Designing Land: Kuklen Industrial Park and the Transformation of Plovdiv’s Peripheries through Global Production
Ina Valkanova
Thursday 26.3, 14.00
ONLINE
This lecture presents an in-depth study of a global production landscape on the periphery of Plovdiv—the Trakia Economic Zone. Building on discussions of material flows, networks, and social dynamics, it examines how land is transformed through interconnected material, regulatory, and experiential processes.
Focusing on the role of the private construction company Senit, the lecture traces how industrial development was initiated on former agricultural land and enabled through alliances between political, financial, and advisory actors. In doing so, it highlights the mechanisms of extended industrial urbanization. The case of Industrial Park Kuklen is examined through land ownership patterns, transactions, and management structures, revealing the political-economic frameworks that have shaped the area, alongside emerging practices of care and environmental repair.
The lecture further explores the evolving material life of the landscape, shaped by both human and non-human forces, where natural processes intersect with the controlled design of industrial infrastructures. By approaching industrial territories as dynamic and relational environments, it offers a multi-layered, more-than-human understanding of global production landscapes, challenging the notion that such developments occur on a tabula rasa or are governed solely by dominant economic and political forces.
Ina Valkanova is a researcher, urbanist, and activist. Her work explores the relationship between global production and local environments, focusing on a special economic zone on the periphery of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD from ETH Zürich (Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies) and a Dipl.-Ing. from RWTH Aachen University. From 2017 to 2019, she served as Coordinator for Investment and Innovation for Sofia’s long-term development strategy, Vision for Sofia 2050. Prior to this, she was Director of the international festival One Architecture Week in Plovdiv. Ina is a co-founder of Gradoscope, a Sofia-based collective focusing on urban and landscape process design in complex urban initiatives and redevelopment projects. She has taught at the University of Architecture in Sofia and at ETH Zürich, and has lectured widely across Europe, including at Copenhagen Architecture Week, Belgrade International Architecture Week, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and KU Leuven. Her work has been published in Steel Cities: The Architecture of Logistics in Central and Eastern Europe, Dimensions Journal, and Bauwelt, among others. She served on the jury of the 2025 New European Bauhaus Awards and recently co-curated the exhibition It Was All Fields Once, presented at CIVA and Track Brussels.
Within the framework of the course
MACHINE IN THE GARDEN: Wanderings through the Countryside
By the Observatory of the Countryside
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki
For online attendance contact memarkaki@uth.gr
On Wednesday, 18 March 2026, as part of the Erasmus+ BIP "QueerrRing Ecologies: Performative Approaches within and around Bodies of Water and Waterscapes", a series of lectures will take place at the Museum of the City of Volos. Duration 18:00-21:00.
Please find the detailed programme here.
Erasmus+ BIP:
DArch, UTh Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly
EBABX École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux
ERG École de Ρecherche Graphique
DCCMI, UThDepartment of Culture + Creative Media and Industries, University of Thessaly
Tending Sheep, Goats and Windturbines
Alexandros Bouris
Mezzanine
Thursday 12/3, 10:00
Kafireas in southern Euboea, also known as Kavo Doro, isolated and exposed to wind and waves, occupies its own place on the map. The main activities in the villages of Kavo Doro are goat and sheep herding and the wind energy industry. Goats and wind turbines may not appear to have a direct connection; however, amid the transformations of the contemporary era, such unconventional relationships seem to flourish. Yet they share a common denominator: care—care for both animal and machine. Residents of the wider area are professionally engaged in caring for goats and sheep as well as wind turbines.
Successive arrays of wind turbines, endless electricity cables, abandoned villages, very few inhabitants, and countless goats characterize the landscape. They coexist—or at least attempt to—as the wind industry dramatically affects the area, transforming it into an industrial landscape where each of us becomes an intruder in an environment that has already moved beyond us.
Alexandros Bouris studied architecture at the University of Thessaly and currently works at Antonas Architects in Athens. His research project Caring for Goats, Sheep, and Wind Turbines has been presented at film and photography festivals. His interests focus on questions of rural space and the transformation of the countryside.
Within the framework of the course
PELION CHŌRA: Dissecting and Reweaving a Mountain
By The Observatory of the Countryside
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki
Thursday 12/3/2026 11:00-13:00 - Room Γ and online (MS Teams)
Download the poster.
The lecture will take place as part of the course: COHABITING IN THE GARDEN: ARCHITECTURES OF CARE Instructor: P. Phokaides, Assistant Professor, UTh
Short bio:
Thalia Marou holds a diploma in Forestry (AUTH) and a Msc in Environmental Design of Cities and Buildings (EAP, 2007) and a Ph.D. from the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly. Her research interests include urban gardening as an everyday practice, natureculture networks, care in more than human worlds. Since 2014, she has been teaching at the Department of Architecture, Uth the courses: Urban Plantings, Urban Agriculture in the Contemporary City, Food Geographies, Naturecultural approaches to Environmental Issues.
Lecture by Ioanna Piniara: “Towards an Ecology of the Private: A Manual for the Trigono Community Land Trust in Kessariani” from her book titled “We Have Never Been Private: The Housing Project in Neoliberal Europe”.
Wednesday 11/3/2026 19:00-21:00 - Room Γ and online (MS Teams)
Download the poster.
The lecture will take place in-person and online as part of the course: COHABITING IN THE GARDEN: ARCHITECTURES OF CARE Instructor: P. Fokaidis, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly
Short bio:
Ioanna Piniara is an architect and researcher holding a PhD in Architecture from the Architectural Association (AA). Her research interests include the study of domesticity as a biopolitical device for the control of bodies and identities, the spatial implications of economy, institutional power and policy in the design of urban housing as well as narratives for the decolonization of housing typologies and urban forms. Ioanna has taught History and Theory Studies and Architecture and Urban Design at the AA, and she has been a post-doctoral fellow of the ‘Architectures of Order’ research cluster at the Goethe University Frankfurt. She is currently teaching design and theory seminars at the Architecture School of the National Technical University in Athens. She is the author of “We Have Never Been Private: The Housing Project in neoliberal Europe” by Actar Publishers, 2025, and “The Housing Question is a Feminist Question: Housing Commons for the ‘New Woman’ of the German Werkbund” by M Books, 2026.