STUDIO OVERVIEW
Daniel Boorstin (A guide to pseudo-events in America, Vintage Books, New York, 1992) has observed that with modern tourism the experience of travel has become “diluted, contrived and prefabricated” in contrast to older modes of adventure into the unfamiliar. This studio explores what kinds of architecture might encourage more exploratory, immersive and authentically enriching patterns of holiday experience. Two questions are addressed. First, a typological and programmatic question: Traditional settlements often survive as sites of tourist hospitality. What if we envisioned a hotel structured as a settlement, with neither corridors nor clear boundaries, integrated into existing conditions so as to contribute to the enrichment of the life of everyone and not just the hotel patrons? Second, a formal and syntactic question: What should we learn from traditional settlements that have grown aggregatively over time as we design complex layouts all at once? In addition, the relation of buildings to the land and the interaction between the framing of views and the placement of buildings on site are recurrent themes of inquiry. The underlying motivation, however, is to explore how different ways of seeing, feeling, and inhabiting can be supported by design, and how we define and shape desire, pleasure, comfort, encounter, and curiosity in the first place.
The site for the studio is adjacent to the village of Kato Petali, on the Island of Sifnos, Greece. Extensive documentation relative to the village is provided by: Wagner F, 1988 Kato Petali auf Sifnos (Saltz + Druck gmbh, Düsserdorf). Broader backgrounded on the vernacular architecture and settlement form on the island is provided by: Tzakou A, 1994, "The evolution of a traditional unity" Ekistics 368/369 pp.321-342.