This thesis is a search for the ways with which the bread making process could get into the design and use of a public city square. If the bread, its smell, the labor of producing it, the “hearth” and the oven in which it is baked become a spectacle in the everyday lives of the plaza’s dwellers and passers-by, then we are investigating the changing relationships and movements on the site, as well as the way with which the proposed square will work as a system together with the adjoining central market of the city.
The chosen site to house the transmutations mentioned above is Varvakeios’ square, surrounded by the city roads Athinas, Aristogitonos, Sokratous and Armodiou, located in downtown Athens. We can already see the plaza and the whole area sheltering the greatest portion of the central city market’s uses, mainly the meat and fish market, as well as a great street market for vegetables and dairy, but there are no bakeries close enough to be included in this system, and one can only buy one’s bread in some very few small corner markets. What we are proposing is placing a bakery on and inside the square. Just like a cook who practices the art of “culinary economy”, I decided to form the new square out of the current square’s “leftovers”, by using most of the structural and functional elements already there, like the large underground parking space, but at the same time doing minor and hopefully important adjustments to house the new bakery, as well as improve the pedestrians’ flow of movement, use, experience and “taste” of the square.