greenery, solid surfaces, electrical supply and water collection, 12
creating space beneath and on top of it, for different activities and events. -- A flexible network of floating components in the harbor basins which composes a transformable archipelago, creating different special qualities of artificial landscapes. These units have embedded electrical and watering network which is expanded as they assemble with each other. The different units typologies for assembling makes mass production the preferred way of fabrication and is serving transformability. The intervention is using self-sufficient mechanisms, using natural means for energy and watering. More specifically, small floating units of Pelamis Type are located outside the breakwater, capturing wave’s kinetic energy. A watering network from rainwater is embedded on the proposal, led to basins which serve as structural supportings. Different types of vegetation for Mediterranean areas adjust the microclimate and the structure itself which works also as a shade.
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Halophytes at Watersports
Unit Types
Assembly Example Pattern
Electric and Water Network
On Pier Pots
Creeper Plants
Plants Over Construction
Floating Vegetation
Infrastructure Nodes
Var. 1: Larger Scale and Minimun Floating Ground
Var. 2: Medium Floating Units Population
Var. 3: High Population, Coastal Microscale
Solid Surface
Perforated Tiling / Vegetation Pots Walking Surface
Floating Shell
Electricity and Watering Main Supportive Infrastructure Supporting Core-Potential Building
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Luminous Windskin Installation Proposal International Open Call for Architects / Artists: “Second Nature” European Capital of Culture Paphos 2017 In Collaboration with Grigorios Koutropoulos, September 2016
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Main Front View
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Topview
The specific installation aims to create a different interpretation of the relationship between human and nature. Since we are living in the anthropocene era, the proposal is consisted merely by artificial objects which simultaneously interact with two natural elements; wind and sun, which both are the most dominant ones in Cyprus. The 12x12cm panels form the “skin” of this shell, creating a kinetic installation which is controlled by the wind, and as a result, its pixelated skin visualizes the forces of air, creating at the same time a dynamic non planar surface. The metallic surface reflect the installations environment, adapting and merging the structure within the space. The shell is also an unnatural dune//sunshade for a visitor, aiming to be perceived as an artificial changing landscape. During a windy sunny day with wind, the real time simulation is also visualized on the shade itself, creating a small rest point. Concerning the element of sun, 16
Rear Vier
the panels are painted on the outer side of the shell with phosphorescent paint which absorbs daylight; as a result at night, the panel consisted skin is illuminated self sufficiently. More specifically, they contain luminophores particles and can glow for up to ten hours. During a windy night, a low tech media non planar facade is visible. The installation aims also to show the prospect of potential decentralized urban infrastructures, that could have simoultaneous hybrid roles, serving as wind energy capturer and as a lighting source.
1-5 Construction Process: 1. 9,26 + 10,31 m bar forks of 5cm diameter, 845 aluminum panels 1mm thickness, 300m Metal wire 3mm, Phosphorescent Paint 2. Bending of Hollow frames, assembly 3. Installation of vertical wires on frame, panels painted 4. Installation of horizontal wires 5. Panels placed
Air Dynamics Simulation, Vector Visualizations Emerging Pattenrs
Physical Scale Prototype Chunk at Night, Air Conditions 3 Bf
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Skin Transformation in Different Wind Conditions
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Digital Hydrologies Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL MArch Graduate Architectural Design Research Cluster 01, 2013-2014 Tutors: Alisa Andrašek, Dağhan Çam In Collaboration with Liaoliao Xi, Jingya Huang and Tao Song (3rd phase)
Phase 1: Assembly of Fixed Structure Clusters out of Site
The specific research explores the creation of a new ecological space and a strategy for its formation, dealing with the issue of rising sea levels. Rising Sea levels is one the most significant environmental issue of the past decades, due to the global warming phenomenon. Floods are increased year by year, especially to adjacent to oceans or rivers areas. An elaboration on a potential synthetic ecology that could be developed by a new architectural system in these environments was made. A system that can create new land and inhabitation space with an adapting and self-organizing way, using natural energy and not with an holistic one as built concrete coastlines. Today, there are some efforts of coastal management with self-organizing methods even in engineering. In Netherlands a method called “Sand Motor” is applied in coastal areas by which 18
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Anchoring of Fixed Structure in Site
Phase 3:
River Stream as a Constructing Force
Phase 4:
Units Locking on Fixed Part
Phase 5:
Tides and Floods Shift Sectional Density
sand is deposited near the desired areas and natural forces as flows and wind contribute to the reallocation of the new land. A method with a proposed fixed structure which acts as a trap along with deposited aggregation granules with sticking and locking properties is proposed, as a self organizing and transformable method of new protective land generation. The intricacy and porosity in different scales of the created fabric by aggregates can easily act as traps for sediment, so that the aggregates acquire an additional layer of materiality, a higher resolution strata of accumulation which gradually stabilizes the structure and creates a new land for inhabitation. Inside the water, phytoplankton is growing so fishes and other organisms can dwell. On the surface the increasing resolution creates a synthetic accessible area for humans to come in contact with water.
Fluid Behavior and Emerging Formations
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High Resolution Ecological Space
River Territorial Mapping
River Bank Case Study
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Velocity
Direction Grid
Saltiness
Vector Size
Temperature
Velocity Colour Map
Extreme Conditions Fluid Behavior
Frame 50
Frame 100
Frame 200
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Decontamination and Production Mechanism Diploma Design Thesis, February 2013 University of Patras, Department of Architecture Supervisor: Prof. Panos Dragonas 8 International Landscape Biennal, Barcelona 2014
The former industrial area of Drapetsona is one of the largest “terrain vagues” in Attica (Greece), located next to Piraeus’ port. A few industrial monuments have survived in the area that is awaiting for a new use since the late 1990’s. The project aims at the decontamination of the ground and the reactivation of the area. The actual economic and environmental broader city needs are taken into consideration through the investigation of new means of production for the 21st century city. The project consists of three parts: (a) Ground interventions gradually absorbing the soil’s industrial chemical residues of former producing units. These are phytoremediation, protective cap on the coastal zone and reed bed plants in clean areas for water filtration.(b) A new anaerobic digestion plant of residual products. These are saturated phytoremediation plants, community’s organic wastes and sludge. Though anaerobic digestion process, biogas is produced and transferred to the Electrical Company and to ships at the Port of Piraeus. (c) A new infrastructure, in the form of an elevated grid, which connects the interventions mentioned above. This is a system of transportation for saturated plants and other products in the anaerobic digestion plant; it is also a public space which offers the chance to explore the landscape, observe cleaning procedures, and visit the industrial monuments. By the time that the contaminated areas are cleaned, the grid infrastructure may be removed so that the ground is ready to accept a new use.
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New Supportive Buildings
Infrastructural Grid of Network
Ground Decontamination Interventions
Existing Buildings
Anaerobic Digestion Plant
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Proposed Self-Sufficiency 1. Waste Management. 2. Anaerobic Digestion. 3. Phytoremediation. 4. Water Filtration 5. Fuel for Pireaus’ port ships
Saturated Plants Transportation
Anaerobic Digestion Plant
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Teleworking on a Pier Advanced Architectural and Urban Design Studio Supervisor: Prof. Panos Dragonas University of Patras, Department of Architecture Winter 2010
//Scanscape; {Dwellers//Teleworkers Live Between [Physical//Augmented++Virtual] Reality}
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During the past twenty years, rapid technological shifts along with digital work and internet use has changed human’s daily activities. Different inhabitation scenarios-realities emerge. The specific project elaborates on a scenario of a fictional residential profile. The new dwellers exclusively telework, choosing to spend more time in their own apartments. The different conditions of the case as the dipoles of work-inhabit, physical-digital, natural-artificial and public-private are taken into account. The empty space of the pier is filled with nature, transformed into a park, with additional uses that support the need for recreation as well as residents daily needs. The park could be used from both the new residents and city’s citizens who since they are living in a Greek city they have not sufficient green spaces. That could secure the appropriate population mixture of the new public space. During night, the facades facing the park are used as media ones, filled with “advertisments” of teleworkers. The blocks are put at the edges of the pier, in order that the houses have the best view. They are formed in section attaching “L” shaped apartment units one next to another. Between two mirrored “L” appartments a public corridor is created. The part of the unit that faces the corridor is the working space and is enclosed by a big Augmented Reality glass window in order to demonstrate parts of the resident’s work. These window acts both as a publication and a way of communication. 26
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1.Media Façade//Teleworking Advertisment, 2.Solar Façade Filter, 3.Housing Blocks, 4.Stripes of Nature, 5.Supportive Facilities, 6.Pots for Vegetation, 7.Existing Port Authorities / Modernism Monument
Housing Units’ Plans (Bottom to Up): Lower Dwelling Level, Teleworking Agora Level, Upper Dwelling Level
Potential Gathering Areas
Pier Wandering
Circulation on Park
Housing Blocks
Stripes of Nature
Supporting Facilities
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Aumented Reality Agora: The Middle Floor constitutes the Teleworking Level of dwellers. Augmented Reality Surfaces are the Mediums of Communication between client // visitor and working person // dweller; working spaces privacy conditions can be altered by shifting surface’s transparency. 27
The Track Museum Olympic Museum of Athens International Student Architectural Competition ArchMedium, Fall 2010 In collaboration with Andreas Nikolovgenis
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The brief was asking for the design of an Olympic Games’ Museum in the historical center of Athens, between the 1896 Olympic Games’ stadium, known as Kallimarmaron, and the temple of the Olympic Zeus. The design concept elaborates on the idea of athletics’ track, as a symbolic element of the olympics along with an organizational and spatial interpretation. The existing club’s track is used as museum’s plaza. The main idea of track that consists of adjacent linear paths is also delivered in the museum volume. High walls along with the natural light that enters from the glass roof create dramatic in-between spaces.
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Soil Topography Excavation Plaza Flooring Interactive Ramp Light Track Trail Tall Trees Ilissos River 1. Acropolis Panorama, 2. Exhibition Levels, 3. Media Couloir Surface, 4. Track Walls, 5. Entrance Perforated Walls, 6. Administration, 7. Walk Beyond Byzantine Archaeology, 8. Track Plaza, 9. Theater, 10. Excavation of Basilic of Ilissos Located in Site, 11. Emergence of Ilissos River 28
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Dwelling Above the Common Ground Architectural Design Studio Tutor: Petros Babasikas, Lecturer University of Patras, Department of Architecture February 2011
The house is designed in order to host a couple without children and their working place that is a kindergarten. The design concept ellaborates on the bipole of house’s private spaces and commons ones. The height difference across the site is aso taken into account. The working space and the house are separated and located on the two opposite sides of the sites respectively. The kindergarten is located in the entrance of the plot. The ground becomes a common place for both dwellers and visitors. This “common ground” includes the kindergarten’s yard, the garden, that acts as a buffer zone between the house and the kindergarten, and the common spaces of the house, such as the living room. On the other hand, the private spaces are placed in an upper level, scattered in different volumes; the “private boxes” which are hung by the roof, are viewable as solids from the living room but their totally closed cladding doesn’t allow the visitor to see inside. The natural light enters from the glass roof of these boxes. The same glass roof allows for both the man and the woman to look in the other while sleeping, bathing, dressing… The roof could be a private garden used by the couple, including a small pool, a sand-pit for sunbathing and a small area for home made vegetation. The two walls that support the roof include auxiliary uses of the house and storage spaces.
1. Private Spaces: Bedroom, Shower, Wardrobe, Office, Car Park, Pool, Sand Box. 2. Private Garden Level, 3. Supportive Walls with Auxiliary Uses: Kitchen, Bathrooms, Storage Space, Shelves,BBQ, 4. Small Kindergarten, 5. Common Garden, used by the dwellers as well as by the children; the living room with an interior garden of woodchips is part of it. 30
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Top. Common Garden, living room and Auxiliary Uses Embedden in walls. Bottom. Private Garden Level and Private Spaces (right), Common Garden on Ground Floor.
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