~ Urban Syntax~

Competition Entry for the Design of Aridea City Center

The superposition of different systems allows us to deconstruct the complexity of the design into separate systems that are analysed and studied separately, focusing on their individual characteristics. The next step is to determine how these systems interact and are influenced by each other as well as by the elements of the space.

The systems chosen to form the elements of this urban syntax, and which create distinct networks spread across the city, are three.

The first is a network of infrastructure elements ,stormwater drainage manholes, and all public utility networks, designed as industrial design elements together with metallic linear elements that have as reference the old railway that reached up to Aridaia.

The second system is composed of various water events expressed with different intensities. Points, lines and surfaces form a network that spreads throughout the city. The upgrading of the fountains present in many parts of the city into sculptural compositions creates a dialogue with the elements of industrial design and encourages social interactions around them.

This third system of greenery uses linear and geometric certain herbaceous flower beds that aim to intensify the engravings, acting as a complement to the other systems and to serve the traffic flows in the public space.

The result of this process is the creation of an open syntax that interprets and interacts with the city. The absence of a universal design allows and fosters local interactions of elements that in turn influence and are influenced. It is from these local interactions that the overall image of the public space emerges.

But the existence of a common syntax makes the intervention recognizable by all, despite the absence of a unifying logic. Clearly there are architectural gestures and proposals, such as the logic of maintaining visual continuity from point to point, the variability and flexibility proposed in Setsku Square, but the aim of the proposal is more to propose a system of organization and structure in space that first takes into account what is happening at the local level, and by following specific rules produces an architectural whole that emerges from these local interactions and therefore has resilience to them.

In other words, a system is created that allows individual elements to change without the whole losing its structure and coherence.

Architectural Design: NoDāta Architecture – Christos Gourdoukis & Xenia Papastergiou

Design Team: Christos Gourdoukis, Xenia Papastergiou, Athina Charalambidou, Maria Ritou, Angeliki Politi, Danai Porfyropoulou, Norbert Nechala, Maria Chatzikalia

Date: 2023

Location: Aridea, Greece