THE CONTEXT
Tourism is a massive phenomenon of rural colonization, which extends par excellence to coastal areas of particular natural beauty. The colonization of the coasts, with heavy material infrastructure, upsets the balances of the land, creating irreversible environmental footprints. Greece is currently in a new economic and political condition, where the country’s recovery is supposed to necessarily pass through the liberation of every form of activity, jurisdiction and exploitation of its coasts. The coasts, from a common good, are transformed into an economic magnitude. Thus, the economic crisis will immediately turn into an environmental crisis if the plans and legislation abolishing any limit to the colonization of the extensive coastal reserve are not stopped. How is the responsibility of architecture redefined in this condition?
THE PROPOSAL
The concept of coastal habitation with a minimized environmental footprint is investigated. The planning and design of a mobile-floating hotel unit is proposed, to minimize the environmental footprint, as well as to produce an amphibious habitation experience. Thus, the ground of the architecture is not the land but the sea surface. The floating unit consists of a typical open-type car ferry, which is converted to transport fifty floating habitation units for the accommodation of one hundred vacationers. The choice of this type of ship attempts to activate a surplus and partially decommissioned fleet of the Greek coast. The ship visits inaccessible, protected coastlines. The floating units are moored, shared, inhabited and reassembled. The mother ship functions as a mobile reception area for shared hotel functions, with the possibility of “landing” in areas accessible from the sea. The floating units are the “rooms”—with simple ergonomic organization and energy autonomy—of a semi-outdoor and amphibious habitation. For hydrostatic and symbolic reasons, the shape of a typical mooring buoy for light boats (remetzo), of those that fill the Greek coasts during the summer months, is used.
THE SUBJECT: AMPHIBORG
The proposal invokes an Epicurean perception of austere living and ecstatic hedonism. The fantasy of life by the sea, which gives meaning to vacationing, is pushed to its limits, as the subject is activated in an amphibious condition of life. The conditions of habitation of the floating medium, as a field of amphibious life, are explored. The future of architecture is linked to the diverse and still unknown possibility of habitation of the sea. This technical possibility presupposes a new experience, where the immaterial fantasy of the cyborg acquires the materiality of water in the condition of habitation of the amphiborg.
Participation in the Greek pavilion at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale 2014.
In collaboration with Vasias Lyris, Konstantinos Zve, Giorgos Rymenidis, Michalis Softas.
Energy Planning Consultant: Aris Tsagkrasoulis.