Harbouring the City: urban and infrastructural encounters

The port of Piraeus in metropolitan Athens is one of the largest of its kind in Europe. It serves a significant civic passenger traffic connecting the Aegean archipelago, as well as a considerable flow of goods, holding a precious location in the global container-trade network. Part of the passenger port lays in direct relation with the city, highlighting its role as an active transport infrastructure and an integral feature of Piraeus’ identity. 

Our work attempts to tackle a double challenge, one that the greater area of the harbour is about to face in the years to come. On the one hand, both a new metro and a tram line will expand the existing transport network adding up to an already dense spatial condition. On the other hand, after the latest privatisation wave in Greece and due to its geostrategic position, Piraeus sparked the interests of shipping companies which ultimately took over, rearranging its dominant narratives and gradually subtracting it from the public realm.

The multiplicity of clashing interests among the various actors and stakeholders of the area has so far been resolved through a systematic distribution of space; materialised borderlines declare the state of division, while overpasses and flyovers separate incompatible components. In the midst of this fragmented landscape, our project speculates on a rearrangement of all the elements involved, establishing synergies as well as staging conflicts. This merging operation actually suggests new possibilities of sharing space and therefore seeks the appropriate mechanisms and forms that will make it possible.

If it is the clear allocation of agents and functions that serves narratives of effectiveness and safety, then any effort to embrace frictions among them requires a very thorough understanding of all the potential protocols involved; transport infrastructures, vehicles circulation, pedestrian movement and the port itself. An extensive series of maps and diagrams were produced, mainly focusing on the periodicity and ranging intensity cycles throughout day- and year- of the city-harbour ecosystem, proving an array of possibilities of overlapping and merging functions.

It became evident that the border between the city and the port cannot be represented by the simplistic linear element of the existing fence. Instead, the border is understood as a whole territory, loosely defined between the edge of the city and the quay. The port is not enclosed in itself. One understands oneself to be simultaneously at the port and the city; the project area becomes a threshold between them. What emerges is an inter-mediate space, subtly marked by its floor materials, where all independent functions are dispersed, assembling an amplified shared space: pedestrian movements, vehicle circulation, bus stops, ticket offices, kiosks, public toilets etc. Design elements like the ground formation or the floor materials, were used to encourage specific uses while limiting others, in an effort to balance the potential of all actors in negotiating their place. Apart from the soft and latent interventions, two large canopies were installed to accommodate certain groups of functions, further encouraging practises of sharing beneath them.