DRW
Exhibition
UDAMOU, GREECE & VENICE, ITALY
2014

Mechanism of Suspension – Infrastructure and Legislation for free Camping

Research and design project exhibited in the Greek pavilion ‘Tourism Landscapes: Remaking Greece’ at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia: ‘Fundamentals’.

Mechanism of Suspension is a collective project launched in March 2014, exhibited in the 14th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia as part of the Greek Participation. The commissioner required the design of a tourist accommodation unit in an idyllic, non-existent coastal landscape, to which the proposal replied with three complementary elements.

The first consists of an alternative legislative framework against the privatisation of the coast, and in support of free access to the commons and the definition of communal use, with an emphasis on the conceptual categories of need and self-negation. The second invents the exemplary Udamou Beach (Nowhere land) and finally the third, constructs a field and an infrastructure for free camping.  
The project is a machine that reconfigures a coastal landscape to function as a field for outdoor free accommodation. It attempts to curate logistically and legislatively the territory that supports this possibility. Precondition for the existence of this infrastructure is the radical modification of the current legal framework that would guarantee and protect free camping and the free use of the commons. The landscape that derives from this process performs as an expanded field of different zones, spatial definitions, activities, and forms of living. It does not have an owner, a fence or a monitored entrance and it cannot be appropriated. It is free, reversible, and offers access to common utility networks without compensation, while any productive activity, supply or provision concerns the needs of users and inhabitants – not profit.
The infrastructure is not a building but an exposed machine. A field that measures and produces energy, collects, and provides water, organises basic hygienic facilities, water supply and an irrigation network, manages waste, produces, stores, and disposes food, while it materialises fundamental architectural arrangements defining the territory. The living units do not unfold in relation to the infrastructure but occupy the field. Lightweight tents, fabrics, and other temporary arrangements construct the various units of accommodation.
The relation between infrastructure, dwelling and landscape intensifies the paradox of an otherwise free camping site designed as an open machine for living. The often hidden parts of a building – cables, pipes, tanks, boilers, storage, cranes, refrigerators, kitchens, toilets, basins and faucets – are uncovered “in the middle of nowhere”, exposing the sheer size of all things considered as the minimum necessary. How can we expose the limits – political and social – of the ruthless exploitation and privatisation that the current economy and way of life enforce?
[Project Microsite]

Team
Theodossis Issaias
Platon Issaias
Alexandra Vougia
Thanos Zartaloudis / Lawyer
Collaborators
Alexandros Avlonitis / Architect
Chrysoula Korovesi / Architect, artist, graphic designer
Ilias Matsas / Mechanical engineer
Stavros Milonas / Architect - Prelab, Prototyping and Reverse Engineering
Categories
Collective Equipment, Ecology, Environment, Infrastructure, Policy, Provision, Research, Speculative, Sustainability, Territory

About

Fatura Collaborative – Research & Design Practice, was founded in 2009 and is developing projects across a wide range of scales, from intimate objects and performance, to architecture, urban design and planning. We are interested in architecture as social infrastructure, in developing collective equipments, in the design of spaces of care, empathy and welfare. We design and research expanding new problematics about ecology, the domestic, everyday life and the city.

Members

ELISAVET HASA
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher and educator based in London. She holds a diploma in architecture from the School of Architecture of the University of Patras, Greece (2015) and was awarded a PhD from the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art (2022). Her thesis dealt with the materiality of grassroots, ad hoc and mutual aid projects by social movements in Europe and the United States, with an emphasis on their relationship with the state. She is teaching in undergraduate architectural design studios and history and theory courses at the London South Bank University and Central Saint Martins. She is also a registered architect in the UK (ARB) and Greece (TCG) and has practiced architecture in London, Madrid and Athens.

PLATON ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

is an architect, researcher, and educator. He studied architecture in Thessaloniki, Greece, and holds an MSc from Columbia University and a PhD from TU Delft and The City as a Project research collective. He is Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the co-Head of Projective Cities MPhil programme at the Architectural Association, where he is also teaching Diploma Unit 7 with Georgia Hablützel and Hamed Khosravi. His research interests explore urban design and architecture in relation to the politics of labour, economy, law and labour struggles. He has written and lectured extensively about Greek urbanisation and the politics of urban development.

THEODOSSIS ISSAIAS
ARCHITECT

(he/him) is an architect and educator. He serves as Curator, Heinz Architectural Center, at Carnegie
Museum of Art and Special Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture. He studied
architecture in Athens, Greece, and holds a Master of Science in Architecture and Urbanism from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on architecture at the intersection of
human rights, conflict, and the provision of shelter. This interest led to his PhD dissertation
“Architectures of the Humanitarian Front” (2021, Yale University), which examined a period
around WWI when conflict, displacement, and territorial insecurity provoked the reconfiguration
of humanitarian operations –their spatial organization and ethical imperatives.

GIANNANTONIS MOUTSATSOS
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Lund, Sweden. He graduated in 2010 from the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens and holds an MSc in Energy Efficient and Environmental Building Design from the School of Architecture of Lund University (2015). He has practiced architecture as a freelance architect in Greece and currently in Sweden (eg. Tengbom architects), where he works on a wide range of projects including small houses, larger residential complexes as well as care, educational and industrial facilities.

ALEXANDRA VOUGIA
ARCHITECT

is an architect and an educator. She graduated in 2007 from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds the MSc in Advanced Architectural Design from GSAPP, Columbia University (2008) and a PhD from the Architectural Association – School of Architecture, London (2016). She is currently an Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has previously taught at the Architectural Association and the University of Westminster and practiced as an architect in New York and Athens.

MYRTO VRAVOSINOU
ARCHITECT

is an architect based in Thessaloniki. She graduated from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015 and holds an MSc in Environmental Architectural and Urban Design from the same institution (2023). Since 2017, she has been collaborating with a group of freelance engineers, working on a variety of residential, workspace, and small-scale digital fabrication projects. Her special interests lie in urban and architectural design practices that promote spatial justice.

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