Visiting students of architecture envision the cities of the future400 people from 46 countries gather for conference in Elefsina
Within the huge hangar-like building that used to be the Elaiourgiki factory in Elefsina, 400 architecture students from 46 countries got together over two weeks this past summer in an unusual kind of collective-living situation to talk about and design models for future cities. With them were established architects, artists and members of academia. The place hummed with activity – video art, performances, scale models, installations, textiles, colors and people, all in a continual flow of organized chaos. Elefsina was chosen for this year’s Pan-European Conference of Young Architects and Architecture Students because it has been seriously affected by heavy industry, landfill sites, shipbuilding yards, oil refineries and anarchic construction. At the same time, however, it is a town that is being redefined. Its three main levels, the ancient, early and later industry, combine to shape its image, one that these young architects tried to comprehend, comment on and make use of. These conferences began in 1981, when architecture students from Liverpool, UK, invited students from the rest of Europe to suggest solutions to their own city’s problems. In the old factory in Elefsina, the students attended lectures, took part in exhibitions, competitions, debates. They talked, laughed, argued, held parties, went out for walks and to the beach, had fun and worked hard. Over two weeks they made friends, fell in love, produced art, architecture and ideas for their own ideal city. Yvonne Michel, 27, Lichtenstein «No space should be wasted. More people can fit into one place, as long as everything is more compact, and spaces between buildings are used. A town means living in close proximity. By creating gardens in front of and behind buildings, you can create distance between people, and the idea of a city breaks down.» Eva Kanagasabai, 21, Germany Ambitious and romantic, she wants future cities to make use of their parts that have been destroyed in order to become special, like Berlin. «It is both old and new. It is special because it isn’t perfect anywhere. I want urban space to be used so that there is variety. Homogeneity is boring…» Guillaume Demorsier, 25, Switzerland «People are interested in being close to stations buses, roads, to be able to move faster from one place to another. Squares have already disappeared. We will keep them, they will have the same social role but a different form. We will build higher and there will be green spaces and squares within the buildings themselves… Elefsina has pleasantly surprised me. There are so many contrasts… In one small area, there are archaeological ruins and industries, like a puzzle.» Elena Antonopoulou, 25, Greece Elena has confidence in the town’s inhabitants, who will make an active contribution to creating and developing its image. «With certain rules, naturally, but not as restricting as those imposed by over-designing, just like Greek cities… the way in which they are unplanned. Even if they don’t have the social ghettos of other cities, Greek cities are interesting for another reason: They are a mosaic. In the end, cities today, because of the movement of populations, are precisely that: small pieces.» Hugo Lamont, 24, Ireland «Cities will become higher. Dublin has a huge problem because of the anarchic spread of housing. It is spreading to its fringes. Although architects are making designs, the same things are being built over and over. For years people worked the land and now they want gardens. The strange thing is that although the center is filling up, people still want gardens. That’s how I have been used to living. That won’t change in high cities, it will simply take a different form. In Tokyo, they’ll have gardens in the sky. For me, that’s the ideal.»
