Agglomeration of Empty Shops
The empty shops did not belong at a singular project in the past, but they were situated in a linear system of athenian arcades. The proprietors or the renters decided the nature of the business that was proposed to be placed at every spot. The agglomeration of the empty shops would programmatically include the (abandoned now) spaces into a single project. Even if the agglomeration does not offer a continuous experience, the project was undertaken with the ambition that the first impression of a random passage through the arcades would give the impression of a single decision operated in a number of rooms. The occupation of the empty shops would have to perform at a first level with a singular logic. A space of an open ad hoc university or a system of discussion rooms or equipped rooms for temporary shows could transform this linear spaces to a different entity. The unity of the intervention is indicated by the continuity of the arcades. At a second level what had to be secured was the exact opposite: the multiplicity of this fragmentary space had to be again secured and guaranteed as the most important part of the intervention. An inhomogeneous functionality is programmed. An unusual urban curating had to firstly define the unity of its intention, organize and colonize the empty space and secondly keep the scale of the small shops in a unified intervention. An accurate and complex programming is here analogue to an idiosyncratic, public curatorial work where the functions of the spaces are curated.
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Athens, 2014
Collaborators: Elina Axioti, Katerina Koutsogianni, Katerina Grigoropoulou