Ioanna Barkouta (ibarkouta@gmail.com) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly in Greece. She holds a BArch from the University of Thessaly and a post-graduate degree from the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens. 

Habitation in a State of Emergency – The Athens Paradigm in Times of Crisis

Following five years of acute economic crisis, traces of deprivation and austerity are revealed upon the urban body too. Which would be the traces left by new biopolitical circumstances on the city, on habitation, on us, If emergency theories were intertwined with contemporary habitation practices, sited within today's city of Athens? Starting from theoretical discourses on emergency, the construction of a new regularity will be sought, which naturalizes shifts from one way of life to another and, respectively, from one habitation type to another, affecting thus relationships and structures. By emphasizing on the spatial dimension of this new (re)description of space and using as a methodological tool the notion of “representation”, new definitions and constructions of the notion of habitation emerge. Through new meanings and performative elements, the consistent materiality of inactive housing structures shifts and unbeknownst to us is transformed into a procedure in progress. 

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