The Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly is organizing a conference on contemporary challenges for architecture and urban space and invites students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, young graduates as well as PhD candidates to participate in a critical dialogue on the current issues of Greek cities and the potential of architecture to become a tool for questioning and empowerment, shaping new collective dynamics and responses to social needs.
Costis Hadjimichalis
Crises Spaces. Structures, struggles and solidarity in Southern Europe and Radical Geographies.
Lecture
Thursday November 06th 2025
14:00 (GMT+2)
Mezzanine, Post Graduate Room
Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly
Pedion Areos,Volos
Lecture within the framework of the courses
South: Space and non hegemonic paradigms of knowledge
Tutor: Iris Lykourioti
Ektos Polis: Researching the Urban otherwise: KTOS POLIS: Wanderings through ExtendedUrbanisation
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki
Biography
Costis Hadjimichalis is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Geography, Harokopio University Athens. He previously held a position at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and has been visiting professor at Roskilde University (Denmark), UCLA and Berkeley (USA), Panteion University, Athens (Greece), Oslo National University (Norway), NIRSA(Ireland), Macquarie University (Australia) and Universitá deggli Studi di Padova (Italy). His current research and publications concern uneven geographical development, local and regional development, radical geography, democracy and spatial justice and landscape analysis. He has been section editor of Regional Development for the International Encyclopaedia of Human Geographer, Elsevier and founding editor of the Greek journal Geographies. Among his recent books are Space in Left Thought (co-author Dina Vaiou, in Greek 2012), Debt Crisis and Land Dispossession (2014 in Greek, 2016 in German), Geographical Issues suited to non-geographers, (2016 in Greek), Crises Spaces. Structures, struggles and solidarity in Southern Europe, London: Routledge (2017, paperback 2019, modified Greek edition 2018) and Sketching urbanities in the Mediterranean (in Greek, 2021).
On Tuesday 4/11/2025 at 19:00 in the auditorium of the Department of Architecture, the results of the research project “SchoolNET: Innovative Tools for the Sustainable and Inclusive Refurbishment of Schools Building and Inclusive Mobility”, PR VENETO FSE+ 2021-2027 Priority 2 “Social inclusion and combating poverty”, will be presented, with:
University of Padova:
- Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering
- Department of Industrial Engineering
- Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology
- Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation)
IUAV University of Venice:
- Department of Design Culture
University of Thessaly:
- Department of Architecture
- Department of Early Childhood Education
New publication by the Centre of New Media and Feminist Public Practices
Care in Conflict: Artistic Reflections on Broken Worlds/Words
This publication seeks a rapture with the way we speak, taking language-as-care as the starting point for a reflection on what could critically resist the emergence nowadays of “care” both as a buzzword in the contemporary cultural scene and as an, often aestheticised, representation in various artistic and theoretical contexts.
The Centre of New Media and Feminist Public Practices commissioned texts from Gigi Argyropoulou, Ethel Baraona Pohl and Lisa Maillard, Elke Krasny and Svetlana Milevska who, in the context of this publication, strive to re-read care and its discontents and clarify antagonistic understandings and significations of care. They aim to better understand the fundamental role of care in the contradictions of social cohesion and social emancipation while addressing issues such as the Global South, care and curating, feminism, situated knowledge and affect. Informed by and based on a feminist perspective, they try to differentiate and raise consciousness on how these exact values are extracted by the globalised market to be invested in the rally of profit. As an epilogue, bell hooks’ “Teaching New Worlds/New Words” which has been included in its Greek translation (“Γλώσσα: διδάσκοντας νέους κόσμους, διδάσκοντας νέες λέξεις”), urges us to embrace new words as pathways to new worlds, as both a critical reflection and a heartfelt call to action, opening up possibilities for reimagining collective futures through language and care and underlining the understanding of our work as part of critical pedagogies.
The publication also includes a feminist index that operates as more than just a cataloguing or referencing system; it is a dynamic practice that brings to light otherwise peripheral or ec-centric positions, pathways, relationships, and interconnections of the partners of the Care Ecologies programme: The Centre of New Media and Feminist Public Practices, Mamidakis Foundation, State of Concept, Idensitat and WHW/ What, how & for whom. The publication has been realised as part of the Care Ecologies project, funded by the Creative Europe Program and the European Union.
As the double-faceted care (both radical and capitalized) tricks us, it is imperative to think about care ecologies, power relations and the cultural and geopolitical hegemonies as these are revealed by language and to take care of these ecologies in order to speak differently.
Care in Conflict: Artistic Reflections on Broken Worlds/Words
Edited by Elpida Karaba, Valia Papastamou, Marianna Stefanitsi, Ioanna Zouli
Contributions by Gigi Argyropoulou, Ethel Baraona Pohl, bell hooks, Lisa Maillard,Suzana Milevska, Elke Krasny
Translation by Afroditi Christodoulakou (English-Greek)
Copyediting and Proofreading by Damian Mac Con Uladh
Designed by Studio Lialios Vazoura
Printed by Kostopoulos Printing House
Bound by Androvik Dimitra
Published by University of Thessaly Press
ISBN: 978-960-9439-98-5
© Copyright, 2025, The Authors, CNMFPP and University of Thessaly Press, Volos.
All rights reserved
Τhe publication has been realised as part of the Care Ecologies project,funded by the Creative Europe Program and the European Union.
You can download the book as a pdf.
See the cover.
Λecture by Nikos Katsikis entitled Geospatial Metabolisms on Thursday 23/10/25 at 15:00 in Amphitheatre and online.
How can we understand the spatial dimension of urban metabolism?
How does the resource supply of dense urban centers shape interdependent, operational landscapes of primary production and transform planetary space?
And in what ways can this relationship be reimagined in a sustainable, resilient, and just manner?
Nikos Katsikis is an Assistant Professor of Urbanism at TU Delft, where he coordinates the Critical Environments research group , and a founding member of the Urban Theory Lab-University of Chicago. His research combines urbanization theory, spatial design, and geospatial analysis, aiming to understand and transform the spatial dimensions of urban metabolism. He holds a professional degree in architecture from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and a Doctorate from Harvard GSD, where he served as editor of the journal New Geographies and lecturer in Urban Planning and Design. He has also taught at the Royal College of Art, the Architectural Association, and the Politecnico di Milano, and serves as an external advisor to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. His forthcoming books include Data-spheres of Planetary Urbanization and Environments of Planetary Urbanization (Jovis, 2025).
https://criticalenvironments.nl/
http://www.terraurbis.com/
In the framework of the course
EKTOS POLIS: Researching the Urban Otherwise - Wanderings across Extended Urbanisation
Observatory of the Countryside
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki
For the connection link, please contact memarkaki@uth.gr
See the poster.
The international workshop RE/CONSTRUCTIONS: Histories, Politics, Futures is part of the two-year research project Contested Reconstructions in Global Perspective: Spatial Histories of Conflict and Expertise in 1940s Greece (HFRI, 2023–25 Project Number 15122), which combines architectural history and digital humanities to examine the entanglements of expertise and conflict. It will be held in person between 17-19 October 2025, at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly in Volos.
Scheduled for the final trimester of the research project, this workshop will publicly present its findings and serve as a platform to foster discussion on the histories and politics of post-conflict reconstruction—a field that, needless to say, has become a central challenge in contemporary research and design. Building on the productive conference session Revising Histories of Post-Conflict/Disaster Reconstruction (SAH 2025, chaired by P. Phokaides and F. Abreek-Zubiedat), this workshop aims to place the paradigmatic case of post–World War II reconstruction in Greece in dialogue with the contemporary politics of post-disaster recovery following the recent catastrophic floods in the city of Volos and the wider Thessaly region. The primary aim of this workshop is to broaden discussions on the histories and politics of post-conflict and post-disaster reconstruction by foregrounding marginalized perspectives and experiences. It invites researchers working across diverse temporal and geographic contexts to engage with the following broader questions:
- What major shifts have occurred in the practices and paradigms of post–WWII reconstruction, decisively shaped by Western values, technocratic expertise, and developmentalism?
- How has recent scholarship shifted from positioning architects, planners, and other experts as the central protagonists of reconstruction histories, to foregrounding bottom-up processes led by builders, inhabitants, and other agents—such as animals, plants, infrastructures, and machines, among others?
- What would it mean to radically revise the historiography of reconstruction to include the perspectives of marginalized humans and more-than-humans as co-constitutive forces in environments under reconstruction?
- And, given the escalating frequency and scale of contemporary catastrophes, how might we reimagine reconstruction as a project of spatial and environmental justice—one grounded in practices of care and healing, articulated from a planetary perspective?
This workshop aims to reconceptualize post-conflict and post-disaster reconstruction as a broader epistemic inquiry. Through public lectures, scheduled and informal discussions, a fieldtrip and screenings we seek to foreground critically situated investigations of reconstruction processes and case studies. In doing so, we aim to interrogate dominant epistemological frameworks and explore alternative research methodologies—including critical archival analysis, digital mapping tools, ethnography, oral histories, autobiographical narratives, and relational writing—as well as diverse modes of dissemination, such as film, exhibitions, and other public-facing formats.Ultimately, we ask: what new modes of perception or knowledge production are required to account for what has been silenced in the histories of reconstruction, while also registering what continues to echo beyond conventional forms of evidence? Beyond crafting more just historiographies, how might critical research help us reimagine the political stakes of reconstruction—both historically and in relation to unfolding futures?
Amid ongoing wars, protracted military conflicts, and escalating ecological catastrophes—including earthquakes, floods, and wildfires—post-conflict and post-disaster reconstruction projects are proliferating globally, demanding deeper historiographical and theoretical engagement. This workshop brings together an international group of researchers to foster future collaboration, including the development of a collective publication critically examining the histories and politics of reconstruction in post-conflict and post-disaster contexts.
Workshop Participants
“ContestedReconstructions” Research Team:
Petros Phokaides (PI), Polymeris Voglis, Eleni Gkadolou, Dimtris Skaltsis, Stavroula-Maria Micha, Giota Pavlidou, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat, Panayiota Pyla, Ijlal Muzaffar.
List of Invited Participants:
Kalliopi Amygdalou, Christos Filippides, Aslihan Gunhan, Stylianos Lekakis, Fabiano Micocci, Penelope Papailias, Maryia Rusak, Antonis Petras, Loukas Triantis, Vaso Trova.
Workshop Public Program
Friday 17 Oct 2025 / 18:00 – 20:00
Welcoming message
Kostis Paniyiris, Department Head
Introduction to the Re/Constructions Workshop
Petros Phokaides
Polymeris Voglis
The Burden of the Past in Shaping the Future
The Politics of Reconstruction in Postwar Greece
Panayiota Pyla
Reconstruction and Reconciliation: Varosha's Long Wait
Ijlal Muzaffar
Land-dreams: Meaning, Memory, and Belonging in a Reconstructed Landscape
SCREENINGS
Friday 17 Oct 2025 19:45
Metamorfosi - A Settlement in Flux (19min)
(Thanos Karanikas, Dimitra Kosma)
Saturday 18 Oct2025 20:00
Floodmarks: A Video-Chronicle (22min)
(Penelope Papailias)
Lecture
UTOPIAN HOURS Luca Ballarini & Stratosferica
Wednesday 15 October 2025 12:00 EET
Hall Δ και Teams
Luca Ballarini will present the programme and the curatorial strategy for the upcoming urban festival Utopian Hours—an international festival of city making and urban innovation— which he hosts in Torino 17-19 October 2025. The festival offers ideas for city imaging and how to develop and contextualize visions about the future of cities, but also community building, place making and social innovation. In addition to keynote speeches, Utopian Hours offers workshops and immersive exhibitions to explore a diverse range of experiences and expertise for the future of urban innovation and life.
Stratosferica is an organization that produces and disseminates urban knowledge with projects that range from research to storytelling, from education to placemaking. They work in cities and territories alongside businesses, public administrations and communities to redefine the positioning of places starting from the ideas of those who live them.
UTOPIAN HOURS
Meeting ID: 331 985 502 771 0
Passcode: en3AF27m
Join the meeting now