The issues of immigration and refugee crisis highlight the need for a new political consciousness aiming to reconsider our values concerning the already known terms of social life and narratives. As G.Tzirtzilakis mentions, the term of “meta-architecture” characterizes our cities’ new condition. The coexistence of great architectural buildings and monuments, with the new conditions of living are leading the city beyond architecture. Spatial facilities and temporary shelters are the basic manifestation of meta-architecture.
Theresearch tries to investigate the boundaries, the changes and the concurrence in the area of Kypseli, a neighbourhood in the center of Athens, during a period of general crisis, through two examples of polykatoikias: Drosopoulou 74 + 81. Kypseli can be characterized as district with a special feature; the coexistence of locals, immigrants and refugees through the years, as well as, its inhabitation from middle and lower economic levels.
This anthropological research includes in situ observation of living conditions along with writing the findings. Concepts as ethnography, culture, ethnicity, multiculturalism, as well as the methodology of social anthropology, are clearly described in a non limited way of reproduction of various scientific references, on the contrary it encourages dialogue on how to study human societies that change over time. The new collective living spaces are designed and inhabited in alternative ways. The main tool that will be used so as to evaluate the changes in the city of Kypseli is the analysis with qualitative and quantitative materials. The new proposals express organizational and programmatic experimentation, where architecture describes collective lifestyle living and at the same time reflects the relationship between the public and the private, applies alternative housing and property models and develops collective ways of composing space. A comparative method of analysis was used between continuous and violent changes and their normal successions over time.
