RENOVATION - RECONSTRUCTION OF ARGYRI MARKET IN PATRAS

Architectural study:

K. Moraitis, V. Pharmaki, A. Chelidoni

Collaborator Architect engineers: G. Atsalakis, A. Zisimopoulou, ARSIS Architects

Structural study:

Ch. Kirpotin and Co., Consultant Engineers and Co.

Collaborator Civil Engineer, M. Kourousi

E/M study:

A. Papamatthaiou and associates – Ch. Georgitsogiannakos, M. Papamatthaiou

Bioclimatic design Consultant: E. Trianti

The obvious theme of the competition refers to a mutilated, segmented building and to the current demand of its functional supplementation. However, the competition’s real subject concerns the architectural management of the historic relations –which obligates us to answer a series of questions.

First series of questions: Is the relation with history valid? Does it fall under these standard didactics that we ruminate within the context of a “conservation” formula?

Second series of questions: Does the destruction, the breach, the abolishment of the continuousness stand as a historical phenomenon? If it does, is it the responsibility of the modern creator to conceal these phenomena of discontinuity? To heal all the wounds in a remarkable, reassuring normalization of the historical consciousness? Nevertheless, such a reconstruction consists a falsification of the historical and social ethics.

Instead, the proposal decides to register the historical discontinuance and to convey the historic contrast. It attempts to maintain the rescued building shell and to add an entirely distinguished construction, which is also expressively consistent towards the moment of this modern intervention.