WATERSCAPES: REVEALING THE TERRAIN OF ATTICA'S PIKRODAPHNE STREAM

In the 20th century, Natural versus Urban led to compact urban expansion, building over most of Attica’s rivers and streams, with the aim of strongly consolidating anthropocentric activities on site.

Such movements set strict boundaries on the natural formations, unleashing their irregular behavior are unleashed on the artificial surfaces. Fixed boundaries cannot withstand the changes caused by natural behavior thus leading to flooding phenomena on the one hand and ecosystem degradation on the other.

This diploma thesis studies one of Attica’s few remaining streams, the Picrodaphne Stream, a large-scale natural discontinuity within the urban fabric that serves as a habitat.

The concept of the stream is approached as a ubiquitous moisture or dynamic force that shapes the ground, an intermediate landscape between mountain and sea that constantly expresses different intensities of the fluid element in the urban landscape.

The aim of this research is the activation and interaction of artificial and natural processes to infiltrate the natural mechanisms into the compact urban network, shaping landscapes characterized by shifting terrains.

The field of study is therefore the regulation of contacts between the structural and topiary domains to introduce porosity and fluidity into the solid urban terrain.

Four intervention points, different in terms of water-soil interaction and anthropogenic treatment, are redesigned to create intermediate grounds.

The definition of the distances and the relationships between soft and hard surfaces are the main tools of this urban landscape composition.

The folding of these interactions is realized through excavations or embankments that are consolidated by natural or artificial materialities such as vegetation or solid surfaces, or by structural elements.

The interventions attempt to maintain a distance from the ecosystem by creating new intermediate grounds.