Honorary Mention, 2013
Design team: Cristina Ampatzidou, Teresa Papachristou
Architectural ideas competition “Reclamation of communal spaces and creation of landmarks in Thessaloniki”
Organiser: Municipality of Thessaloniki, Technical Chamber of Greece
On a neighbourhood level public space has lost its significance and is now defined as the un-built leftover, contrasting the safety of private homes. The four neighbouring plots are open voids in a densely urbanised environment. Our proposal is to use the unbuilt space as a geographic mass that inserts the natural landscape in the city through the gaps in its urban tissue. Our main architectural tool is the folding of landscape, at times mildly following the existing heightlines and at times intensely creating spacial situations able to host several functions. With attention to the blind walls we also propose small, almost artistic interventions suitable to each space’s microscale that counteract to the feeling of being ‘drowned’ under the height of adjacent buildings.
