Unit 6 @ URBAN FRINGE FESTIVAL 2019

‘URBAN GLENTI’ curated by Urban Gorillas, Yiorgos Hadjichristou

Participation of Unit 6 @ the Buffer Fringe Festival of Performing Arts 2019

Work presented:

Unit 6: “Time Synergies_Adaptive Architecture” academic year 2015-16 / 2016-17

Curators: Maria Hadjisoteriou, Yiorgos Hadjichristou

Putting up the exhibition: Afra Omidi, George Kartsakas, Christos Xenophontos, Andreas Prokopiou

Location: Buffer Zone, Area of the Home of Cooperation, Nicosia

Date: October 2019

‘URBAN GLENTI’

Behind a grove of plants and trees, a stage of a courtyard is generated between two tents and the Walls: an ‘Urban Glenti’ is performed.
The tents accommodate an exhibition of the participants work as a hanging garden in dialogue with the mobile forest that surrounds them. The courtyard acts as the environment where the ‘Urban Glenti’ is celebrated with presentations and discussions.

The groups of the participants have extensively dealt with issues and activities related to the Buffer Zone. The look into this liminal zone not merely as a negative repercussion of war or other detrimental human activities, but rather as an opportunity to think of an emergent festive urban realm.

Performers / participants:

1. Urban Gorillas

2. Creative Center for Fluid Territories- Duncan Higgins, Anna Souto , Jim Harold, Susan Brind, Shaunna McMullan, Johann Sandborg, Andrew David Lock, Linda Lien, Yiorgos Hadjichristou

3. UNIC- Architecture Department of the University of Nicosia

Unit 6: “Time Synergies_Adaptive Architecture”. Curators: Maria Hadjisoteriou & Yiorgos Hadjichristou

Unit 6 Coordinators: Maria Hadjisoteriou & Angela K. Petrou;

Tutors: Maria Hadjisoteriou, Angela K. Petrou, Yiorgos Hadjichristou, Christos Papastergiou.

Arch 101- the Urban Glenti. Coordinator and Curator: Yiorgos Hadjichristou, Tutors: Yiorgos Hadjichristou and Petros Lapithis

4. Collaborator: Dendros ltd

Unit 6 investigation

Site | Buffer Zone

The site is documented through a series of parallel investigations into the physical conditions and history of the site. The representational process is intended to reveal conditions, often suggesting contested boundaries and spaces which are acknowledged as sites of opportunity

Subverting the fixed image of the site

Separate from the actual happenings and conditions of the place, the site of the Buffer Zone has remained tinged and stigmatised by its ambiguous status. The aim of the research is to re-establish the identity of the site through its specific character and to come away from the fixed image of the site. The process of seeing and mapping activities from the ground directs the observer to examine the small scale ordinary things of the site, giving them importance. This elevates the meanings of the simple everyday to extraordinary, and has the advantage of identifying the unique characteristics of the particular place and at the same time uncovering its identity.

Cataloguing of the sites is used as a design methodology. It is primarily an attempt to reach and communicate ideas about stories, places, moments and situations which can trigger better understanding of the place and communicate the layers of complexity. The representations of the site do not create a hierarchy of information but convey a bottom up order appropriate to the way the site was revealed.

Making the invisible - visible

Individual research extracted the characteristics of place and practices of neighbourhoods. The slow and seemingly insignificant and ‘unseen’ organic evolution of the site is acknowledged as a strong part of its identity, forming a complex system of territories and signs.

Credits:

Buffer Fringe Festival of Performing Arts 2019 _ curator Ellada Evangelou

Urban Glenti curatorial team: Urban Gorillas, Yiorgos Hadjichristou

Unit 6 Coordinators: Maria Hadjisoteriou & Angela K. Petrou;

Tutors: Maria Hadjisoteriou, Angela K. Petrou, Yiorgos Hadjichristou, Christos Papastergiou.

Students work: Galanou Christina, Kartsakas George, Kyriakou Maria, Omidi Afra, Panteli Stefanos, Prokopiou Andreas, Xenofontos Christos, Koufopavlou Chrystalla