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  Maragkou Afroditi / Phd candidate
THE RUIN AS AN INTERPRETATION ARCHIVE: THE SETTLEMENT OF MEGDOVOPLIKTOI IN ORFANA VILLAGE, KARDITSA

Biography

Afroditi Maragkou (Athens, 1988) is an Architect (AUTH, 2012), holds a MSc degree in Architectural Design (UTH, 2015) and is a PhD candidate in the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly.
She has participated as a speaker in international architectural congresses, as an assistant curator in architectural workshops and exhibitions, and has published articles in local architectural magazines. At the same time she works as an architect based in Trikala.
Her research focuses in the architectural theory and history of ruins through archival interpretations.
 

Research interests

The ruin as an interpretation archive: The settlement of Megdovopliktoi in Orfana village, Karditsa

The research addresses the concept of ruins and abandonment through the archive that accompanies them, in order to highlight the archival practice as an interpretation mechanism capable to activate them in the public sphere. The research context focuses on the lowlands of Thessaly, where the traces of an abandoned settlement in Orfana village in Karditsa, have been the springboard for an “archaeological” reading of the site. Traces, oral testimonies and evidence which compose the history behind this abandonment, will be collected in order to produce a narrative capable for a public activation of this site.

What remains unexamined and undervalued in the Greek landscape, are the extreme and abandoned limits of the small non-metropolitan regional areas. In these limits of Greek cities and not in their formed and high density centres; there is a great dispersion, a marginal instability, states of transition and deposition. The reflections of the relationship between natural and artificial landscape in these non-metropolitan areas, can only be recorded through systematic approach and subjective mapping. Thereby, we can analyse social transformations, changes in attitudes and cultural identities and above all the signs of these changes on the landscape. The landscape of the lowlands of Thessaly is selected as a paradigm of a changing reality, where one can see and recognise a number of exemplary transformations and specificities. The field observation and investigation of this landscape is not limited to recording the conditions or the geographical boundaries, but considers the landscape as an open field of correlations and interactions. So in order to understand it we must understand the relationships between local communities acting in it.
Interdisciplinarity, archival practices, modern approaches to architecture and art, and research through the "oral history" practice, are some of the documentation and validation methods which will be used in this study.
 

e-mail

afro.maragkou@gmail.com