LOCUS

theECONOMY THAT TRANSFORM THE TOPOGRAPHY

Economy* is a term originate from the Greek language containing a very well composed and demanding meaning. The word economy consists of two words. The word "oikos"– house, temple, city, and the word "nemein"-the management, the system of collective driving laws in order to live well together. Oikos in the ancient greek language means not only the actual house but the overall and familiar correlation grid of the city, the surrounding cultivated area, the near topography and landscape peculiarities, the road networks and the chain of political and merchant relationships with the near by communities. Seeing under this scope* the area (the municipality of Southern Pilion having the village of Argalasti as the administration and finance center) where the monastery of PAW is situated is a flourishing and thriving topography of well being within its natural limits and the scale of communities. The area is formed of smooth hills running down to the Pagasitikos gulf to the south and the Aegean sea to the east. It is an exceptional and ideal geography allowing multiple cultivations of olive trees, fig trees, grape vines and apple trees to thrive and multiply throughout deep history enabling the communities to a sustain and balanced economy. The coastal line presents a variety of small seaside plateaus usually used as recreational leaving well areas from the spring time on till early winter.

The south lower part of the peninsula was and is fully and continually inhabited from the 1150 BC on. Through history the usual way of building a local economy network is to create a seaside post (a station) where the ships can harbor, bring, present and exchange goods with local products (olive oil, ceramics, fruits, wine). The main settlement or village was then situated up the hills for best protection and defense. Nowadays the area is presenting a moderate visiting and recreational profile reaching a peak during the summer time.

theTECHNOLOGY THAT TRANSFORM THE TOPOGRAPHY

The aviation and naval networks together with the advance and fast adaptation of computing technologies and the internet are the crucial factors that sustain the living and economic standards of life in the area. Although the area has a valid network of prime and secondary roads together with the trekking paths left untouched from the time they were used for communication and transportation between villages and the main city of Volos (then, late 20th century forth, an industrial and economic center not only for the Pilion mountain peninsula but the overall plain of Thessaly) the visiting flood during the summer didn’t suppress the local identity. The huge numbers of summer visitors are direct mostly to the nearby famous Sporades islands (Skiathos, Skopelos, Alonissos) and the east side of northern Pilion facing the Aegean sea. Skiathos has also an international airport similar to the airport of Nea Anchialos (Volos) responding well to the immense air traffic during the summer. The new and fast expansion of the internet network is a crucial civilization factor driving young high educated workers and thinkers to live and work in the area strengthening the communities already well performing in keeping most of their inhabitants the length of the year.

theIDEAS andPRACTICES THAT TRANSFORM THE TOPOGRAPHY

1. Christian Monasteries are and always were constituting and declare the content of a major field of ethos* within the heritage of Christianity through out its historical drifting and spread. They can be found in multiple scales, compositional and formal variations, well situated into a variety of landscape and urban environments, all over the European continent, Russia, the near and middle East, the central Asia and the Arabic peninsula. The monasteries were and still are crucial local, regional and international cultural centers structurally shaped by a mixture of self-oriented choices of behavior regarding the people constituting their community core seeing as a common (the monks) and publicly accepted and followed disciplines of living together (the visitors and believers). They are always situated either into a unique and exceptional landscape or, to the contrary, at a rough and out of reach topography in order to fortify the will and the spiritual strength of the believershabitants. The spiritual devotion of the monks was and still is the only and unique power accelerating spatial transformation (buildings, cultures, handmade products, food and artifacts) and the everlasting preservation of the monasteries overall structure and rituals (schools, churches, hospitals, libraries, hosting units, common and unifying seasonal rituals). Usually, at the area where a monastery is first become situated and active it alters a variety of landscape and communal transformations. The near by communities are always welcome, accept and depend on its presence as a spiritual and cultural distinguish reference bedrock. The monastery is the best till today cultural reference of a common although it is, by choice, seek not any firm connection with the modern urban life patterns.

2. The summer patterns of living are also a driving and inspiring set of rituals rapidly transforming self to a transparent and receptive ‘’other’’. The length of the day, the early morning and the night breeze by the sea, the easy way of doing simple everyday acts, the long dialogues under a tree or a shadowy shelter during the day (imaging, narrating and exposing incidents of self behavior, criticizing the urban priorities suppressing self, explaining and proposing political and philosophical possibilities), the rest into the dark interiors during noon time, the thrifty and modest living manners (eating and producing food, offering, visiting and inviting), the sea and the fishing rituals (night long fishing rituals), the sailing and the swimming along the diversity of the seaside land formations, the long and demanding trekking disciplines on the mountain, crossing endless variations of cultures and pockets of houses scattered in between the distances, the tranquility of the afternoon hours till midnight (explaining and comprehending the identity of the day passed) and, finally, the most crucial and essential property of life in the open, the tiny scale of the habitats and the sparse of native and visiting human beings living and sharing a communal experience of life, confirm and verify a stochastic* and philosophical* practice of well being.