PAST YEARS PARTICIPANTS IN THE KAM WORKSHOPS WORKING GROUPS: CHRISTINA ACHTYPI _ ANDREAS ANGELIDAKIS _ ANTOINETTA ANGELIDI _ DIMITRIS ANTONAKAKIS _ AIKATERINI ANTONAKAKI _ ARISTIDE ANTONAS _ YANNIS ARVANITIS _ ANGELIKI AVGHITIDOU _ ELINA AXIOTI _ ANDREA BALESTRERO _ ETHEL BARAONA POHL _ IRO BERTAKI _ VASSILIS BOURDAKIS _ ELIAS CONSTANTOPOULOS _ SHUMON BASAR _ MICHELE BRUNELLO _ RICCARDO CALDURA _ KOSTAS DAFLOS _ ALEXIS DALLAS _ DIMITRIS DIMITRIADIS _ DIMOS DIMITRIOU _ ΜATTEO GHIDONI _ DIMITRIS GOURDOUKIS _ MANUEL JORANT BRIQUETTE _ HARIKLEIA HARI _ VILMA HASTAOGLOU _ KOSTAS HATDJIKIRIAKOU _ DIMITRIS ISSAIAS _ PLATON ISSAIAS _ NADIA KALARA _ ELINA KARANASTASI _ ZISSIS KOTIONIS _ ANDREAS KOURKOULAS _ PANOS KOUROS _ VASSILIKI LEONTARI _ EVA MANIDAKI _ FOTINI MARGARITI _ PETROS MARTINIDIS _ POLIXENI MATZIOU _ THANASSIS MOUTSOPOULOS _ ΒERT DE ΜUYNCK _ NIKOS NAVRIDIS _ FILIPPOS OREOPOULOS _ NIKOS PATSAVOS _ GEORGIOS PANETSOS _ PANAYOTIS PANGALOS _ KOSTIS PANIGIRIS _ LOIS PAPADOPOULOS _ SPIROS PAPADOPOULOS _ CHRISTOS PAPOULIAS _ VASSILIKI PETRIDOU _ LILI PEZANOU _ MARIOS PHOCAS _ PETROS PHOKAIDES _ ANGELO PLESSAS _ DIMITRIS POLYCHRONOPOULOS _ PANAYOTA PYLA _ CAROLINE RASPÉ _ ELPIDA RIKOU _ ALCYSTIS RODI _ LORENZO ROMITO _ RENA SAKELLARIDOU _ EVI SOUGKARA _ DIMITRIS STAMATAKIS _ EVA STEFANI _ VASSILIS STROUMBAKOS _ CHRISANTHI SOTIROPOULOU _ DIMITRIS TSAKALAKIS _ CHRISOSTOMOS TSIMOURDANGAS _ YORGOS TZIRTZILAKIS _ REA VALDEN _ ARISTOMENIS VAROUDAKIS _ YANNIKOS VASILOULIS _ STAVROS VERGOPOULOS _ VANGELIS VLAHOS _ ARIADNE VOZANI _ MARIA VRONTISI _ SOFIA VYZOVITI _ ZAFOS XAGORARIS _ GIORGOS XIROPAIDIS _ IOANNIS ZAVOLEAS


KAM summer workshops were initiated as a particular way to think again what "architecture in a local frame" could mean; how an architectonic investigation could be driven towards local phenomena? Aristide Αntonas, Filippos Oraiopoulos and Ζafos Χagoraris formed the first working team. A determination to approach architecture as a "site specific elaboration" brings us to the 2011's "Value of Garbage": it was always a question of propagating the local to an international level: an interest for a city’s “insignificant” places was the first manifested declaration of the team. The third workshop (proposed under the name “paradigmata”) represented Greece for the 9th architecture biennale of Venice. The biennial project, extended the investigation to insignificant places around Greece and in Cyprus. The “paradigmata” project formed the field of an intense experiment of defining sites through groups of invitees. After the “paradigmata” year, the term «κτιστό συμβάν» (built event) was used in order to describe a particular architectonic area between a procedure and the procedure’s traces: "built event" was also the name of a series of works undertaken by different teams, directed by Antonas and Oraiopoulos. A theatrical preparation of a built procedure, a work of tracing, and the procedure’s resultant traces were considered as equally important parts of the same constructive procedure: a problematic description was always at stake defining or "building" insignificant places. The deposited projects were proposed as alternative views of the places, as constructed definitions of the insignificant spots. Last year the workshop (curated by Antonas and Vergopoulos) included the elaboration of some first quick reactions that could drive the design of the following years.

In this year's "Value of Garbage" issue, the workshop will investigate architecture as a particular moment of a crisis of values. The particular Greek moment has already been read last year as an emblematic case: a positive, constructive look to the bankrupted planet that we keep building is needed. Some strong concepts need to be redefined, such the concept of “reuse". Some changes of the value systems have to be taken under consideration for the function of a workshop that always related art to architecture through theoretical investigation.
  17 AUG
press conference
introduction

Techniques of Deevaluation
    Aristide Antonas
Symptom, Garbage, Excrement:
Topologies of Value

    Yannis Stavrakakis
  18 AUG
ΧΥΤΑ visit
morning session

Waste... There is no Away
    Anita Hackethal
  17-20 AUG
1st week studio
Point Supreme (coordination)
with Ekaterini Antonakaki,
Apostolos Kalfopoulos, Evi
Sougara, Eleni Spiridaki,
1st week invited speakers will follow the studio for one or two sessions.
  19 AUG
morning session
An Architectural Reconciliation with
the Manmade Debris Drosscape

    Elina Karanastasi
Decomposition
    Panayotis Pangalos
Decay
    Vassiliki Petridou
evening lectures
The Garbage and the Context
    Konstantinos Pantazis
    Marianna Rentzou
    (Point Supreme)
Political Waste
    Tassos Sakellaropoulos
  20 AUG
evening lecture
Love in a Trash Can
    Apostolos Kalfopoulos
 the Value
of Garbage
KAM workshops 2011
  21 AUG
mid-presentations & jury
Lois Papadopoulos (coordination)
with Kostis Mavrakakis, Georgios
Panetsos, Nikos Patsavos,
Alcystis Rodi, Sofia Vizoviti
  22 AUG
evening lecture
Post-empire: the Battle of the
Generations and its Garbage

    Panos Dragonas
  23 AUG
morning session
The Residual Character
of Commons in the Age of
Digital Reproduction

    Petros Moris
    Pegy Zali
    (KERNEL)
  22-25 AUG
2nd week studio
Divercity (coordination) with
Orestis Argyropoulos, Elina Axioti, Aris Cohen, Angelos Floros,
Platon Issaias, Apostolos Kalfopoulos, Katerina Koutsogianni, Ioannis Oikonomou, 2nd week
invited speakers will follow the studio for one or two sessions.
  26 AUG
final presentations & jury
Stavros Vergopoulos (coordination) with Christina Achtypi, Bouki Babalou, Yannis Filis, Titi Papadopoulou, Philippos Oraiopoulos, Nikolas Travasaros,
  17-26 AUG
workshop transmissions
Lamb and Lamp (Elina Axioti,
Evi Sougara, Eleni Spiridaki,
Yannikos Vassiloulis) with
Petros Phokaides and Eva
Papamargariti

    Center of
    Mediterranean
    Architecture


summer workshops for
graduate and postgraduate
students of architecture

Venetian port, Chania, Crete
kamworkshops@gmail.com

Through the condition of the current global financial crisis, alternative concepts of “economy” challenge the obvious values of things today.

At this stage the notion of waste determines from one side what remains exterior to the current value system and on the other hand, identifies/conditions precisely the stability of the current value system’s interior and its adequacy. Everything is defined through a process in which waste, from the one side, shows the limit of the world economy (representing an area outside it), while, from the other -somehow - the waste identifies the internal space of this economy, organizing the financial systematic order by an idiosyncratic negation.

What may be an architecture of waste today? What can be a product of waste? This question will determine an architectonic investigation at this year's workshop. We encounter efforts to find a new place for waste in today's economy; waste has already become important and we are already surrounded by rhetorics of waste, recycling strategies, sustainability discourses: waste remains a constant reference gaining more ground and its performativity in contemporary culture is usually ascertained as based on "obvious facts". Any waste seems to be worthy of our attention, and also as defeating the self-evident character of the value of garbage, based too on idealizations. Architecture’s growing systematic approach to waste also seems to depend on idealizations of the concept of nature and unthoughtful political rhetoric.

With the emergence of waste as a thematic priority, the Center for Mediterranean Architecture’s 10th workshop for summer 2011 aims to re-examine or re-invent a role for architectural theories in the current crisis in order that they result from its controlled bankruptcy. The reconstruction of the theoretical conditions under which waste is shown asks for an explanation of its symbolic power. Architecture tends to appear more and more as evidence of the correct use of garbage. But it needs some confirmation of the value of non-waste to confirm the value of the conversion of waste into a valuable species. The question of the workshop will be: how, through an investigation about waste, strategies of valuation can be organized today? In this process of valuation, is it possible to talk about the product in a way that shows that even the value of waste turns into a fantasmatic waste of precious material? Through which architectures could we avoid an idealized “hidden narcissism of waste”? How could we reconsider new values for architectural production out of new waste strategies?

The workshop will produce elementary constructions out of waste and design projects that will be exposed as usual in the Center of Mediterranean Architecture headquarters in the Venician port of Chania, Crete. A lectures program will run in parallel to the design seminars.



Supported by
AUTH, School of Architecture
UTH, Department of Architecture
University of Patras, Department of Architecture
NTUA, School of Architecture
MAiCh
Στη συνθήκη της σημερινής παγκόσμιας οικονομικής κρίσης οι εναλλακτικές έννοιες της οικονομίας προσφέρουν προκλήσεις για επανακαθορισμούς της απόδοσης αξιών σε πράγματα, συμπεριφορές, ταυτότητες, σε αντικειμενα και υποκείμενα: μπορεί να θεωρούμε τις αξίες αυτές δεδομένες κι ωστόσο η προφάνεια των αξιών μοιάζει ακυρωμένη σήμερα, με τρόπους που οφείλουν να μας απασχολήσουν.

Η έννοια του "απορρίμματος" εκφράζει από την μια μεριά την εξωτερικότητα του σημερινού αξιακού συστήματος και από την άλλη μεριά προσδιορίζει ακριβώς την ευστάθεια του συστήματος και την επάρκειά του. Στη σκηνή αυτή καθετί που ορίζεται ως απόρριμμα από την μια μεριά δείχνει το όριο του κόσμου της οικονομίας (παρουσιάζοντας την περιοχή εκτός αυτής) και από την άλλη προσδιορίζει με κάποιο τρόπο το εσωτερικό της καθώς συντάσσει τον οικονομικό ορίζοντα της.

Τι μπορεί να αποτελεί αρχιτεκτονική του απορρίμματος; Τι μπορεί να είναι προϊόν του απορρίμματος; Τα ερωτήματα αναζητούν, στο φετινό εργαστήριο αρχιτεκτονικής τού Κέντρου Αρχιτεκτονικής Μεσογείου, τον προσδιορισμό τους. Οι προσπάθειες να ενταχθεί το απόρριμμα μέσα σε κάποια νέα θέση της σημερινής οικονομίας αποτελεί μόνιμη σταθερά που φαίνεται να κερδίζει ολοένα έδαφος και να μετατρέπεται σε “αυτονόητο δεδομένο”. Κάθε τέτοιο δεδομένο αξίζει την προσοχή μας, αξίζει επίσης η κατάρριψη του αυτονόητου χαρακτήρα του που εδράζεται υποχρεωτικά σε ιδεοληψίες.

Με την ανάδειξη του απορρίμματος ως θεματικής προτεραιότητας, το εργαστήριο αρχιτεκτονικής του 2011 θέτει ως στόχο να εξετάσει εκ νέου την κατάσταση της αρχιτεκτονικής σε συνθήκη κρίσης και την σκέψη που προκύπτει μετά από την χρεοκοπία της. Ο επανακαθορισμός των θεωρητικών όρων με βάση τους οποίους παρουσιάζεται το απόρριμμα ζητά εξηγήσεις για τη συμβολική του δύναμη. Η αρχιτεκτονική τείνει να εμφανίζεται ολοένα και περισσότερο ως απόδειξη μεταποίησης του σκουπιδιού. Χρειάζεται όμως κάποια επιβεβαίωση της αξίας των μη-απορριμμάτων για να επιβεβαιώνεται η αξία της μετατροπής του απορρίμματος σε αξιόλογο είδος. Το ερώτημα του εργαστηρίου θα ήταν με ποιον τρόπο το απόρριμμα οργανώνει στρατηγικές αξιοδότησης σήμερα; Υπάρχει σε αυτή τη διαδικασία αξιοδότησης κάτι που να μιλά για το προϊόν με τρόπο που να φανερώνει ότι ήδη η αξία των απορριμμάτων μετατρέπει το απόρριμμα σε κάποια φανταστική πολύτιμη ύλη; Με ποιόν τρόπο θα μπορούσε να αποφύγουμε κάποιον ιδεολογημένο ναρκισσισμό του απορρίμματος;

Το εργαστήριο θα παράγει κάποιες στοιχειώδεις κατασκευές από απορρίμματα και θα σχεδιάσει projects που θα εκτεθούν στο τέλος του στον ισόγειο χώρο του ΚΑΜ στο Μεγάλο Αρσενάλι.







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KAM books
KAM books
  KAM show
in Thessaloniki
  May 2011
  the Value
of Garbage
  blog
  2 quotes
  the Bankruptcy
of Architecture
  blog - KAM 2010
  studio works
  and talks
  at Chania
made by Lamb and Lamp