10th Annual International Conference on Architecture
Program (Athens Local Time)
(*In the program presentations are included from all the subjects scheduled to be presented in parallel)(Note: each presentation includes at least 10 minutes for questions and discussions if available)
Monday 6 July 2020
10.00-10.30 Registration
10.30-11.00 Opening and Welcoming Remarks:
Gregory T. Papanikos, President, ATINER.
Nicholas N. Patricios, Vice President of Strategic Planning & Analysis, ATINER, Dean Emeritus & Professor, School of Architecture, University of Miami, USA.
Clara Germana Gonçalves, Researcher, CITAD (Centro de Investigação em Território, Arquitectura e Design), Lusíada University and Associate Professor, ISMAT (Instituto Superior Manuel Teixeira Gomes), Portugal.
11.00-11.30 Vladimir Mako, Professor, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Title: Characters of Ancient Architectural Orders and Their Mannerist Interpretation in Dietterlin’s Book from 1598.
The aim of this paper is to explore a particular metaphorical pictorial language used by German mannerist painter Wendel Dietterlin in his book on architecture at the end of the sixteenth century. It was formed through personal imaginary interpretation of the Vitruvian notion regarding personal characters of the five ancient architectural orders. In that context it has all aspects of the mannerist approach in inventing metaphorical meanings by combining ancient, mediaeval, and contemporary narratives. However, in that process Dietterlin unavoidably refers to cultural and social aspects of his time, particularly when reflecting on the issue of the invention of the ‘new [German] architecture’. By this, Dietterlin enters the group of the majority of German sixteenth and seventeenth century authors on architecture emphasizing one particular prerogative in their writings: to merge the ancient roots with the longing for a coherent German cultural identity. However, it seems that in the process of narration, used to ‘invent’ new forms of architectural expression, Dietterlin refers also on a kind of historical development of mankind in a particular manner.
11.30-12.00 Hrvoje Bartulovic, Assistant Professor, University of Split, Croatia. Title: Process of Reconstruction of Unused Buildings in Croatia.
This paper aims to investigate the implementation of 4Rs (Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, Rethink) in process of reconstruction of unused buildings in Croatia. The built environment is one of the largest contributors to global emissions and climate change, thus enhancing the energy efficiency of building leads to the more sustainable development. This especially refers to refurbishment of historical buildings which were not build according to the demands of substantial reductions in operating energy and carbon footprint in new constructions. And when these elements apply to the abandoned buildings the surpluses are accumulating. Reusing in a sense of refurbishment and/or of reconstruction of existing unused buildings is entailed, reducing in sense of enhancing energy efficiency of building imposes by the law defined maximum energy consumption, but legal framework acknowledges a variety of possible approaches. Recycle of the material can be observed in sense of using the material from the building site in new purpose, but also in sense of using recycled material for refurbishment of the building. And all above requires rethinking of the approach both in design and in construction with enrolment of all development stakeholders. The in-depth analyses of the projects of reconstruction of unused buildings which authors of the paper were involved as a practicing architects, as well as comparison with best practice contemporary projects, was planned with aim of defining the possibilities of implementation of above mentioned 4Rs. The goal of the paper is to help the transformation of the Croatian construction and real estate markets towards sustainability, by promoting green building programmes and technologies, as well as integrating the available and obtained knowledge, experience and insights into design, construction and management of reconstructed unused buildings in Croatia.
12.00-12.30 Raffaella Maddaluno, Assistant Professor, CIAUD, University of Lisbon, Portugal. Title: Between Earth and Sky: Art and Architecture in Dialogue in the Work of Rui Chafes and Camilo Rebelo.
In a former hotel, bought and remodeled by a seed Portuguese producer, in Switzerland, in one of the underground spaces, an architect and a sculptor, also Portuguese, worked together to give life to an egg-shaped space. A space born from the need to give hospitality to a sculpture, “semente” by Rui Chafe, has become a pretext for the reflection on numerous themes. The creative and process interaction between art and architecture, the symbolic force of a form like the egg, the possibility of creating a place inside the space and out of time. Always more we feel the need to represent something that leads us back to a process of discovery of the origins, but which very often catches us unprepared and it frightens us. More and more the ephemeral and the noise are part of our journey, and when we mee t moments of pause, like the place of Camilo Rebelo and Rui Chafes, we feel a deep sense of strangeness, which forces us to re tune with our essence, that at the bottom is silent as silent is the inside of an egg. As the architect Camilo Rebelo says in an interview the one an d the other become integral: “I look at my space and without the sculpture of Rui I hear noise, with the work of Rui I feel tha t there is silence, alliance, harmony”. This collaboration opens the doors to a second chance of project, the client is the same, the place is Portuguese: Grandola, in Alentejo. This time t he theme is housing, a concept that brings with it a series of reflections on the relationship between the identity of the pe rson who designs the space and who will then live in it. The collaboration of the two protagonists is measured on this occasion no t only with elements experimented in the previous project (the matter, the material, the form), but also with the landscape (its heights, its extensions), with nature (the colors , the smells, the temperature), with the time that will pass and that will put all this to the test. The present text aims to analyze the artistic path of both architect and sculptor, starting from the story of these two occas ions in which art and architecture reach a moment of harmonious tangency in the silence and universality of f orms. This analysis will reflect on their creative modes, possibly trying to recognize similarities, tangencies or deep divergences. It will also be an opportunity to continue to reflect on the timeless question of the interconnection between art and archi tecture.
12:30-13:00 Carlo Pozzi, Professor, Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” Chieti-Pescara, Italy. Title: After Martì Arìs.
13:00-13:30 Joao Miguel Couto Duarte, Assistant Professor / Research Fellow, Lusíada University / CITAD, Portugal. Title: The Re-Encounter with the Acropolis – A Journey of Fernando Távora.
“I left the Temple of Hephaestus and walked slowly up to the Acropolis. Upon reaching it, I walked the length and breadth of it; I saw a lot but understood little. The whole thing is not easy, in part due to the ruins and in part because the beauty and grandeur are sometimes not as open as one sometimes assumes.” “We returned to the Acropolis, which was illuminated by the full moon. It is a different scenario; new points of view, different relationships and, above all, the softness of the moonlight enable better reflection and observation” (Távora, 1960). In June 1960 the Porto architect Fernando Távora (1923-2005), who played a decisive role in defining Portuguese architecture in the latter half of the 20th century, visited Athens for the first time, on the last stage of four-month study travels which had taken him to USA, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Pakistan, Lebanon and Egypt. On his very first day in Athens, he visited the Stoa of Attalos, the ancient Agora and the Temple of Hephaestus. He also went up to the Acropolis. He returned there on the two following days, showing a sense of doggedness, before finally returning to Portugal. Several written thoughts and drawings remain from his short stay. A sense of initial discomfort gave way to a more serene and enthusiastic appropriation of the Acropolis – Tavora’s own words reproduced above would seem to denote this. His walk up to the Acropolis was unquestionably the realisation of an encounter he had long imagined. Távora learned about Greek art and architecture early on within his own familial context. He maintained an interest in both after having graduated in Architecture in 1950, even though he had naturally expanded the horizons of his interests in the meantime. He owned a number of books on the subject matters. The fact that this was Távora’s first visit to Athens is grounds for reflection on his understanding of the Acropolis, observing the confrontation between his prior knowledge and his experience of the work. The question is both how a possible idealisation, based, above all, on literary and also on imagetic sources, may have configured the initial appropriation of the architecture, and how that appropriation liberated itself from said initial idealisation to take root in the knowledge provided by immersion in the work itself. It is this change in the bases of his understanding of the Acropolis that is perhaps discernible in the change in tone between Távora’s two observations that was effected after visiting the building. Taking into consideration the possibilities provided by an interdisciplinary framework for a comprehension of the architecture, in the context of which one applies and crosses historical theorisation, written reflections on experiencing the work and its representation in drawings, this paper seeks to understand Távora’s particular approximation to the Acropolis. In it, his first encounter with the Acropolis will be examined from the perspective of a re-encounter.
13:30-14:00 Rui Manuel Reis Alves, Assistant Professor / Researcher, Lusíada University / CITAD, Portugal. Title: The Architectural Place as a Metaphorical Experience in Steven Holl’s Work.
The question of the relationship between architecture and the site and the meaning of this relationship, that is, of architecture as the construction of the places of human existence, played an important role in the debate that architectural criticism developed between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s. However, we can speak of architecture as the construction of places, in a close and significant relationship with the surroundings or with the landscape since the origins of architecture itself, within modernism itself and persisting consistently in the practice of the most interesting Portuguese architects today, manifesting in this case in a particular attention to the territory, to topography, to the dialogue with pre-existences built and the landscape in general. Formal simplicity may also work as a way of placing the accent on the ability of the architectural object to relate to its surroundings and not on its own protagonism. In a very different cultural context, the North American architect Steven Holl advocates a different approach, although he refers to the relationship with the site as structuring in his architecture, based on the phenomenological experience of built architecture and its intersection with the experience of the site, making it possible, architecture, an opening for us to see it in another way. For Holl, the link between site and architecture is not merely physical or even rational but sensitive and intuitive. The nature of this link has a metaphysical or poetic content. This position is justified because if in the past the link between site and building was made “through the use of local materials and craft, and by an association of the landscape with events of history and myth” (Holl, 1991), today we need to find other ways to do it. We will then try to understand their method and compare it with what is visible in the work of some contemporary Portuguese architects, pointing out the differences and the search for a common sense.
14:00-14:30 Break
14:30-15:00 Ulrika Karlsson, Professor, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Title: A Live Interior: Environments, Assemblies, Materialities.
The three-year artistic research project Interiors Matter: A Live Interior examines different conceptions of interior’s temporality, duration and instability – a “live” interior. The notion of a live interior is explored in a domestic setting. During 2019, rooms in two early to mid-century apartment buildings in Stockholm have been documented using a technique that combines laser scanning with photography. Using coloured point clouds from this acquisition process, the project has resulted in a set of drawings that explore three main issues. The first issue has to do with representation and the fact that domestic interiors are difficult to document in projective drawings. This problem has throughout the history of architecture given rise to productive frictions that have propelled the discipline forward. A well-known example of the link between modes of representation and the production of interior concepts has been put forward by Robin Evans in “The Developed Surface: An Enquiry into the Brief Life of an Eighteenth-Century Drawing Technique” (1997). To capture an interior in a set of projective drawings is difficult because it is a volume rather than a mass, but in addition because it is unstable. The interior is not complete until the inhabitant has filled it with furniture and belongings, and this tends to be beside the control of the architect. To represent the domestic interior, one has to consider both its architectural framework as well as the traces of its inhabitants. The second issue has to do with positioning the studied apartments in relation to disciplinary conceptions of domestic interiors. Because of the inherent instability of the domestic setting, there exists a history of understanding the domestic interior and its inhabitants through their belongings and how they are organized. In the Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin understood the 19th century Parisian interior as being defined by a collection of objects amassed by the inhabitant. In her recent essay “Architecture in Extremis” (2011) Sylvia Lavin suggests that architecture and its inhabitants can suffocate under the pressure of “stuff”, but stuff can, if properly considered, be embraced as an architectural opportunity. Both authors acknowledge that the placement, displacement, replacement and reassembly of objects, furniture and entire interiors, makes the interior a “live” environment, continuously in production. Finally, the drawings produced for the project explore point clouds as a medium. Walls and floors, as well as furniture and objects, are all seen in minute detail from a particular point in space occupied by the laser scanner. Through the eyes of the scanner, these drawings describe the interior at three nested scales that reveal hierarchies, adjacencies and interdependencies. From the entirety of an environment, via particular assemblies of objects, to materialities that showcase shifts in colour and texture. In summary, Interiors Matter: A Live Interior asks four main questions: How is instability affecting the production of an interior environment? How can aspects of an interiors’ instability be captured, documented or replicated? How can an artistic process that engages change through digital technology contribute to an understanding of interiors in flux?
15:00-15:30 Thomas Bisiani, Adjunct Professor, Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy. Title: Architecture without Man. New Development Scenarios of Infrastructure and Innovation in Trieste.
Both infrastructure and research and innovation make possible communications and exchanges between increasingly distant places, so that the geographical position and administrative division of states are less and less significant than the polarities of individual cities. Europe is trying to keep pace with this vision, European cities with higher growth rates are already “planning the revolution”. The growth trend also concerns medium-sized cities, the UN forecasts growth for 96% of European cities with more than 300 thousand inhabitants in the next 15 years. Trieste, from the point of view of the port and infrastructure system, can approach this model by strengthening the two drivers of development, quality of life and job opportunities. Until yesterday considered at the centre of Europe, today it is conceptually repositioned through the Belt and Road Initiative, at the western end of a Eurasian system. A specificity to be investigated is the complex system that combines port infrastructure and logistics with scientific research and innovation promoted, among others, by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the International School for Advanced Studies, the University of Trieste, AREA Science Park. In a recent monitor by Intesa Sanpaolo, the ICT cluster of Trieste stands out among the 24 Italian high tech areas for its performance in the export of electronic components, semiconductors and computer hardware for TLC. Three cases demonstrate how an ecosystem made up of infrastructure and innovation can generate both development conditions and crisis situations, and consequently it cannot only exist but must be managed: 1 SAIPEM – leader in the energy and infrastructure sectors, has set up the Submarine Robotics Pole in Trieste. Where it was built and has its operational base the OIE (Offset Installation Equipment). This is the latest and highest technology in the world to avoid environmental disasters from underwater oil spills. 2 Java Biocolloid – Indonesian company among the main producers of red algae extracts for the food and pharmaceutical industry, in Trieste has established its European headquarters, the location favours distribution in Europe, Middle East and USA and offers the opportunity for development and innovation with the scientific bodies in the area. 3 Coltan – the so-called “blue gold” is a superconductor with large storage capacities for electrical charges. In March 2019 a 5t container was seized in the port of Trieste for violation of the regulations on the use of radioactive material. This example also confirms the existence of a model that rewards the infrastructure endowment and the vocation for innovation, but it also highlights critical issues related to opaque traffic and the exploitation of rare earths and resources of the planet. Starting from these bases, the study wants to highlight scenarios of regeneration of port areas in a vision of Trieste as an incubator of innovation. The objective is to define a landscape of activities with high added value, able to affect quality of life and job opportunities, exploiting a new position of port centrality.
15:30-16:00 Inge Roecker, Associate Professor, The University of British Columbia, Canada. Title: Rethinking Inclusive Housing Design.
In a society that demands for spaces that could respond to a wide range of abilities, there is limited inclusive housing design discussions and solutions available beyond the elements of universal design. Current housing typologies available in the market are often rigid in the way they respond to the intended user groups, resulting in spatial mismatches and/or financial barriers for certain populations to access housing. Such problem presents an opportunity for innovative solutions through design with the following research question: How do inclusive housing design solutions shape affordability and improve access to independent lifestyles? There has been continued efforts in the housing development community to advocate for socially inclusive design and examine solutions. This project aims to continue such efforts but will focus more on the forms of development, unit typology configuration and overall space integration. In order to arrive at a truly inclusive model, there is a need to understand current models which perpetuate the exclusion of several priority groups. It is necessary to learn from groups who experience financial and spatial exclusion due to current market housing conditions. Therefore partnering with organizations who have connections with communities that can benefit from inclusive design is critical in better defining the research problem, and developing and testing the design solutions. In addition, to ensure any solutions are grounded with development reality, it is also critical to include partners in policy making, development industry and design professionals in this process. The proposed talk will focus on the methodology in working with a diverse stakeholder groups to find inclusive design solutions for the building and its units that would not cost more, yet could accommodate a more diverse population – with or without disabilities, allowing a larger mix of demographics and abilities to be present in the community.
16:00-16:30 Elena Rocchi, Clinical Asssitant Professor, Arizona State University, USA. Title: Representation as a “Relevant” Translation: the Message of Las Meninas
In setting the pure contingency of the world, architecture establishes the fields as necessary frameworks for interactions to be carried out. Architects first imagine these interactions as situations, framing them using abstract representation just like a theater director, a movie director, or a painter do. It is the definition/depiction of these situations, the central problem of architecture. The author`s current Ph.D. research focuses on deconstructing set design conventions as reversing the process of edited work to find ways to represent perception in architecture, observing the relation between distance and duration of the structural scaffolds that guide interactions in theater, cinemas, installations. The background of the discussion is an example of a reversed process of an edited painting: Velázquez’s Las Meninas, to Svetlana Alpers, a highly symbolic work of difficult interpretation (Alpers: 1983, 30-42.) The paper analyzes the tension Velázquez created in the painting between two contradictory modes of picturing the “relationship of the viewer” to the picture (a “world in view”), and to the world (an “absent subject-viewer” as a “world not seen”). The painting remains untranslatable — a “painting without meaning.” As Derrida would say, the experience of translation is submitted “to the trial of the untranslatable” — what Alpers calls the “unresolvable ambivalence” of Velázques masterwork: the viewer sees a world reconstructed through the window frame while he experiences it as seen it in a mirror. Following Alpers’s essay strategy of describing the dilemma, the paper’s argument is to try to show it instead, using representation. Rereading Las Meninas in representational terms allows distinguishing “what is framed” from “what is mirrored” to see where Velazquez (the painter and the viewer) stands, in relationship to the picture and the world. Using the two-step method Alpers applies to raise her topic, the analysis carefully shows 1) the great size of the pictorial space and 2) the source of the Kings’ reflections on the mirror; then 3) it draws attention to Velázquez’s position in the composition. The conclusion depicts the “unresolvable ambivalence” to infer that the picture is at once, a window frame and a rear window, and that the viewer is Velázquez himself.
21:30-23:00 Greek Night (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Tuesday 7 July 2020
08:00-11:00 Urban Walk (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
11:00-11:30 Marte Mujika Urteaga, Associate Professor, University of the Basque Country, Spain. Title: JAI TEK: Superbly Underdeveloped Caryatids.
Leading researchers have joined with JJAI TEK ideas since 2005, contributing both with their own architectural works, as with studies related to vernacular examples. Recent JAI TEK papers have been inspired on the exhibition “Architecture Without Architects”, that was held in 1964 at the Museum of Modern Art of New York, by the curator and architect Bernand Rudofsky. The exhibition offered a great diversity of exotic and suggestive pictures, coming from any continent, as a cultural heritage and source of inspiration. A selection of spontaneous, anonymous, vernacular and tribal architectures. The interest of the exhibition and the catalogue, not only lies on the aesthetic beauty of the images, or in the ethnographic beauty reflected on them. The interesting series of architectonic concepts according to which they were organized and grouped also meant a new theoretical contribution. Last two pictures -number 155 and 156- showing some wooden African caryatids, provoke Rudofsky’s next reflection: “… These two pictures, therefore, merely hint at the intimate architectural aspects. The anthropomorphic pillars at left support the roof of the palace at Ketou (Dahomey), the one at right stands in a communal rest house of the Dogon. Less distant perhaps and less ladylike than the Kore of the Erechtheion, they are linked to modern Western art. Museum pieces in our eyes, they represent rather common fare in some superbly underdeveloped countries.” This new paper will try to contribute to this idea, with similar study cases from the area of influence of our School of Architecture. In farms like Harrillaga Haundi and Zumitza, the medium used to carve ornamentation and decoration was wood. Although the human figure is very low, there are some interesting exceptions of the 17th and 18th century.
11:30-12:00 Francesco Del Sole, Assistant Professor, University of Salento, Italy. Title: The Architectural Illusion of Edoardo Tresoldi. The Reconstruction of the Basilica of Siponto.
12:00-12:30 Anastasia Nikologianni, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Birmingham City University, UK. Title: Built Environment and Landscape Design as Tools for Resilient Cities.
This paper considers the range of legal, institutional and professional frameworks that exist at an international level relating to landscape and evaluates the scope and effectiveness of these tools in helping society meet the global challenges we face. Focusing on the role of landscape architecture in sustainability policies in urban areas it examines the possibilities of integrating key concepts, specialized bodies and actors to create more robust, landscape-led mechanisms to support transformation and change. It also provides an overview, at a time of great change, of the potential counter role of more serendipitous means of getting people to act and think differently about landscape and architecture, including the role of spatial visions and drawing, emerging practices and ideas, the role of civic and academic leadership, cross disciplinary and third sector actions and partnerships, the need for new financial models and more complex shared governance structures. It asks if these different kinds of endeavours could become or are becoming, more vital, effective and necessary in order to shift political mindsets and effect real change. It concludes by proposing how these different strategies might complement each other to challenge perceptions at a political, strategic level and how this might in turn, shift institutional behaviours in order to achieve greater social, ecological and spatial justice.
12:30-13:00 Kokila Mohan, Architect & Urban Designer, Council of Architecture (COA), India. Title: Fading Edifice – An Understanding of Traditional House Typologies in Vernacular Settlements. Case of South Indian Region, Tamil Nadu.
The saying never fails “Old is Gold”, Country like India is born and deep rooted with its strong belief and practicing of cultural and traditions in all areas which also includes in built structures. The historic landscape in India has over the centuries evolved into spaces of timeless appeal. Despite having undergone numerous physical, social and cultural transformations some of the historic areas still manage to remind the inherent historic values of the place through the unmatched beauty of its traditional architecture and morphology coupled with the vibrancy of open spaces, materials, usage of spaces and celebrations abounding with activities of the people. These areas with its multilayered history seen over period of time frame become the symbols of the provincial where architectural beauty of the place resides. Urban and Rural India has undergone transformation in the name of urbanization and wide usage of modern terminologies, but the raze for complete tangible heritage is not possible to achieve because of its extraordinary architectural skills crafted by craftsmen and artisans whose ideologies to the details in construction has strong values added makes it retain with its hard struggle in the race of global world and it’s time for us to retain and acknowledge these traditional settlements which encompass, vernacular residential community structures, as well as religious buildings and historic monuments which reminds us our roots and explains past wealth in the form of buildings. They display varied characteristics depending on their location, inhabitants, their historical role and relation to the surrounding. This paper aims to investigate in appreciating treasures and indigenous settlements as a whole with an interest to deeply find for architectural brilliance in ancient built structures constructed on specific parameters to meet up the socio economic and cultural aspects of distinct settlement in southern Indian peninsula region and help the neighborhood not to fade its beauty by proposing policy and design oriented strategies.
13:00-13:30 Zhennan Ke, PhD Candidate, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. Title: Subject Politics and Spatial Form: The Spatial Evolution of a Maritime Settlement on the Edge of City.
Maritime settlement is a special social form formed by coastal residents using Marine resources, which reflects the characteristics of fishery life, social structure, unique culture and settlement space. Shapowei is located in the southeast coast of China. Since the Ming dynasty, it has accumulated strong Marine culture, spatial texture and social characteristics of maritime settlements. As the representative of maritime settlements in China, Shapowei also carries the historical culture of the marginal ethnic group Tanka, an ethnic group of fishermen who lives on a boat all his life in China，and the reality of its struggle in the post-modern context. In the long history of the maritime settlement, the traditional spatial boundary formed by the geographical and local historical network has been changing with the influence of social change and maritime trade, and with the continuous change of production relations. The city, as the other, squeezes the boundary of the remaining maritime settlements, which is embodied in the social space and settlement form, together with the ethnic identity dilemma of the piscator. The essence behind these appearances is the change of dominant capital, class and social relations caused by political changes. It’s a game of multiple groups. This article attempts in the perspective of anthropology to explore the evolution of the maritime settlements, through field research, historical maps, literature, space schema, for the objective description, makes every effort to reproduce the history of Shapowei settlements, to explore the projection of subject construction on spatial form under political relations in different periods. By sorting out the evolution of the daily living space and ritual space of the Tanka, this article highlights the spatial representation of the conflict between the self and the other in the boundary. At the same time, this article also explores an approach of exploring formal-political relationships.
13:30-14:00 Elena Fialkova, PhD Student, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, Czech Republic. Title: What does the Architecture of Democracy Represent?
In the time of the crisis of democracy, new questions also arise in the field of architecture. The function of representation is one of the basic functions of architecture. Today architecture is asked about the content of terms that should be represented, symbolized and materialized. Meaning of many institutions, public buildings, architecture is redefined in political context. What influence does politics have on the functioning of buildings and what impact does architecture have on the functioning of institutions? What are the ways democracy and architecture relate to each other? What should the architecture of these buildings represent today? The Athenian democracy is the best known democracy in the history of mankind. The folk gatherings of ‘ecclesia’ were held here at the place called Agora. The term ‘ecclesia’ has two meanings. It is a house for gathering. At the same time, the term refers to the community of believers who gather around their interest. In parallel with two meanings of “ecclesia”, we can perceive the importance of architecture not only as a space that forms a shape for historical events, but also as an entity which participates in decision-making and has an opportunity to play an important role in shaping them. Today, however, democracy is a very abstract concept and is often manipulated in favour of particular interests. The architecture of political representation buildings is in the background behind political events and cases. Does architecture have an ambition to be part of democratic dialogue? Contribution built on this theoretical basis will point out at several examples of political buildings as representatives of democracy in the structure of the city. The main role in many European capitals is often played by the iconic buildings of Parliament, the Government, the seat of the President, the judiciary, but it is also interesting to look at others – ministries, offices and so on. Their grouping or fragmentation also initiates the questions on concentration or distribution of political power. The paper will present the analysis of three scales of political power distribution in each country – the scales of architecture, urbanism of city and the national level.
14:00-14:30 Anjali Sadanand, Professor, MEASI Academy of Architecture, India. Title: Wall as Material Culture: Focus on Indian Vernacular Architecture.
Walls are fundamental elements of architecture. In their capacity to create shelter they are universal. The objective of this paper is to study and analyse walls in their role of constructing social and cultural meaning in the built environment. The paper thus entails a study of walls as material culture in the context of patterns of belief, customs, gender and community. The paper focuses on the manner in which this meaning is embodied in the wall as construction technique, material and aesthetics. The interplay of a climatic response and a socio cultural solution will be described. Vernacular architecture from five climatic zones of India will be studied. The paper will therefore look at walls as a cultural response to the environment and will describe the varying systems which different cultural traditions have produced to respond to the environment. Vernacular architecture from five climatic zones of India will be studied. Through a set of parameters which define their architectural language in terms of the physical properties of the walls, the paper discusses the way walls are articulated to convey meaning based on cultural differentiation. Amos Rapoport’s compendium of ideas is used as a theoretical framework. The discussion restricts itself to walls in domestic architecture of India with a few global examples for cross comparision. The paper ultimately looks at walls as a product of cultural response to the environment through varying resilent systems present in vernacular architecture and re interpreted to contemporary conditions visible in some of the contemporary architecture of India.
14:30-15:00 Luis Manuel Lourenco Serro, Professor, Universidade Fundação Minerva, Portugal. Title: Seven Unknown Drawings by Luigi Manini.
Luigi Manini, set designer at the National Theatre of S. Carlos lived in the second half of the 19th century, which was characterized, in the field of aesthetics, by the transition from romanticism to naturalism. This article aims to analyse seven unknown drawings by Luigi Manini, as an expression and illustration of this artistic period. For this, we analyse the three major periods of art exhibition by Hegel in his work Aesthetics. Integrated in this analysis the evolution of artistic expression, with more emphasis, is illustrated the study of ornamentation, its nature, its importance in stylistic participation and, along its journey, the variation between the expression plane and the content plane that the ornament, as a sign, suffered. To conclude this journey, Romanticism, used ornamentation as an evocative element of cultural styles and cultures, consistent with the essence of romanticism: a sublime expression. But in its final phase, Romanticism evolved into naturalism, that manifests, not the differentiated architectural element, but its collective nature. Urbanism is a social response of Architecture. The ornament loses, at this time, its symbolic value, but maintains its expression plan that was developed with an appreciation of its plastic value. It’s the ornate by the ornate that keeps, still, more time in Belle Époque; in Art Nouveau and Art Deco, to disappear completely in Modernism. These drawings, from a affirmation phase of Luigi Manini’s, are integrated at this time, and their analysis will be concluded from the historical conclusion of this article.
15:00-15:30
Maria Joao Moreira Soares, Research Fellow / Assistant Professor, CITAD / Lusíada University, Portugal. Title: The Body of the Houses and the Houses in the Body: Louise Bourgeois and Santiago Ramón y Cajal.
In her installation Cell (Choisy) of 1990-1993, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) literally places one of her childhood homes, the Choisy house, under the guillotine. The theme of memory and the relationship between memory and the houses that were her home throughout her life is a recurrent one in her work. Indeed, the subject matter of the house, be it the house-body or the house as memory, runs through Bourgeois’s many years of work as an artist. The representation of these houses as bodies of her story, Bourgeois’s story, is derived from an almost carnal exposure of the reverse side of a life and of the body that lived it. The houses are extracted from the body of Louise Bourgeois as edified cells. Inherent to them is the world of interiority. Interiority of the body, as a house specifically. If one advances, anatomically and not allegorically, beyond the bone, and enters the box that contains the brain, what does one find? According to Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934), one finds neurons as imagined miniature versions of the self. Cajal has been credited as the father of modern neuroscience, demonstrating that the brain does not consist of a continuous, interconnected network of cell appendages, but of discrete cells – or neurons. His observations resulted not only in his ground-breaking theories, but also in the two thousand and nine hundred drawings he produced of the nervous system as we know it today. His drawings reveal an extraordinary world of interiority… and also – why not say it? – of imagination. Cajal looks into the abyss and recreates it in his drawings: cell bodies; pyramidal neurons; axons; synapses; and much more. The drawings are like new worlds that set thought free; thinking, an action that once belonged to the drawn object. When returning to Cajal’s notion of neurons as imagined miniature versions of the self, one can imagine the number of these singular miniatures that inhabit a network of houses, in a landscape of indiscernibility, converging on the ultimate house: the body. This paper endeavours to cross the representations of the worlds of the bodies of the houses that resided in Bourgeois with the representation of the houses in the body that Cajal exposed to the world. This crossing stakes a claim for a return of the interiority associated with the body, to the exterior world and to the rooting of the BEING in the architectural being.
20:00-21:30 Dinner (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Wednesday 8 July 2020Educational Islands Cruise
(The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Thursday 9 July 2020Delphi Tour
(The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
* ATINER does not have the administration and infrastructure capacity to organize separate online conferences for each one that is planned every week. Instead, an attempt has been made to have one online event for the given week.
