A year after the “Minor-Asian destruction” of 1922, a refuge colonization named New Ionia gets established in Volos, to house some of the thousands of refugees who temporary lived until then in warehouses, schools, tents etc. The chosen area for the creation of settlement, Xirokampos, was about to be gradually transformed into a vibrant, multicultural, refugee settlement.
Due to the low quality of the chosen area and the lack of time and financial resources, the houses built, were mainly small and structured with cheap materials, with lots of construction errors, of no architectural interest, while the majority of them were unable to meet all the needs of the settlers. Moreover the houses didn’t correspond to the number of refugees that arrived in Volos. In chronological order of their completion occur the following categories of houses: the Squares (1924), the Concrete ones (1925), Jamaliotika (1927), the German ones (1928), the Stone ones (1928-1929), Kartaleika (1934) and the last ones (1936-1938) in the area between the streets Thiron-Sinopis.
Today the original core of the refugee settlement has evolved but maintained its peculiarity. This peculiarity results from the forms, the disorderly stratificated levels of the houses and from the complexity of their faces. Nowadays, although to a lesser degree than previously,
the free, public areas and sidewalks are occupied, sometimes subtly or sometimes more decisive, by interventions and objects of residents. These elements distinguish more sharply in neighborhoods of the Squares, Jamaliotika and the German ones. Increased density in the specific parts of the historic center, are the outcome of the need of the residents to make their living more comfortable and bearable in such little square meters. The expansion of housing was proportional to the degree of organization of life of their residents and to the technology development and progressive urbanization of New Ionia. The arbitrariness, the various impurities and contradictions, have created a unique and remarkable architectural character in the neighborhoods of the former refugee settlement.
