"Urban Law and the physiognomy of the city" (original) (raw)

The influence of Urban Law on the physiognomy of the city

2005

Law imposes rules which define a legal behaviour of a nation organised in a society. Legal, ethical or written rules derive from myth, customs or religion and express ethnological, religious, cultural, political, social and financial conditions together with each society's special characteristics which leave proportionally their mark on the urban landscape. At first the paper analyses urban legal rules with an impact on the physiognomy of the city, such as those referring to the protection of architectural heritage, industrial sites, the building coefficient, the city density, billboards and things subject to public use. Urban rules will be examined separately according to their implementation field, national and local. Secondly the paper examines the jurisprudence of the Greek Council of State over the protection of the built environment and the city landscape. Throughout the paper will be given examples of the implementation of the above legal framework and jurisprudence on th...

The Present And The Future OfThe Greek Urban Landscape

1970

This paper investigates the basic parameters that affect the transformation of urban forms, focusing on the elements that define the image of the contemporary Greek city. A first important group of such parameters is connected to the endogenous dynamic of the socio-economic content of the Greek cities. It is true that the mixture of gradually added layers, or piles, of the urban fabric, keeps a differentiation or diversity to an extent in an internal aspect, but also, compared to the typical sense of “European city image”, as well. A second group of parameters is connected to the recent trends and inflows from the European and international reality, which are considered to lead to a certain homogenization of the urban landscape. A main aim of the present work is to investigate this trend on the Greek paradigm. This paper adopts a case studies’ approach, organized in two stages: Initially the motives and effects which have shaped the Greek urban landscape during the past decades are ...

The Greek Urban Block since the Establishment of the Greek State in 19th – A Chronicle about Morphology and Urban Form

HISTORY - URBANISM - RESILIENCE . 17th IPHS Conference, 2016

Based on literature and archival research along with specific plans, the study considers the different transformations of the Greek urban block in relation to street network, built and open space. Case studies such as Thessaloniki, Athens, Patra, Serres, offer the opportunity to highlight the evolution of the Greek urban block through representative examples of urban development in specific periods of Greek history: in the neoclassic city of the 19 th century, during the beginning of 20 th century, during the interwar period (1923-1940) and in the postwar city during 1950s and 1970s. The investigation focuses on the general historical framework connected to urban development, whereas specific masteplans showcase the practice of each period respectively. moreover, the study highlights parameters, which form, reform or transform the urban blocks, such as planning principles and design tools. The objective of this research is to analyze characteristics and qualities of the morphology of urban blocks in order to understand its importance in the organization of the city.

“Balancing Acts Between Ancient and Modern Cities: The Ancient Greek Cities Project of C. A. Doxiadis”, Architectural Histories 3 (1): 19 (2015), pp. 1-22. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ah.cv

This paper examines the inception and development of the Ancient Greek Cities (AGC) research project (1963–77) of Constantinos A. Doxiadis and addresses the novelty of its methodological approach to the study of classical urbanism. With the AGC project, Doxiadis launched a comprehensive study of the ancient Greek built environment to provide an overview of the factors involved in its shaping. The project produced 24 published volumes — the first two laying out the historical and methodological parameters of the ensuing 22 monographs with case studies — as well as 12 unpublished manuscripts, and through international conferences initiated a wider dialogue on ancient cities beyond the classical Greek world. It was the first interdisciplinary study that attempted to tackle the environmental factors, together with the social and economic ones, underpinning the creation, development and operation of ancient Greek cities. Doxiadis’s innovative approach to the analysis of the ancient city was indebted to his practice as an architect and town planner and was informed by his theory of Ekistics. His purpose was to identify the urban planning principles of ancient Greek settlements in order to employ them in his projects. This paper examines the concept and methodology of the AGC project as well as the ways in which Doxiadis used the study of ancient cities in relation to his contemporary urban/architectural agendas, and explains this important moment in the historiography of ancient Greek urbanism.

Practice and theory in Greek urban design

2009

The phenomenon that has intensively been recorded in contemporary Greek urban reality is the observed deviation between built urban environment and the process of teaching urban planning in universities. The particularities of local architecture, products of the effort of adapting the peculiar urban landscape combined with the existing climatic conditions, are often ignored in order to create impressive elements (most times copies of international corresponding) aiming at superficial impressions than to function and duration. “Impression of the moment “often restricts urban formations to smoothly integrate within existing urban terrain and prohibits project to adequately adjust the existing environmental conditions. As soon as young students from architectural schools begin their profession as licensed architects, they realise the amount of legislative restrictions they have to face in order to adjust their practices to contemporary Greek urban status. Consequently, they are “trappe...

The Stadium as Generator of Urban Form. The Case of the Panthessaliko Stadium in Volos

Feliciotti, A., Fleishmann, M. (eds.). ISUF Annual Conference Proceedings of the XXVIII International Seminar on Urban Form: "Urban Form and the Sustainable and Prosperous City", 2022

The Panthessaliko Stadium was built in Volos, a city 325 km North of Athens, to host some events for the 2004 Olympic Games. It is settled in the neighborhood of Xirokampos, on the northern fringe of the city. The area is defined by a variety of typologies and scales that represents very well the urban development of the Greek city since 1970s that has driven to the final loss of any urban morphological coherency. The objective of this paper is to investigate the urban form of Xirokampos with the scope to reframe the typology of the stadium - a special building at a very large scale - as a civic building that may play a crucial role in the city. To understand the impact of this typology on the urban environment is relevant in order to reframe its cultural, social, and formal meaning, both in reference to underused existing sport infrastructure as well as to new planned developments. The paper will investigate, at first, the historical evolution of the urban form of the examined area of Volos in order to understand the relationships among the various parts - characterized by different typologies, forms, and spaces - that compose the neighbourhood, and it will conclude with the presentation of the results of some studies conducted at the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly, where students had to analyze and challenge the impact of the stadium by re-designing the surrounding city.