Extreme Spaces - Creating space in extreme and extraordinary conditions
Participation in the student competition on the occasion of the XXII UIA Congress "Cities: Grand Bazaar of Architectures", Istanbul 2005
Zervou Angeliki, Saranti Konstantina 2006
Intention of the team was to plan interventions in thin slices of the city’s space and time, which manifest socially extreme cases. To identify documented scenarios of social needs to which the intervention has to respond. The interventions could take the form of actions, structures or processes, aiming to modify the everyday built or perceived environment using versatile, ephemeral, participatory medium which draw from a wide range of interdisciplinary fields.
Our interested was focused on the basic organization unit of the Greek city. The inhabitance model of the Greek city is based on the urban block, which is surrounded by the city’s public spaces (streets, squares etc). On the periphery of the urban block, apartment buildings develop one next to the other, leaving a free open space in its center.
This inhabitance model, has reached a marginal stage of expression since it unables the experience of the communal spaces within the urban block and the relations that could develop between them. The elements that consist the model of inhabitance are disengaged and the relationships that define it are disrupted. The inhabitance unit created by this model is no longer the urban block but the individual flat itself.
In order to recompose the “inhabitance system”, we suggest new correlations amongst the elements that form it. We transpose the inhabitant off the narrow bounds of the flat to the other spaces within the urban block. We consider these spaces as one unity, which is part of the urban ground. Consequently, we create the conditions for a new approach in the existing model of inhabitance and its relationship to the city.
