ARTEMIS LIMNATIS DIANA OF THE WATERFRONT A presentation of projects concerning the rehabilitation of the coastal zone of Patras Κ. Μoraitis - Associate Professor, School of Architecture N.T.U.A.
Research Program Heracles Ten projects for the Greek City Dieci progetti per la città greca» The first project of our presentation has to do with the research program Heracles that took place in 1996. The purpose of the program was to provide a number a projects concerning urban areas in important Greek Cities Athens, Volos, Mytilini and Patras. For every urban area selected by the program two different design groups, an Italian one and a Greek one, working separately had to present propositions, so that at the end of the program a comparison could be made.
We have to note that in the program participated rather well known architects by that time, as the Italians Franco Purini, Stefano Boeri, Cino Zucchi,Giorgio Grassi, or the Greeks Dimitris and Suzana Antinakakis, Iannis Koukis, Iannis Kizis and Dimitris Filippidis, Nikos Fintikakis. For the coastal zone of Patras the two projects presented had been elaborated by the Italian team of Milano University under Antonio Monestiroli and the Greek team Arsis under Konstantinos Moraitis.
The project zone of Patras was that of the port zone of the city, and the aim of the program was to bring the Sea back to the City.
The urban settlement of Patras, during 18 th century, during Ottoman occupation, before the liberation of Greece. The settlement seems to be organized around the fortress, at a certain distance of the seafront.
The first Urban Plan of modern Patras as designed in 1829 by the Greek in origin urban planner Stamatis Voulgaris, officer of the French army who seems to be the first urban planner of modern Greece. Voulgaris master plan presents a neoclassical city in immediate relation to the sea front. What does this mean?
It means that from the very beginning of the modern independent history of modern Greece, Patras presented a cultural orientation and in the same time an economical orientation towards Western Europe. Neoclassism for Europe of the 18 th and the 19 th century was not only an mere aesthetic preference. What is more it was un emblème de la raison, an emblem of the new enlighted bourgeois civilization and an emblem of the new political regime of the modern bourgeois democracy. If Greece, Athens or Patras had to belong to the modern western European world they had to established a neoclassical personality.
This cultural interest for neoclassicism seems even more important because the newly born Modern Greek State has to remind to the westerners, after its liberation, that Europeans have deliberately accept as central reference, for the formation of their own civilization and of their own political systems, ancient Greece in general and ancient Greek Democracy in particular. Neoclassicism seemed therefore to be an immediate remark of this historic relation between Ancient Greece, Modern Greece and Modern Europe. Propilea of Parthenon, Louis-François Boitte -1864
Patras however had one more reason to establish for itself, after the Greek liberation a neoclassical European personality. It was designed as an extrovert city, an important commercial gate towards Europe. Neoclassicism served therefore as a branding image, if we would like to use contemporary terminology, for a new city, which was the immediate urban result of the port of Patras. A port that the first Prime Minister of Greece, the farsighted Ioannis Kapodistrias, has already imagined for the Greek future. In an astonishing historic way it is exactly this extrovert personality that Patras has to claim once more, as the present workshop definitely states.
The city of Patras at the end of 19 th century - 1893.
The City of Patras 1895. The relation to the port is already established.
Back to the Hercules Program...
Patras Coastal Zone Antonio Monestiroli s proposition
Patras Coastal Zone Antonio Monestiroli s proposition
Patras Coastal Zone Antonio Monestiroli s proposition
Presenting the proposition of K. Moraitis and the ARSIS Architects team
The principal of the Urban Comb
A first remark about the city was that we could describe the coastal zone and the relation of this zone to the interior of the city, through the metaphor of a comb, whose principal horizontal stem corresponds to the zone of the port, across the sea, while the perpendicular teeth, towards the interior of the urban area corresponds to the streets, perpendicular to the sea front. Voulgaris has designed this important schematic relation of the urban comb clearly, but the continuous growth of the port plus the continuous growth of the circulation across the portal zone, had destroyed little by little the immediate relation between the comb teeth and the sea.
The principal concept of the proposition was to re-establish the relation between the sea and the city, to bring the sea back to the city. The reorganization of the main port functions in another place, at Dimeon Coast, outside of the central part of the city front, seemed to be an important help towards this direction. In the same time a ringroad, serving the heavy circulation that has no reason any more to pass in front of the coastal zone in the interior of the city, seemed also to be of extreme importance.
There was a need however for an even stronger way of bringing together, of knitting the coastal zone and the city. For this reason the project is trying to establish stronger connections using linear buildings that grow up form the coast and, passing over the street and the railroad line like bridges, arrive to the other side of the street, to the side of the urban buildings. We have given to these building structures the nickname of pins, in order to describe their connecting value.
The principal of the Pinning Buildings
During the elaboration of the project we had the chance, for the first time in our professional life, to take care of an important relation that could be detected, between the different non built parts of the city. Looking at the aerial photography of Patras it seems clear that the hilly territory around the fortress, above St. Nicolas Pier, come to close to the coast. It seemed therefore rather easy to create a green recreational line across the seaside and then try to connect it with the hill, or with the interior of the city with green lines across the streets.
The principal of the Green Connecting Lines In a clear way we were rather immaturely trying to create green corridors having anyway no connection with similar efforts in other countries.
After this first effort however green networks in the interior of densely populated areas has grown to be a kind of a design possession to me, connected to a number of urban design efforts, as for example those concerning the metropolitan area of Athens
Possibilities to create a green network in the metropolitan area of Athens research program under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Environment, 2010-2012
Thanks to Fabian, Vasilis, Henri, Katarina, Berenice A necklace of landscape interventions in the west part of the Athenian basin. A proposition of the international design. workshop Urban Futures, subject Building an urban oasis - The A. Tritsis Environmental Park in Athens 2011- Univ. of Dortmund, Univ. of Duisburg-Essen, School of Architecture Paris-Malaquais, School of Architecture N.T.U. of Athens
Creating an urban biotope in Athens diploma project, A. Andrulakakis, T. Tzanavara, responsible professor K. Moraitis, 2012.
Creating an urban biotope in Athens diploma project, A. Andrulakakis, T. Tzanavara, responsible professor K. Moraitis, 2012.
It was because of this environmental and landscape decision that the project used the reference to Artemis Limnatis, to Diana of the Waterfront, describing the volition of the reintroduction of the natural features in the territory of the urban civilization.
The transformation of the territory around St Dionisios railway station and Glyfadas Pier to a transfer node from train to cruisers, connected to a huge exhibition shelter and to a botanic garden.
An homage to Joseph Paxton and to the Crystal Palace or to the immediate relation between a garden and a building
Rehabilitation of the Northern Pier V. Lalioti, diploma project, responsible professors S. Tsiraki and K. Moraitis, 2012.
A network of urban voids and green streets
A new fish market, the fisherman s center and the museum for the Greek fishing activity T. Mamasis diploma project, responsible professor N. Marda, K. Moraitis, 2012
A fish tail, coming down from the spinal cord of Trion Navarchon (Three Admirals) Street