Text from the Reactivate Athens research initiative:

Reactivate Athens/101 Ideas is an initiative born of crisis, but energized by the potential of this ancient city to realize a new vision. Athenians today are increasingly grappling with a lack of agency. Which spatial tactics could be most effective in tackling the late capitalist mechanisms eroding civic society? What consequences can be drawn regarding the subject position of the

urban designer, activist or researcher? In the context of the upcoming mayoral elections, the RA Lab decided to generate 101 ideas for Athens – to initiate a debate about the city, for the city. Athens is burning for ideas. Our project is a synthesis of many recurring visions collected over the course of six months. While this synthesis represents a perception, rather than an objective reality, we are convinced reality can and must change.

Can Athens become a model for a new kind of European city? Reactivate Athens is a project focused on bringing the city back to order – using what already exists in creative, unexpected ways. But this order must evolve from within, not be imposed from above. It is a project focused on bringing the new migrant workers out of the shadows and into the metropole. Patches of the periphery in the old center. We can no longer reason in terms of North or South, East or West. Our visions for new urban acupunctural interventions in the city cohere, collectively, as an impure act of regeneration. The RA Lab has operated as a multitude of passionate and networked urban guerrilla networks practicing new strategies for design. An unseen image of the city rushing sharply into focus.

The history of urban theory is well documented in many ETH projects – in 1970, Henri Lefebvre wrote about the non-existence of a language of urbanism. In 1980, Michel de Certeau suggested the collapse of the concept of the city. In 1995, Rem Koolhaas foresaw the end of urban planning. In 2014, the RA Lab is collecting urban visions for Athens and seeking to understand what desires they reveal in the collective psyche of the city’s inhabitants. Through this research, we are attempting to address a number of questions. How can we conceive of the idea of the ‘urban’ in Athens today? Does a city in crisis produce a certain kind of knowledge? Against a backdrop of enduring unrest and uncertainty, how can the public participate in the process of urban and social change, redefining the relationship between knowledge and power?

The principal aim of this book is to explore urban design and architecture in Athens through an interdisciplinary lens, gathering specialists working in fields from psychoanalysis to sociology, economics to urban theory. The questions we are asking are vital for the future of the city. Is there a specific politics that stems directly from the discourse of the urbanist? If this is the case, should such political agency ultimately lead to the establishment of a new city by means of an avant-garde collective like the RA Lab? What are the political implications? Do alternative ideas about how to make the city anticipate the possibility of a radically different general urban economy?

The research work was carried out in collaboration with the Onassis Foundation, Urban Rail Transport SA, the office of the Mayor of Athens, the National Technical University of Athens, the University of Thessaly, along with many other institutions and institutions.

Location: Athens, Greece  

Design: work completed while at Urban-Think Tank & The U-TT Chair ETH Zurich, Project Architect & Lead Researcher