INOM
EXAMENSARBETE ARKITEKTUR, AVANCERAD NIVÅ, 30 HP
STOCKHOLM SVERIGE 2020,
PARASITIC OPERATIONS:
TO INHABIT A CADAVER
STUDIO K, THE EPICENTER FOR STREET ART IN ATHENS
BENJAMIN TOLIS
KTH
SKOLAN FÖR ARKITEKTUR OCH SAMHÄLLSBYGGNAD
TRITA TRITA-ABE-MBT-20336
www.kth.se
1
PARASITIC OPERATIONS: TO INHABIT A CADAVER
STUDIO K, THE EPICENTER FOR STREET ART IN ATHENS - By Benjamin Tolis, 2020
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way And the stars look very different today For here am I sitting in a tin can Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do
Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go David Bowie – Space Oddity
INTRODUCTION
We are in Athens. I feel the scent of Souvlaki and roasted chestnuts in the afternoon, and yesterdays “favva” that all the "yiayiades and pappudes" have prepared for the cats at the doorsteps around Filopappou hill. The old people at the “kafenio” are playing “tavli” while sipping on a small cup of Greek coffee. And around the corner a group of African musicians relentlessly beat the drums and create a rhythm that blends in with the noise of the city’s heavy traffic.
At my way to the university, I take notice of a specific building while walking with my Greek cousin Leonidas. This building draws my attention. Not only because it is abandoned and half- completed, a cadaverous structure like a skeleton, but because its huge walls are shining, impossible to ignore, painted in bright colors by the city’s street artists. Rays of sunlight trickle through the bare concrete structure finding its way to highlight the skillful creations. The colorful graffiti’s flickering in the afternoon dusk makes me curious.
At first, I thought of the building as an eyesore, a stain on the cityscape, a concrete mass with an unfortunate past and no future, but it grew on me. I could not help myself to fantasize of what it was once meant to become and what it could be in the future.
2 THE SITE, LAGOUMITZI 15
The building that caught my attention during my Erasmus studies in Athens is the skeleton of Lagoumitzi 15. The construction of the building started in 1969 but was halted for unknown reasons. The work was continued in 2008 by architecture firm Potiropoulos D+L, but in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis the finishing of the project was once again put in a deep freeze in 2009. Today, the building belongs to the Greek ministry of education and is intended to become residence for students of Panteion University someday.
The building is situated at the most prominent corner spot of its city block, close to avenue Leoforos Andrea Siggrou, one of Athens main arteries. The Syngrou avenue is the main highway that connects the center to the coastal front, and it is well known and prominent for its rich and vibrant cultural scene. Several significant cultural institutions are situated along the avenue’s straight axis. This avenue is not only recognized for its association with “high culture”. Street culture is dominating Leoforos Andrea Syngrou at night. Street techno communities claim public space and turn underpasses to club venues, strip clubs and drag shows turn on their pulsating neon signs, and street artists paint the city, protected by darkness.
In this project I undertake and give life to this huge skeleton-like building, the unfinished structure, that exist in the midst of the cultural clash between high and low on avenue Leoforos Andrea Syngrou.
AN EVER-CHANGING CANVAS
I call the project Studio K, because of my inspiration from Kafka’s literature during the project.
Studio K is the new epicenter for street art in Athens. The program of the building resonates with its past, since the building, in its original form, has already been covered by artists paintings for decades.
In fact, the street artform has a strong presence in Greece and a long history. It has been used as a tool of expression during difficult times for centuries, during hardships like the Ottoman occupation, the Nazi occupation, the Civil War, the 1967 military Junta and recently the 2008 financial crisis. Actually, the dire state of the Greek economy in the recent past, has strangely enough, fostered the emergence of a thriving artistic scene. A metropolitan city, cheap rents
3 and the fact that Athens is slightly lawless gives it a 90’s Berlin vibe that attracts foreign and national artists to the capital. Street art is huge in Athens. The New York Times calls Athens
“one of the continent’s most vibrant and significant cultural capitals” and “a contemporary mecca for street art in Europe”.
The building of my project, Studio K, expresses the city’s effort to be in the forefront of the development of the artform. It hosts workshops, open symposiums and lectures and gives an opportunity for artists in Greece as well as artists abroad to apply for a scholarship in the heart of the metropolis of Athens. The building offers massive studios with generous spaces and challenges its tenants to think big and be brave.
Studio K will spearhead the development within the artform, and twice a year the doors will open, welcoming the public, giving an insight of the cutting-edge work within. In addition, the building will give the interested the opportunity to apply for workshops, take part in open symposiums and hand-picked lectures or simply to relax on the rooftop, overlooking the Acropolis.
PARASITIC METHOD, THE CRASS LOGIC OF AN INTRUDER
Since I am designing Studio K for a non-conformist group of people, graffiti artists, I choose to approach the project by trying to mimic the parasitic art form that is graffiti in architecture. My ambition is for the building to radiate the same energy as the artform it is devoted to, and its intended users.
To achieve it, I am working with a parasitic architectural method. I use the book Writing Art and Architecture by philosopher and architect Andrew Benjamin, OneFiveFour by architect Lebbeus Woods and also The Parasite by philosopher Michel Serres as the primary reference literature in this master thesis.
The form generative parasitic architectural method was originally conceived by Andrew Benjamin and is based on Michel Serres’s “dark organizational theory”. The method warrants the architectural parasite to operate with the same logic as its counterpart in nature. An architectural parasite needs to operate on or in a host and can never exist on its own. While clinging onto its host, it hijacks the host’s water, electricity, and ventilation infrastructure. The parasite frays, it never adds nor ornaments. It creates, by undoing and transforming, thus
4 fraying on edges, lines, and borders of the host, not to compromise the structural integrity of the host’s construction.
Andrew Benjamin phrase it well: Within the project’s own logic the external wall as a line is not broken. The parasite works through it. Living on it by contributing to it. Being positioned on it, the parasite works by repositioning what counts as the surface, the line is held and dispersed - frayed - such that while there is a form of repetition the system that produced the line no longer defines its presence. Its frayed presence is the result. (Writing Art and
Architecture, p. 138)
The host’s structure and nature, organizational logic, is pitted against parasitism, and yet, the parasite begins to occupy spaces within the building. This process opens up spaces that were hidden before, turning private space into something new and make sure that separated spaces are now jointed.
Depth and layering are created because the parasite can work within the whole body of the host, both vertically and horizontally. The parasite, the intruder, nestles its way up through the floors and continues to develop until its anatomy is fulfilled.
STUDIO K, A DESCRIPTION OF THE BUILDING
The building structure in black steel, advance from the first step of the entrance and sticks to the host’s concrete static structure. The staircase, asymmetrically expands, like a gigantic rib cage ascending upwards breaking through several floors and eventually overwhelming, consuming and taking full control of the remaining floors.
Open studio is a huge, open space, open on all sides towards the surroundings, with concrete slabs above, that gives shade and protection. In a way this space is an extension of the street. It has similar characteristics, a high tolerance threshold, meaning it can withstand exploitation and abuse.
The staircase continues from first to second and third floor. As the visitor reaches higher, he becomes more and more aware of the city, seeing it through the framework of steel beams. On the third floor and at the end of the staircase the balcony protrudes out of the building, hoovering over the buzzling avenue below. Here people can relax, talk, and enjoy the view in between the many workshops, symposiums, and lectures or ongoing projects.
5 At the back of the room of the third floor is the door to ascend further, up the relaxed donkey- stairs into the next section of the building: The LAB.
From this level upwards, the building consists of four identical floors with studios for the scholarship artists. The space is equipped with a network of vast ventilations, silently removing chemical debris and excess moisture. The air conditioning system keeps the temperature at 17 degrees. Each studio is generously sized, and in the heart of the plan is a shared common space and vertical communication. Soft and muffled city sounds are barely heard in the LAB, rays of sunlight filter through the perforated extended metal façade and disperses into a soft glow through the transparent floor-to-ceiling polycarbonate panels into the white room.
The LAB is designed to give the artists a space dedicated to creation. The artists get a focused space where they can work effortlessly and uninterrupted in. To begin with, the studio is
completely white painted, welcoming the new tenants. The transparent floor-to-ceiling
polycarbonate panels let in a soft glow filling the space giving no interrupting stimulus or outside view. Walking into the studio in the LAB section is as staring at a blank, white paper. There is an urge to fill it, the nothingness is unsettling by itself and it creates the feeling of wanting to create something out of nothing.
THE ROOFTOP
On the seventh floor, as the door slides to the side it feels like walking into a wall of heat. The relaxed donkey stairs lead you calmly to the rooftop. The scenery unfolds step by step as the hill of Acropolis emerges, with the extraordinary Parthenon dominating the view hundred meters above the city.
The rooftop is a vitalizing oasis, a retreat in stark contrast to the LAB and its program, a place for the tenants to regain momentum and strength. This is a gathering place, built for people to come together and sit facing each other, a place for loud discussions and events. While seated the ridge frames your scene, concealing the view, highlighting the Acropolis surrounded by blue.
A MASTER THESIS BY BENJAMIN TOLIS ADVISORS: RUMI KUBOKAWA & ORI MEROM
STUDIO: PERIPHERAL FUTURES KTH, 2020
PARASITIC OPERATIONS:
TO INHABIT A CADAVER
BLUE:
Theatres, Operas, Cultural centers, Museums, Art institutions and Cultural assosiations
Burlesques, Drag shows, Strip clubs, RED:
Brothels, Squats and Street events WHITE:
Project site, Lagoumitzi 15
CORE
SKELETON
PARASITE
MÖBLERAD, PLAN 4-7
