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Project theme: Architecture and Tourism in Santorini Island Project title:
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Student: Liu Peiyu, Zhang Yuxin School of Architecture and Society Politecnico di Milano
ABSTRACT
The objective of this project is to design new spaces of accommodation
for tourists that have come to experience the wild and unspoiled nature of the Santorini Island.
The main design parameters derive from a cultural point of view inspired by the Santorini nature and research of existing cultural architecture that provide guidelines in the design process.
There will be a consideration for the local weather and hence a consideration for the requirements and demands for suitable use of material and construction.
A great source of inspiration in this project are the traditional cycladic architecture: white painted villages that stand on the top of the high red-coloured cliffs.
They have high cultural value and have contributed in making Santorini one of the top destinations in the world.
From a closer investigation of these architectures the desire is to learn tools and methods with focus on tectonic
and sustainability in order to create a space of accommodation that integrates with the atmosphere of the
unspoiled islands and is incorporated with qualities that can enhance the experience of the architectural history, the wild nature and the culture of the Santorini people.
http://www.aegeanislands.gr/islands-aigaio/architecture-aigaio/architekture-aigaio.html
ARCHITECTURE AND TRADITIONAL SETTLEMENTS
THE CYCLADIC ARCHITECTURE
Unique aesthetics. Plasticity. Simplicity. Moderation. Urban planning “by instinct”
(without a plan). Folk architecture that serves the human needs, while at the same time producing masterpieces, internationally recognized by Le Corbusier himself who visited Cyclades in 1939 and by other representatives of modernist architecture.
The settlements of the Cyclades, built with the strong winds, the cold and heat, the extreme natural phenomena and the best way to make the most out of the limited space in mind, do not fight against nature or seek admiration and reward –even though they have been winning them for centuries. The high aesthetic creations of the simple man, the craftsman with limited knowledge but strong instinct and love for his hometown fit
perfectly into the surroundings taking advantage of the slopes and the peculiarities of the terrain, "conversing" with the landscape in a timeless language.
The Cycladic settlements with their houses, squares, schools, bridges and churches are not homogeneous. They have many common features, but differences as well, depending on the history of each island, its nature, the resources available (stone, wood etc.), the landscapes, the water, the wealth of the subsoil and how active and capable the residents, who often built the houses they stayed in themselves, were.
The Aegean Sea, with its dangers and the aquatic communication routes offered throughout the centuries, was the cohesive link between them and the neighboring mainland areas.
The architecture and the urban planning of the islands complied with the historical cycles. They served the human needs and were determined by each conqueror or by the dangers that the islanders faced due to the raids.
So similar and yet so different… Those who visit the islands of the Cyclades are astonished to discover that each one is unique maintaining its position within the renowned “circle” (Cyclades –islands with a circular formation around the center, which is the island of Dilos). They admire the caves of Santorini, as well as the towersof Naxos, the tile-roofs ofKea’sandKythnos’scapitals, and also the traditional Cycladic settlements ofTinoswith the marble fountains and the dovecotes.Ermoupoli in Syros with the neoclassic mansions of Vaporia and the cube-like capital of Mykonos. The “sirmata” (lodges for the boats) of Milos, and the industrial monuments ofSerifosandMilosthat many years of mining left behind.
The evolution of the traditional architecture. The first settlements in the Cyclades were coastal. During the Mycenaean period barricaded settlements took their place.
This happened once again when the pirate raids forced the residents to abandon their coastal settlements and build fortified ones during the Venetian rule. Some of them were built around a castle with their houses actually forming a second wall (typical examples areAstypalaia’sandAmorgos’scapitals). In others, the lack of space usually led to the building of two-storey houses with a narrow façade and small openings that were next to one another and formed the fortification wall of the settlement (e.g. the Castleof Sifnos, Serifos’s capital andAno Syros).
The roads were narrow –one to two and a half meters in width- paved and white-washed for sanitary reasons and had stairs. The corners of the buildings in tight turns of the road were curved to allow mules and donkeys loaded with supplies and materials to pass.
Moreover, from the 13th century onwards the landowners and the nobles built tower-houses in the countryside, as well as dovecotes since pigeon breeding was a privilege of the aristocracy.
Over the last three centuries a type of simple cottages was developed, which evolved to important architectural entities -agricultural compounds and later settlements that were in complete harmony with the environment. The main materials used were stones, rammed earth and wood for the rooftops. Soon the needs of that time led to the building of stables, warehouses, windmills, watermills and threshing floors.
Stepping into the 19th century the architecture once again expressed the prevailing socio-economic developments and trends. The boom of shipping and trade, the contact with foreign countries and the migration caused westernized winds to blow over the islands. The mansions and the captain houses with their neoclassical and eclectic features are the legacy of that period.
Another feature of the settlements in the Cyclades is the interconnection between the houses and the public spaces (rooftops, terraces, passages, stairs, recesses), since the former penetrates and assimilates the latter causing it to evolve and vice versa.
DODECANESIAN ARCHITECTURE
The architecture in the Dodecanese presents similarities but also important differences compared to that of the other Aegean islands. The single-room house is a common feature here as well. However, the history and the location of the islands which is very close to the coasts of Asia Minor, Cyprus and Crete led to the formation of special features, which were reinforced by the fact that the Dodecanese were united with Greece in 1948, after three decades of Italian occupation.
The similarities with the Cyclades are of course more obvious on the islands near them, like Astypalaia. The small barren islands’ economy was based on shipping and trade, but in recent years the local economies became more specialized. Thus, sponge fishing was developed in Kalymnos and Chalki, while shipping was developed at Kassos, Symi andPatmos. On larger islands such asRhodesandKos, the settlements are more diversified, reflecting the complex role they played throughout history.
They attracted various conquerors each of whom made significant interventions.
Thus, the foreign influences were either assimilated with the local elements (e.g. the Ottoman ones) or foreign architectural styles were applied without any modification
(Venetian architecture, colonial architecture of the Italian occupation between 1912-1943).
Rhodesfrom the 14th to the 16th century was the home of the Knights of St. John and the magnificent monuments of the Old City are a valuable legacy of this period. The impressive Muslim mosques are also preserved to this day, which is also the case in Kos as well. The traces that the Venetian rule left behind in the Dodecanese are indelible. Older settlements such as Paleo Pili in Kos, Ano Poli in Symi, Horio in Kalymnos, Olymposin Karpathos, were built inland so that the islanders could escape the pirate raids. During the Venetian rule the wall that was formed by the walls of the outermost houses took the form of a castle.
Since the late 18th century, neoclassicism, already widespread in the Ottoman Empire, greatly influenced the architecture in the Dodecanese. The economic growth of the 19th century led to population growth and to the expansion of the settlements outside their original core. It was during that time that they became urbanized and emphasis was placed on public open spaces. Depending on the terrain and the density of the town structures, the buildings had narrow (Castelorizo ) or broad façades (Chalki).
Later on, the twin narrow front houses with single roofs or separate ones prevailed on these islands andSimi. The impressive residences of the wealthy merchants and sailors (captain houses) were built on the front line of the coastal settlements.
There were substantial interventions to the structured environment of the islands that served the political goals of the conquerors during the Italian occupation (1912-1943).
The Italians remodeled the historical centers, made restorations to the monuments from the period of the Knights’ rule and built impressive public buildings.
Lakkiof Leros is a unique case in the Archipelago. The admirals of Mussolini focused their architectural efforts on this area thus the largest urban intervention by the Italians in the Dodecanese occurred. Initially, a naval station was created and then a brand new town which they called Porto Lago.
The traditional house. The oldest type of dwelling in the Dodecanese is the single-storey single-room building. The elevated wooden loft (bed, loft, sofa) is used for sleeping, while there is also a cooking space, a fireplace with a chimney and a day use space. A variation of this type is the Γ-shaped building with an added auxiliary space, which was used as a cooking place in Karpathos and Kassos. The two-storey house is an evolution of the basic type. The living room is upstairs and in some islands, likeNisyrosand Patmos, there is also the upper yard, a large terrace which is either an interior patio or it is located in front of the building. The ground floor was used by the family as a day use space. The buildings were made of stone and the beams of cypress or pine. The gaps between the beams were covered with sticks or canes. There were
layers of rushes, reeds and algae on top of them. A final layer of cohesive clayey soil (“patelia”), which was renewed every September, made the bedroom waterproof.
http://www.delood.com/architecture/white-cycladic-house
The traditional white Cycladic house has been an unsurpassed model for the modernistic standards since the beginning of the 20th century. Le Corbusier, when he first visited the Greek isles in 1933, spoke of the "eternal house" and said, "These humble island houses are the archetype of modern architecture". Two years later, he designed his own version in the form of Villa Radieuse - the Radiant Villa.
From this architectural language of the Cyclades, the original statement of harmony, this Myconian residence, designed by the firmZege(Tasos Zeppos, Eleni Georgiadou and Associates) borrows and evolves crucial elements. It is literally made, like its predecessor, of "light and shadow". White, rudimentary geometrical volumes create successive shady spaces, allowing the blinding Aegean sun to diffuse through bigger or smaller openings.
The interior is marked by the omnipresent white - on floors and walls - interrupted only by the wooden ceiling beams, purely decorative in this case. In such an "elemental" space, the furniture, chosen by the owners, had to be discreet and subtly elegant, maintaining the clarity of the whole environment. So the Italian design furniture is made of wood, painted white or upholstered with white cotton, with a few interspersed objects highlighting the island provenance of the house - like the cane table lamps by the Brazilian brothers Campana and a cluster of oil lamps by the Italian firm Driade, whereas the imposing three-dimensional artwork by Kostas Tsoklis, accentuates even further the Greek character of the place.
The primary element nevertheless is the symbolic and yet utilitarian water of the large swimming pool, surrounded by a peristyle of white columns, an ingenious architectural presence, framing the
magnificent view to the adjacent bay.
http://www.henry-moore.org/matrix_engine/content.php?page_id=4452
The P?tris II continued on to Cyprus, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, forty miles from the coast of Asia Minor. As recounted by Carola and Siegfried, at Khirokitia on the island of Cyprus, members of the C.I.A.M. group visited a settlement of several hundred tholoi or circular domed huts. These Neolithic ruins, dating from c. 3,700 B. C., stirred a great excitement in Le Corbusier. Siegfried Giedion would later write:
‘The most interesting feature of the Khirokitia dwellings is their internal organization. They had an upper floor covering half the area of the ground floor. This division is still usual in the rectangular house plans of the Greek Islands, and Le Corbusier reintroduced the age-old principle in his Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, Paris, 1925. When he [Le Corbusier] visited the Greek islands in 1933, together with several friends, he took out his tape measure, and I remember his delight when he found that the floor-to-ceiling heights of the houses (226 cm.) corresponded exactly to the dimension he liked to use and later incorporated in his Modular system.’
Similarly, later in Paris, Jerzy Soltan would recall many instances when dimensional and proportional aspects of the Neolithic remains at Khirokitia would come up in conversation as he worked with Le Corbusier in the development of the Modular system. Soltan felt that for Le Corbusier, recording a direct relationship with these fourth millennium ruins allowed him to connect to an architectural continuum, one that included Le Corbusier as an active participant in the timeless art of architecture.
Together the Giedions and Le Corbusier, also explored the Island of Amorgos in the Cycladic Islands. Le Corbusier recalled going to Minoa, the ancient capital of the island, located on a high cliff above Katapola.
‘While only a few ruins remained from that ancient past, I saw what I needed to see, where King Minos ruled a second kingdom.’
While some Neolithic artifacts and remains of the ancient Minoan civilization have been found at Amorgos, perhaps what interested Le Corbusier more was the location of a well known Neolithic marble Idol from Amorgos that he would have know from the Ancient Sculpture Collections at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
As Carola Giedion-Welcker strolled across these sites with her husband Siegfried and their Swiss companion, Carola too would know that this was the locale of the same Cycladic Idol kept at the Louvre. Subsequently it would be included in her 1937 publication Modern Plastic Art: Elements of Reality, Volume and Disintegration. Furthermore, the 1955 revised and enlarged edition of Carola Giedion-Welcker’s book, now renamed Contemporary Sculpture:
An Evolution in Volume and Space, would feature two full pages dedicated to the plastic qualities of Le Corbusier’s works exhibited by his ‘Ozon 2’ (a painted carved wood sculpture), his 1952 ‘Unité d’ Habitation’ located at Marseilles, the port city where nineteen years earlier they had boarded the SS P?tris II, as well as his design for his ‘Open Hand Monument’ (a sculptural work at Chandigarh, India). Her comment on the ‘Open Hand’ would apply equally to the Cycladic Idol:
‘Uncontaminated by functional intention, it emphasized the emotional origin and aim of what has been built by human hands for man.’
Carola Giedion-Welcker does include in Contemporary Sculpture, sculptural works by other architects, Vladimir Tatlin’s ‘Monument to the Third International’ and Luciano Baldessari’s built project for the Breda Works. However, their contribution consists only of a photograph, and a brief piece of text, in contrast to her detailed two-page spread on Le Corbusier.
Unique aesthetics. Plasticity. Simplicity. Moderation. Urban planning “by instinct”
(without a plan). Folk architecture that serves the human needs, while at the same time producing masterpieces, internationally recognized by Le Corbusier himself who visited Cyclades in 1939 and by other representatives of modernist architecture.
In 1939
The traditional white Cycladic house has been an unsurpassed model for the modernistic standards since the beginning of the 20th century. Le Corbusier, when he first visited the Greek isles in 1933, spoke of the "eternal house" and said, "These humble island houses are the archetype of modern architecture". Two years later, he designed his own version in the form of Villa Radieuse - the Radiant Villa.
Even if you’ve never been to this Cyclades island in the Aegean Sea, you’d still recognize it immediately – candy-colored houses carved into cliffs, sapphire waters, gleaming white buildings topped with half-spheres the color of a stormy sky. Here you’ll find peace as you roam the black sand beaches or the streets of a provincial village like Imerovigli. Beautiful Oia is world famous for its sunsets, which seem tinted with every shade of an artist’s palette.
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Unique aesthetics. Plasticity. Simplicity. Moderation. Urban planning “by instinct”
(without a plan). The traditional white Cycladic house has been an unsurpassed model for the modernistic standards since the beginning of the 20th century.
Le Corbusier, when he first visited the Greek isles in 1933, spoke of the “eternal house”
and said, “These hunble island houses are the archetype of modern architecture”. Two years later, he designed his own version in the form of Villa Radieuse.
Folk architecture that serves the human needs, while at the same time producing masterpieces. The settlements of the Cyclades, built with the strong winds, the cold and heat, the extreme natural phenomena and the best way to make the most out of the limited space in mind, do not fight against nature or seek admiration and reward –even though they have been winning them for centuries. The high aesthetic creations of the simple man, the craftsman with limited knowledge but strong instinct and love for his hometown fit perfectly into the surroundings taking advantage of the slopes and the peculiarities of the terrain, "conversing" with the landscape in a timeless language.
Greek tourism is the country’s main economic activity. The tourism of Aegean archipelago region’s contribution varies between 50% and 90% of the Gross Regional Product. The Aegean has been an established destination since the 1960s, offering a great number of facilities. The traditional built islands and the beautiful landscapes on the one hand, and the unspoiled sea on the other, make it a desirable destination. The major attractions are “sun, sand, sea, sex” types of products, often augmented to take advantage of the cultural, heritage, natural, and historical resources, as well as the events and festivals taking place on the islands.
Both tourism enterprises and the destination as a whole experience an overdependence upon conventional distribution channels, as the majority of tour operators aim to reduce their prices in order to increase their competitiveness and market share, they constantly aim to minimise the profit margins of local principals. Consequently, despite the unparalleled environmental and heritage resources, the Aegean islands fail to attract the desired “high-quality, high-expenditure” tourists. Socio-cultural and environmental impacts also decay local resources and harm the sustainability of the region in long term.
Therefore, we proposed that scientific research, political debate and community action should be utilised in order to rationalise the strategy for tourism of Santorini.
We have a great interest in Cycladic architecture and believe it has a close relation to the term “tectonics”. In this project we will strive to achieve a design solution that is simple, humble, harmonious and thoughtful.
