Europan 7 - Sub-urban challenge, urban intensity and housing diversity
Pilea, Greece - Articulating new polarities
Urban design Competition
Project title: Weaving Urbanscapes  Study site: 10ha   Location: Pilea, Greece   Client: The Municipality  
Architects: Katerina Petsiou, Maria Kechagioglou

The study area is located in the densely built-up district of Malakopi and the residential neighborhood of Konstadinoupolitika, about 500m away from a slip road that gives access to the ring road. Private building projects are behind the area’s rapid urbanization. A situation that will continue, so long as building land remains available and without any plans. The municipality is responsible for infrastructures and public spaces. Now it wishes to build social amenities on the land it owns.
The brief called for the creation of 13400m2 of housing, 3.600m2 of social amenities for the municipality such as shops, services, offices, a small municipal cultural center and a care center for the elderly, as well as 20.000m2 of public space including the degraded and polluted stream which runs through the site.
The site of Pilea is a vacant wasteland wedged between three radically different morphologies. The aim was to develop a project in rupture with the surrounding environment, with autonomous and mixed uses and a network of public spaces, relying on the capacity of the suburban condition to reinvent itself and to organize collective living.