Dourgouti -A Housing project

A. C. Tzonis M. Arch.

This project was carried out as a thesis for the Master's Class at Yale University. It is followed by a chronicle of a series of thoughts which were done before, during and after the design of it.

S. Chermaveff was the critic in its theoretical preliminary study («Search for a New Urbanity» Yale University 1963) while P. Rudolph and R. Venturi were the critics during its design.

A great part of the study is «meta architectonics» but the main goal was to demonstrate the need of an order which is required behind a work of architecture.

An order derived from the human actions and thoughts of contemporary life canalises the actions and thoughts of contemporary life. This spiral relation of interactions, one change affecting the other change, is the generating force of the work of architecture through the ages.

Contemporary architecture does not pass a period of crisis perhaps, but it does undergo a time of disorientation due to the speed and complexity by which social political, technological and economical standards are governed. We have not yet assimilated what happened and happens every day in human history. We feel certain about bits of the change, but we are not yet conscious of the totality of it. Bauhaus, Chartre d' Athenes, Mies Van der Rohe are such fragmentary views but have not given to us a tool to face the complexity of relations between establishments.

What is important is not only to make things work but to make them look that they work.

The purpose of order is to make possible for the inhabitants of a city to find what they want at the time and place they need it and to find what they need where and when they want it and to be conscious of it.

It was not attempted to create a general system of architectural logistics built up of universals but a backbone of a logic of short and flexible systems applicable to each situation, interacting between them.

It is the nature of this thinking that rejects any kind of conclusions driven from generalisations and leading to more generalisations.

In order to make the exercise possible, it starts from several assumptions and leads to the construction of a method. On the other hand these assumptions do not influence the essence of the problem. They are just the raw material to make the principles work and be tested and drive through them to suggestions.

T h e p r o b I e m : (1) To design 1000 houses for 5000 refugees of the first World War, The site D (fig. 1 ) is by the highway which connects the airport, the tourist beach and occasionally the harbour of Piraeus, with the center of Athens.

(2) To design also all that is considered absolutely necessary for the life of the 1000 units which should be included in the pure housing part of the project.

T h e a s s u m p t i o n s : (1) The site D which is now occupied by the houses of the refugees is going to be used in the future for housing.

(2) The same people who are now housed there are going to become the occupants of the new redeveloped housing plus 25.0)0 more (maximum future increase of density).

(3) The maximum density of the area will stay at the level of 200 units per acre.

(4) The highway S is going to continue being the main gateway to the center of Athens from the airport etc. although of different nature in the future. It will consist of a local and an express levels.

(5) The economic standard of the redevelopment under study is going to be realistic.

(6) Since for the beginning and for quite a long part of the future the present occupants are going to live in the housing they must be considered as the «clients».

First we find the reality of the given numbers with which the problem is going to deal.

The dimensions of the site: 400x350 meters, the amount of the units: 1000.

Then we find their reality in terms of the given human institutions.

It comes that 400 x 350 meters mean a maximum walking distance (5 min.). In connection with the 1000 units that means that there can be a use of a common stop of public transportation (assuming that the walkways are protected ) and the inhabitants can go within the unit without any technological medium of transportation (normally). That means that they can share a series of public services that require a walking proximity from the houses.

They can share public services a cafe, a restaurant a food market and other shops. common workshops for small artisans, an infant station an elementary school etc. although lots of the above mentioned need a broader clientele. The result of this establishes a level of communicality between these inhabitants. The aggregation of the houses starts being a Whole, a Place identidiable containing actions associated with it.

It becomes a Compound Place an entity formed between a home and the city, the rest of the city, an inbetween place.

The interior of this place was materialised by the tissue of each unit-home (the wall-gate netting). Enclosing its interior simultaneously has generated and defined a new reality of an exterior-interior.

This is the true organic growth of the architectural tissue.

Note

We compared several times a work of architecture with an organism. It was used as a raison d'etre for its structural system and for its shape, as a result of what was happening in its interior. That was a very short sighted idea about what the role of the architectural tissue is, because it usually ignored that always a wall (and an opening) have two sides both of which are places for the use and thoughts of human beings.

Condused by this organic idea we ignored what the result of this use of the tissue was to the outside as a reaction to the facades of the Old Academy. Thus Modern Movement was created based on another fallacy. Eggs, mosquitoes and snails are marvelous organisms but they are very different from a building because they do not create a fixed environment around them. Thus a car, a jet or a submarine (another favorite simile of the organic architecture ) are more similar to the egg than to a building.

That was a result of a fragmentary mechanistic way of thinking splitting the two worlds the collective and the private, the house on one side the work entertainment as distinct parts and skipping, all the inbetween transitional worlds, the interactions between them.

The definition of the district as a Unit was achieved through the articulation of the inside outside relations. At the point where the houses touch the Gateway Slya point where violent, opposed forces occure the intermeding skin was thickened, the transition became extensive the wall and the gates became a place by itself an inbetween world of transitional Actions.

The actions that are placed here are either hierarchically between the two worlds or inter depended to both of them.

The shops that belong here are served by the city and serve the inhabitants of the district; the workshops have a similar function also; sevices where patronage belongs to the district but there are offer specialyties that have a patronage belonging to the outside infra-urban world of the high-way. There are a cinema, a restaurant, a gas station, a medical service station, a small library and a cafe (probably with oriental specialties ). People also going to those places like this sense of adjustment with the mobility and the anonymity of the Gateway. There are also some people who like to live for various reasons at this point (proximity, vitality).

Those actions also require places occupying big volumes which help to' create a protecting barrier for the undesirable actions that happen on the gateway and outside of the housing. It helps also to establish the special scale required for the gateway extremely different from the scale of the housing.

As scale regulator the building contains a different scale on each side. (An anathema for the purists ).

It was found also that the required density could be achieved by keeping a contact relation between the house and the ground and a vertical ownership of the units in one, two and three stories both creating a type of life not drastically different from what the present inhabitants have and absolutely opposed to what usually is offered for then as redeveloped houses for the poor all over the city.

The next step in the hierarchy of places was occupied by a promenade street containing playgrounds and kiosks.

Its shape was generated by a snake-like maisonette types of houses.

Those maisonettes and the wall building are the highest in the project. That explains three-dimensionally what happens on the ground. The skyline of the wall building with its humping outline and of the maisonettes with their undulating but even outline serves as points for orientation and identity within the district. The form of the promenade street was dictated by the twine actions that happen in it (a place to walk and a place to stay).

Thus reasons of visual climaxes for proceeding, of blocking the views, of forms to contain.

The mall contains again those twine actions but of different intensity.

In the diagrams is described how the final form evolves through the interaction of the over imposed net-levels.

Next to the scale of hierarchies comes the house. We mentioned before about its contact to the ground and vertical ownership requirements that were demanded and were achieved for most of the units with the exceptions of those on the gatewall building and these on the promenade street (representing also hierarchy of social and psychological status of a group of inhabitants ).

For the most common type of house which became the cell-unit of the project two types were used one more open and another more protected from the street. With this flexibility the facades reacted to requirements of orientation or of a choice of scale on the front places of the units. The off balance placement of the elementary school means that it belongs also to the district behind. It creates a state of open to the composition and a point of connection of the project with the neighbouring.

Reversion or the order syncopations and contradictions were created as results or the openness of the project to the city. Thus a diagonal axis points to the Acropolis (a non-pompous, ambiguous, but significant anchor to the city-history) the open corner or the wall building showing some or the units to the gateway.