Archiving Metaxourgio

‘Archive’ is a totality of records, layers and memories that are collected. A city is the archive that consists of the conscious selection of these layers and traces of the past and the present, looking towards the future. Metaxourgio is an area in the wider historic urban area of Keramikos in Athens that includes traces of various eras, beginning in the Antiquity and continuing all the way into the 21st century. Its archaeological space ‘Demosion Sema’ is mostly concealed under the ground level, waiting to be revealed. In this proposal, Metaxourgio is redesigned in light of archiving. Significant traces of the Antiquity, other ruins and buildings are studied, selected and incorporated in the new interventions. The area becomes the ‘open archive’ that leads towards its lost identity. The proposal aims not only to intensify the relationship of architecture with archaeology, but also to imbue the area’s identity with meanings that refer to the past, present and future.

New Public Excavations

The paper draws on recent salvage archaeological excavations in Melbourne, Australia that prompt questions on architectural concerns of ‘site’ in contemporary architectural discourse. For design practitioners, site is usually communicated in direct and straightforward ways, with some practical understanding of the physical forces that form the current site, but little of influencing political or cultural elements. This is particularly problematic in settler-colonial cities such as Melbourne which are built out of complex and contested environments. The urban archaeological excavation is therefore seen as a metaphorical ‘autopsy,’ a brief moment of pause when the site’s history and composition can be publicly examined and challenged. Crucially, the act exposes the significant and potent presence of ground and dirt as actants in the city. This paper examines archaeological and architectural texts and practices to explore the added meaning that a refocusing on dirt and ground as material and medium can add to the architectural reading and interpretation of site in the settler‑colonial city.

Synchronous Worlds

In the Mediterranean basin, the archaeological presence is extremely relevant and diffuse. Together with this is a difficult intertwining with contemporary urban settlements, which archaeology, by tradition, has to be protected from. If conservation is the goal of restoration, the problem of the cohabitation between past and present use is still an issue. This paper will focus on the project of enhancement of the archaeological park of the Greek colony of Naxos, near Messina, in Sicily, led by the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo in cooperation with the administrative head of the park. At the crossroads between the sea, the highway, a lemon orchard and the city of Giardini Naxos, the ancient Greek settlement could be an example of coexistence of the different layers composing the landscape, with the aim of making history and archaeology come to life as synchronous components of the contemporary fruition of the place.

The Lower Valley of Ofanto River

The Ofanto river is the most important waterway in the karstic Apulia region and both nature and man have constantly written on its landscape palimpsest over centuries. The lower valley and the mouth are highly representative of the river landscape, currently threatened by abandonment and degradation. It could be considered an interesting case study of an area outside the major touristic flows but with great potential in terms of cultural values and local development. Following the approach of the landscape archaeology and crossing multi‑disciplinary analyses, the area is interpreted as a complex palimpsest. The paper points out a strategy of valorization of the river valley within the frame of the wider regional programmes by proposing an ecomuseum of the territory. The insights and the suggested guidelines allow the area to be “re‑signified,” to preserve the heritage and highlight the variety of features that make it unique in the local context.

How to Reconcile the Past and the Present

In Western culture, or in what today is called global civilization despite its diverse traits and contradictory evaluations, the relationship with the past has always been both profound and contradictory and in some cases even conflicting. Actualization of the past has occurred in different periods of time and for a large variety of reasons simultaneously assuming cognitive, contemplative, evocative, emulative, normative forms. In this continuous and multi-faceted process, ideological and political motivations led to the revival and legacy of the past seen, from time to time, as an analogical model, a foundation of identity, a source of ethical and aesthetic inspiration, or a tool for cultural formation and social pedagogy. In this sense, the past has become an absolute cultural value and – ideally – has constituted a powerful paradigm for the conception of new models and new metaphors for the construction of material and immaterial forms of the present.

A Room for Archaeologists and Kids

Beginning in June 2018, some forty‑five students from Zurich and Lima led by Guillaume Othenin-Girard (ETH Zurich) and Vincent Juillerat (PUCP) worked together to produce a structure in the heart of the archaeological landscape of Pachacamac, Peru. The project was the culmination of a half‑year collaboration between Studio Tom Emerson of D-ARCH, ETH Zurich and Taller 5 of the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, PUCP Lima, at the invitation of Denise Pozzi-Escot, the director of the Museum of Pachacamac. In this new structure, archaeologists make their first examination of artefacts emerging from the digs, shaded from the punishing Andean sun and in view of passing visitors and school children, who in turn, perform their own exploration in the sandpits across the courtyard. At each end, new finds are stored in rooms enclosed by woven cane walls before being transferred to the museum for permanent conservation. The structure was collaboratively designed and constructed by the students in three weeks in June and July, following a joint research project over several months that produced a new topological survey of the territory: the Pachacamac Atlas. The reality of a landscape changes according to the perceptions of time and memory that underlie it. The visual essay that follows is an attempt to recall the intuitive relationships and invisible links arising from the superimposition of the Atlas onto the processes of design and construction. The collective knowledge gathered over the course of the territorial survey draws an understanding of the place which is larger than the ancient sanctuary per se – unveiling ways of making and the material flows between humankind and the environment on various scales. This methodology of survey drawing reveals the inherent capacity of the architecture student to think both as a maker and a territorial agent, thus triggering an awareness of the designer’s social and environmental responsibilities within the design and construction process.