Invisible parentheses : maping (out) the city and its histories

Abstract

In theory as much as in practice, "history" and "design" have been traditionally regarded as distinct and even opposite spheres of investigation; however, the space of the city, itself a product of both, manifests the overlapping between the two fields. Contrary to modernism's evolutionary model, in which the past is there only to be surpassed, and to postmodernism's revisionist agenda, in which history simplistically becomes material for the future, this thesis proposes that both history and design are dynamic "projects," synchronically and in equal parts shaping urban space. The case study is Thessaloniki, a port-city of major significance but also complex identity, which has developed through centuries as a common ground for parallel cultural and ethnic histories, located as it is at a multinational crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Balkan Peninsula. The capacity of urban space to historically integrate multiple imprints of external influences and at the same time emerge as unique and integral formal entity, conditions any attempt to design in it as well as the writing of urban history itself. The objective is to explore and highlight the continuous shifts in meaning of the city's tangible space, its fabric and artifacts, through the intertwined operation of design intention and historical inevitability.