Cultures of co-occupation
A kazáni, two types of milk, a stráta, and a monoculture in the Thessalian landscape. 

Elina Letsiou
Wednesday 20/5, 14.00, Patari Metaptychiakou

DescriptionThe lecture begins in an apartment kitchen in Larissa—a kazáni, a clay pot, and a fermentation culture—and follows the milk on its journey: from the family’s household-grocery store to the paths of the Vlach transhumant herders and the monoculture fields of the Thessalian plain. Developing an informal material biography across five scales, we will discuss how architectural design can accommodate movement, transformation, and more-than-human co-occupants.
Elina Letsiou is an architect and PhD candidate at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, under the supervision of Zissis Kotionis. Her research reframes the household as a micro-infrastructure of care —not as an architectural typology, but as a living entanglement of human and more-than-human forms of life, sustained through metabolic processes and embodied care. It articulates feminist care theory, posthumanist thought, and infrastructure studies, with milk fermentation as its empirical field across three temporalities: Neolithic Pindus, transhumant pastoralism, and contemporary Thessaly. She is co-editor and co-author of the book Assemblages of Terrestrial Accommodation (FRMK Editions, 2025). She has presented her research at international conferences, including ArchiBau.hr (2022) with the paper Care as a Material Doing, S.ARCH International (2021), and the Creative Europe / OPEN UP — DEVISINGS programme (2023). Her work has also been shown in European exhibitions. She graduated with distinction from the School of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2012) and completed with distinction the Postgraduate Programme in Architectural Design at the University of Thessaly (2015). She is the founder of L2 studio, an architectural practice based in Larissa and Thessaloniki.

The lecture takes place within the framework of the courses:
GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD Tutor: Thaleia Marou
&
MACHINE IN THE GARDEN: Wanderings Through the Countryside
The Observatory of the Countryside Tutor: Metaxia Markaki