corrupt gold

The product of architectural design is often understood as being a 'crystallized' object; either a building or any other artifact. Computational tools, and the fundamental changes that digital media bring to contemporary ways of living in general, make it easier to imagine the product of design as a process; a protocol or a set of rules and strategies, transparent and well defined, that are able to describe and accommodate methods of production of space instead of defining directly that space. Aim of the studio was to explore the ways in which such protocols can be designed and to test the results, or the possible scenarios that can arise out of them in a bottom-up, non centralized fashion.

Such protocols can operate in at least two different scales or areas: One is defining the design process, a design 'machine' able to produce different result for different input; a design protocol. The second is the actual architecture itself: defining automated methods of construction that evolve over time inside a specified framework and produce spacial configurations that go through alternating, growing stages; a construction protocol. 

In the first part of the studio, the students were asked to develop a protocol/process that will be adaptable to different conditions that can be provided to it as input. The aim of the protocol is to control an adaptable process capable of generating differentiated spacial qualities while evolving and growing over time. The protocol in that context was understood as an abstract, scripted, computational construct, that does not depend on a specific site.

In the second part of the studio, the students were asked to apply their protocol in a specific situation that they found on the site. Therefore the generic/abstract process was developed into a specific design. At the same time, the bottom-up process of the first part, that was looking for emergent outcomes, had to be grafted with a top-down approach where personal interpretation, intuition and design decisions become equally important.

The site that the studio will worked with is in northern Chalkidiki, an area in northern Greece that is the site for a number of gold mines; while at the same time a place with a dense forest and a popular touristic destination. Mining activity however produces huge amounts of waste, which in most of the cases are highly toxic living behind contaminated earth and water and large wounds on the surface of the area. Right next to popular blue and cyan beaches that gather hordes of tourists during the summer one can find several mines and lakes of waste full of cyanide.

A new plan for the creation of an open pit mine at the location of Skouries, that is going to further downgrade the region. Then, in combination with the sketchy processes that led to the acquisition of the area by the mining company resulted in a remarkable movement of resistance by the local people who are demanding the open pit plan to be put on hold. The outcome was several demonstrations and clashes with the police and consequently the rise of a movement of solidarity and support around Greece and Europe.

The processes that the studio was seeking to create thus, were healing processes. Ways and strategies to inhabit the 'wasteland' left behind by the mining process while aiming at the same time to explore alternative scenarios for the area.

Final aim of the studio was to create an architectural narrative, that describes the process followed while at the same time imagines possible futures for the site and the area.