Summer Abroad in Greece, Athens

Hydra Cities: Athens, Greece

Studio at CCA: May 17–21, 2010

In Greece: May 24–June 9, 2010

Instructor: Nataly Gattegno, with Jason K. Johnson

Description

Athens, Istanbul, Beirut, Alexandria, Venice; these Eastern Mediterranean port cities, linked by both culture and water, are often used for the study of historic urban artifacts. They have seldom been explored as contemporary cities facing extreme global environmental changes in addition to the infrastructural, political, and economic challenges that will have an immense impact on shaping their architectural futures.

The historic trade connections these cities share suggest an alternate recentering of contemporary European architecture—farther east and back to the waters of the Mediterranean. They describe an architecture steeped in a history of diverse cultures simultaneously located in hyper-dense, urban, water-bound environments. Similar to many cities along the California coast, these cities are continually growing away from their water’s edge while dealing with the emergent ecologies, infrastructural, and environmental needs of that growth.

This studio introduces students to the alternate hyperdense Mediterranean urbanism by exploring and using Athens as its laboratory. Participants explore the classical and modern city and work with a range of cartographic and data-based methods for visualizing urban and environmental systems. Students develop an analytical database for understanding the intertwined cultural, political, and geographical histories and the ways these have shaped their architectural and urban development.

The study of the geomorphology of Athens culminates in the design of speculative proposals for the Kifissos River—a 30-kilometer stretch of river that runs through the heart of Athens and currently occupies a complex culvert that weaves through the city and into its major port, Piraeus.

Hydra Cities studies and explores Athens—both classical and modern—from Hadrian’s 25-kilometer Roman aqueduct to the modern port of Piraeus; the ancient waterworks of Mycenae and the Acropolis to the newly reconsidered contemporary waterfront of the city of Athens; Renzo Piano’s proposal for the Faliron Bay promenade, Santiago Calatrava’s Olympic Stadium, and Bernard Tschumi’s Acropolis Museum.

The studio has a dedicated work space in downtown Athens in which to do research and work. Though Athens is the base camp, the students visit a number of sites beyond the city limits to further understand the relationship of human settlement and urban growth relative to water: Delphi, Cape Sounion, the carved out settlements of Oia, the ancient city of Akrotiri in Santorini, and the island of Hydra—a hydrologically designed town just off the coast of Athens.

The course begins with a one-week design charrette in San Francisco, investigating the history, culture, and intertwined ecosystems of both the Mediterranean and Athens. Students then travel to Athens for two and a half weeks, where the class engages faculty and students from local universities (the University of Patras and the National Technical University of Athens) and a local environmental sustainability agency (Ecoweek, NGO). Lectures, discussions and work reviews have been organized with local architects, landscape architects, and urban planners.

About the Instructor

Nataly Gattegno is a member of the architecture faculty at California College of the Arts and its ECOlab project coordinator. She is a founding design partner of Future Cities Lab, an interdisciplinary design and research collaborative that was recently awarded the Van Alen New York Prize in Systems and Ecology (2009). Future Cities Lab's work has also been awarded an Unbuilt Architecture Award from the Boston Society of Architects and has been widely published and exhibited.

Gattegno has previously taught at the University of Virginia and was the 2008–9 Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan TCAUP. Her research and teaching delves into issues of context, nature, ecology, and technology in urban planning and design; it investigates the relationship between information and design and the opportunities of a design process inextricably linked to research. She has been exploring the opportunities of design in extreme environments as a vehicle of investigating the relationship between energy and form.

Gattegno is a native of Athens, where she has practiced and participated in workshops, design charrettes, and discussions about the architectural and urban future of the city. She was awarded the Stanley Seeger Traveling Fellowship from Princeton University for research on the urban condition of Athens. Her interests were furthered by extensive research in the work of urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis and his vision for the city of the future as a networked, ecosystemic, "ekistic" entity.

She is on the board of Ecoweek, a nonprofit organization founded in Athens that mobilizes young designers and students to rethink the sustainability and interrelationships of their urban environments. MA, Cambridge University, St. Johns College; MArch, Princeton University

Jason Kelly Johnson is an assistant professor at California College of the Arts and a founding design partner of Future Cities Lab. At CCA he teaches design studios and research seminars in design, urbanism, and advanced technologies. His research seminar “Robotic Ecologies” explores responsive environments, interactive kinetic architectures, and self-organizing intelligent systems. Johnson is also CCA’s MEDIAlab cocoordinator. He has previously taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and the University of Pennsylvania.

While studying at Princeton, Johnson was awarded a Butler Traveling Fellowship, a Princeton University Academic Fellowship, and the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Thesis Prize for design research. He was the guest editor of 306090, a journal of emergent architecture and design, distributed by Princeton Architectural Press. BS, University of Virginia; MArch, Princeton University

Prerequisite

Undergraduate: completion of Studio 4 by summer 2010 and instructor approval.
Graduate: instructor approval

In addition students must be in good academic, conduct, and financial standing for the 2009–10 academic year.

Course Satisfies

This course satisfies 3 units of Advanced Studio, an open architecture elective, or an open/studio elective (any discipline).

Program fee

$4350 + $50 summer registration fee
Program fee includes:
3 units, housing, local transportation in Greece, breakfast, museum/field-trip entry fees

Program fee does not include:
Airfare to and from Greece, lunches and dinners, travel insurance, medical or personal insurance (students must provide their own insurance)

Eligibility

This course is designed for current CCA degree students; however, students from other NAAB-accredited colleges may be able to enroll on a space-available basis after March 31. If you are not a CCA degree student and are interested in enrolling, please contact the Office of Special Programs at 510.594.3710.