Magnetized Space

PROLOGUE

Once, the city was divided into two parts, the Athenians and the Metics. In the past, the Metics came with their craft skills. In 2004, they came to build Athens a new village for the Olympic Games. They were brought in to build the nation, however, never accepted as Athenians nor part of Athens.

REFLECTION ON THE IDEAL takes us beyond present Athens into deep historical time. It is the empty heart, a part of Athens’ identity that was never acknowledged. Through the landscape of historical concurrences, this is the journey of both the Athenians and Metics to realise and accept that Athens was and will be built together.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS from where it fell, the abandoned Athens Stock Exchange, now, the Mountain of Refused. It marks the beginning of a Metic’s journey to being an Athenian, passing through Magnetized Space, which reinterprets the qualities of the ancient Agora.

AGORA, its literal meaning of the word is “Gathering place/ Assembly". Centre of the lower town, its natural place is near the Acropolis. Thus the agora and Acropolis formed a sort of double nucleus. In practical and political importance the agora constantly gained at the expense of the Acropolis, until in the end it became the most vital and distinctive element of the city, the living heart. The Acropolis became superfluous, a survival; though must remember that one of the richness things which gave Greek life its peculiar richness was retention and transformation of archaic survivals. It remained essentially a single whole, or at least strongly resisted division. It was the constant resort of all citizens and it did not spring to life on special occasions but was the daily scene of social life (civic centre), commercial (market) and politics (administration of justice).

MAGNETIZED SPACE is the allegory of a magnetic field which will become the new living heart of Athens. With the Acropolis (representing the Athenians) and Mountain of Refused (representing the Metics) on each end, the journey is drawn from the symbology of ritual laced by the symbology of architecture.

MOUNTAIN OF THE REFUSED is represented by a compact depository of Metic’s life story in Athens that have never been documented. Each of these artifacts is in its time directed into the history, present and future. It marks the beginning of a Metic’s journey.

THE FOREST attempts "to completely disorient & dwarf the Metics” between the pillars that rise out of the rectangle plot, below the shades of the great philosophers 1_Pillars take the proportion of the classical Greek order; Doric, Ionic, Corinthian 2_Great philosophers stand tall on the pillars; of both Athenians & Metics  3_Simplified concrete pillars with painted graffiti symbolize present Athens.

THE CAVE comprises of three cavernous voids intended as a screen for alienated reflection to prepare the Metics for the Asylum where they will undergo the legal procedure of becoming an Athenian. Acting on the “subconscious”, from the Forest, a Metic descend into the underground Caves symbolizing the connection between the three realities; the past, present and future.