Composite Architectures

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http://concretecircus.wordpress.com/

Συμμετοχή για τον Διαγωνισμό Ανάπλασης Όψεων επί της Δ. ΑΡεοπαγίτου 17&19

Αποτελέσματα εδώ.

a BundLE of Works

The Bar

2 sketches

Urban Design 9th semester

The Constant Experiment

...the fluid, almost abstract function of the circus is being metonymized onto a constant transforming, refreshing and doubtful redefinition of the Circus Idea, through experimentation per place and time. It is an endless architectural experiment but maintaining the same client and generic Idea. The phenomenon of the Circus prevails over the fluidity of the program; Elephants added, guest magicians invited, non-stop moving from place to place, new urban contexts...New symbols, new structural methods, new materials, new -isms and colors, new posters and circus trademarks... (Concrete Circus Context)

An urban détournement

A bricolage of Tokyo, used for the context of the city featuring in an Etgar Keret 's short story called "a hole on a wall" (Μια τρύπα στον τοίχο, Καστανιώτη publications). Here 's a preview of an animation we did as a team of five collegues(Aristoteles Maragkos, Theodosis Hsaias, Chrysoula Korovesi, Fereniki Fotopoulou, Michael Vlasopoulos). The linearity of the City follows the narrative of the story.

The ArchitecturallY AbsurD

An UrbaN MishmasH 02

Νοηματικό Συνονθύλευμα 01

...Και με μια απλή φωτογραφία ο Charles Jencks επισημαίνει πως ο μοντερνισμός μου πέθανε(Η γλώσσα της μεταμοντέρνας αρχιτεκτονικής 1977). Ο φακός στις 15 Ιουλίου 1972 συλλαμβάνει μια ακραία έκφραση των δυνητικών αναγκών του μετα-μοντέρνου(τουλάχιστον χρονικά) ανθρώπου. Η δυνητική κατακραυγή δηλώνεται στον χώρο που δεν την ικανοποίησε με την μορφή συστάδων δυναμίτη. Για άλλη μια φορά η καταστροφή γίνεται μέρος της αρχιτεκτονικής ακόμα και αν την ακυρώνει ή την γκρεμίζει. Μπουμ, Μπουμ, Μπουμ, ώρα 3.32΄ το απόγευμα. Η αρχιτεκτονική αποτυγχάνει να εκφράσει τον χρήστη, ή χάθηκε, ξεχάστηκε το manual αυτής της "μηχανής (συλλογικής) κατοίκησης". Η στοιχειωτική αυτη "εικαστική καραμέλα" αποτελεί ένα συνονθύλευμα νοημάτων, και παράλληλα με εκπληκτικό τρόπο αφορά τον αρχιτέκτονα με τρόπο προσωπικό, είναι ένα Barthes-έζικο punctum στον χωροχρόνο..Είναι ένα freeze-frame από μια απο τις πολλές οσμώσεις μεταξύ ενός "αργού και βαρούς" δομημένου περιβάλλοντος και των ανέκφραστων βιωμένων ανθρώπινων αναγκών. Ίσως πρέπει να περιμένουμε λίγα χρόνια για να παλιώσει τόσο πολύ η μπετονένια πόλη, ώστε να νοιώσουμε πάλι την ηδονή που προσφέρει το να γίνεται μια έκρηξη μέρος μιας αρχιτεκτονικής ιστορίας..

Χάρτης Ιδεών

Axonometric View(Concrete Circus)

The RUpture evolves...(Concrete Circus)

Sketching the rupture process..(Concrete Circus)

Un_Nesessary Automations

A JukeBot..

Stop motion animation puppet featuring in a short movie we did, me and my friend/collaborator Aristotelis Maragkos.

The Concrete Circus

The following project deals with a dichotomy of architecture in "object" and "event". The concept of the Circus as a procedure of rupture between those two.

The Circus is a mobile "ghost" structure. Incomplete, indeterminant and packable. The teleology of the building and destruction of a concrete circus is a metonymization of its legitimate function: the ephemeral erection and the packing within a bunch of trucks. It is a metonymy of the uncertainty of its origin and destination. In other words the tent & truck architecture is being substituted by cement & dynamite, as Sant 'Elia quoted "Burn it every fifty years..". It's calamity becomes part of the show; the best and most trained acrobats and magicians participate in that unique and unrepeatable extravaganza.

Housing of the Event&Packing__________Solidification around the Event&Explosion
The "idea" of the Circus, that legitimize a tensed fabric becomes an ad-hoc built void. The moment that the first concrete circus is been built, through that architectural rupture the figure and the typology of the circus gain substance. The building becomes part of the show. Becomes the paraphernalia of illusion, jokes and the grotesque. It doesn't cover, but houses the circus. It's once fragmented and scattered spaces saturate a dense, centripetal spiral infrastructure. Concrete backstage spaces and open air-roof for rehearsing included.
A series of metonymies begins with the destruction and the building of New concrete Circuses. And while the ephemeral montage-able materials of the circus constitute a generic structural kit that seaks urban voids to unfold and scatter, a permanent monolithic structure will perform the opposite: It shall be a concretization of the transition from the "urban outside" to the working place of a clown, thus the fluid, almost abstract function of the circus is being metonymized onto a constant transforming, refreshing and doubtful redefinition of the Circus Idea, through experimentation per place and time. It is an endless architectural experiment but maintaining the same client and generic Idea. The phenomenon of the Circus prevails over the fluidity of the program; Elephants added, guest magicians invited, non-stop moving from place to place, new urban contexts...New symbols, new structural methods, new materials, new -isms and colors, new posters and circus trademarks...

The Story of the Urban Arc

Once People constructed a dense city...

They packed and folded their culture into a giant Urban Arc and fled..Fled away from danger and a legitimate past bounding them with the Place.
The construction took a couple of years to complete...During that time they embedded their consensus in a diverse, heterogeneous and perverse built environment, praising proximity, difference, multiplicity, congestion, complexion, contradiction as fundamental social values. Since there had been arguements regarding the generic form of their "city" politicians and planners agreed in a theoritical envelope shaped as a bean, through which each individual citizen would inhabit space by the act of deteriorization of the generic bulk.
And there it was..A sperm of urbanity, a floating concrete genius loci sailing over seas and time, looking for the New Place. The shelled-city begun its vigorous voyage. This urban mitochondrion survived through wars, revolutions and social-economical changes. Signs of human hatred, use, inhabitation and dereliction covered the city walls.
When they finally reached the New Place, a cultural Big-Bang ocurred, a Pandora' s box opened and unleashed societies into the vast empty nothingness of the uncharted lanscape. The once unified, dense civilization scattered into fragments of urbanity, ruptured and unfolded. An almost forgotten word has been re-added to their vocabularies and enery-day language: Suburban. New generations evolved and blossomed around the abandoned, wrecked Arc. Artists praised the Era of the Big-Bang with their work. Everybody was happy, peaceful and equilibrial. Everybody except the old men and women who had lived and survived the trip of the Arc. Nostalgia and misery enfilled their hearts. Their inertia infront of the New and Bright future made them return to the "old city". And after several walks through the once filled with life concrete carcass, they died there peacefully slowly and steadily turning the Arc into an informal cemetery...

2+1 Definitions of the City

City 17 is a fictional city from the first-person shooter computer game Half-Life 2 (2004)

"Virtually all theories about the city are true, especially contradictory ones. The city works both as a medieval village with the equivalent of 13st century inhabitants pottering about, and a global network of 24 hour traders." Charles Jencks(1996 :26)

City is:

"...a collection of primary groups and purposive associations...An aesthetic symbol of collective unity that fosters "Personal Dis-integration and Re-integration" through wider participation in a concrete and visible collective whole." Lewis Mumford(1937)


"...the site of barbarous indifference, hard egotism on the one hand and nameless misery onthe other" Engels(1845)

(Maybe the city today occurs somewhere between these two views. The selected bibliography that follows focuses in the analysis of the city and its architecture through paradigms, specific “frames” of the ever-changing form of the city. The history of a city contains a diverse context where accidents, ideas, traditions, needs, ideologies and participation form a complex environment of the inhabitation of space. It is a built calendar of a diverse civilization. Thus, it is characterized by an element of potentiality. The paradigms constitute the paraphernalia of the urban analysis.)