RENDEZVOUS
A social condenser
Stefania Orfanidou, Gregory Petropoulos
Location: Exarcheia, Athens, Greece
Workshop: Common Architecture
Supervisor: Wilfried Kuehn
Year: February 2017
Postgraduate program: INSTEAD IV
University of Thessaly, Department of Architecture
Our case study is located at an empty plot on the corner of Ippokratous and Laskareos streets. It is part of the wider neighborhood of Exarcheia, in the dense urban fabric of Athens. The area is portrayed by its multicultural character, due to the presence of many different nationalities inhabiting the surrounding streets.
Our purpose is to create a place that will be a reference point for the inhabitants, a social condenser, a “rendezvous” (noun; a meeting at an agreed time and place.). In order to achieve this, we aim to integrate the use of housing with that of a shared kitchen that will function as a communal space, not only for the residents but also for everyone. The idea is that this shared kitchen could work as a participatory activity that will aggregate people for the everyday need of eating, thus enhancing the interaction between them and parallel to that generating a small profit for the administrators/inhabitants.
As a starting point for the design process we observed the traces of the previous structures on the blind facades of the adjacent buildings and decided to reclaim them by creating at the level of the Ippokratous street a platform – entrance for the housing complex above it and the communal space of the shared kitchen beneath it, following the topography of the lot. Regarding the housing complex, we were driven by various typologies of monastery cells as a reference point for the minimum dwelling. The simple linear plan of a corridor and the rooms/apartments on one side is a basic structure of the monastery sleeping rooms, an element that we intend to integrate it to our final design.
