Athens x4 Competition - 1st Prize

Architects: Thalia Vogiatzoglou 50%

                  Thanos Bampanelos 50%

Published in:

PublicCity Expo, Ianos Publications, p.146

Athens x4, UASA-MEECC-NGB press, p34-37

Archisearch.gr

Daily Press

Exhibited in:

2 exhibitions at Benaki museum, Athens

1 exhibition at the Garden of Roses, Thessaloniki

The purpose of the competition was to seek out proposals for the basic cell of the city, the city block. The object was to select four adjacent city blocks in neighbourhoods within the Attica basin, in dilapidated urban environments and to submit a proposal to remodel them, making the best possible use of the crossroads that divide them, combining them with any existing spaces of non structured areas.

Athens is an organically developed, extroverted city, with small scale buildings and infrastructure. These features offer a human-centered urban environment and the potential for a neighbourhood based collectivity. Yet the brutal speed of a widespread and overwhelming motorization has stripped away the public space's social function. 

This proposal sets out to reclaim the open public space in favour of its rightful users, the citizens. In a simple and intuitive way, without imposing artificial events or excessive equipment, it stands as an interpretation of the urban void - the essential and most efficient container of the collective city life. The Park, a green introverted and dense space, reserved for recreation and enjoyment and the Plaza, an open and bright urban space of social interaction, mingling and play, occupy respectively an arm of the cross in the intersection of Proussis and Alkamenous streets in the centre of Athens. These two elemental types of public space - designed as purely and unpretentiously as possible - are placed into the existing road network in order to spread across the city. They offer an extensive network of pedestrian routes, connecting points of public interest, nontheless people and communities.