Agora, Garden, Monument: Recent Transformations in Athenian Public Space

Monday, March 30, 2015 at 7:45 pm

DIKEMES Auditorim

Plateia Stadiou 5

Agora, Garden, Monument:  

Recent Transformations in Athenian Public Space

In the Depression Era, the ideal of Public Space as a place of encounter, diversity and openness, where the individual meets the city, seems lost.  A different set of places, at the edge of the city, emerge:  contemporary Agoras, Gardens and Monuments, sheltered from the city, offering relief, ideology and joy.  What are their characteristics, how do they nurture a new type of citizen, and what can architecture do to bring them back into the city?

Petros Babasikas is founding member of the design collaborative Drifting City and co-curator of the Depression Era Project.  He teaches architectural design and theory at Patras University.  His work explores the connections between architecture, storytelling, media and public space.  It has focused, over the past decade, in the Mediterranean Metropolis and the digital city.  He studied Architecture and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and received his MArch from Princeton University.