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
Ears to the Ground
a sonic lecture byLudwig Berger
With the lights turned off, we listen
to glaciers melting,
the breathing of a peat bog,
the pulse of a highway.
Sound narrates places beyond the city,
and listening becomes a tool
to explore climate change
and the entanglement of bodies and places within it.
Auditorium
Thursday, 2 October, 14:00 — duration 16'
In the framework of the course
EKTOS POLIS: Researching the Urban Otherwise - Wanderings across Extended Urbanisation
Observatory of the Countryside
tutor: Metaxia Markaki
Ludwig Berger is a sound artist and composer based in Zurich, Montrealand Milan. In his installations and performances, he engages playfully with more-than-human worlds such as beehives, glaciers, water infrastructures, and trees. In his musical work, he produces intimate sonic eco-fictions through synthesis and sampling. He has released various albums of field recordings, improvisations, and electroacoustic music, and composes for film, theatre, and radio. He is the curator of the tape label Vertical Music, runs a monthly radio show at Radio Raheem, and teaches sound and field recording at the Institute for Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich, where he studies the sonic dimension of Japanese gardens, alpine glaciers, and urban landscapes.
Within the framework of the Erasmus+ program, the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly co-organized with Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture de Nantes (France), Universita Luigi Vanvitelli (Italy), Anhalt University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Eindhoven Technical University (Nederland) and Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Italy) the Blended Intensive Program entitled "Hybrid Urbanscapes" from July 1 to 6, 2024.
The program fostered a dynamic exchange of ideas, encouraging participants to explore forward-thinking urban strategies that integrate ecological principles, climate resilience, and the evolving interplay between human settlements and natural ecosystems.
Through lectures, site visits, and collaborative design work, students engaged with real-world urban and environmental challenges.
This volume brings together the knowledge and creative explorations that emerged from the workshop. It includes a collection of lectures delivered during the workshop, as well as documentation of field visits to critical sites affected by extreme flooding in September 2023 – the Giannouli neighborhood in Larisa, Lake Karla, and the village of Mikro in Pelion. These locations, deeply impacted by climate-related disasters, served as case studies for envisioning resilient urban and territorial futures.
Additionally, the volume showcases a series of student design projects developed in four design studios at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, during the winter of 2023 and spring of 2024. These projects, which were presented and exhibited during the workshop in Volos, propose innovative approaches to reimagining the delicate balance between river systems, water management, and the built environment, offering critical insights into sustainable urban futures.
Read the volume.
Join us on Wednesday, September 24, 2025, at 19:00, at the Museum of the City of Volos, for the screening of a short video-chronicle (dir. Christos Schoinas) from the exhibition Floodmarks (April 2 – May 9, 2025). The exhibition was organized at the same venue by an interdisciplinary team of social anthropologists, architects, geographers, artists, and activists.
The event has a twofold aim: to reflect on and gather feedback on the exhibition as a public intervention within the continuing afterlives of the flood, as well as to discuss possible future actions; and to announce the establishment of the Diachronic and Experiential Landscape Observatory at the University of Thessaly’s Department of Architecture (TAM) and Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology (IAKA).
Floodmarks was co-organized by members of the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology (IAKA) and the Department of Architecture (TAM) of the University of Thessaly, the Pelion Summer Lab (PSL) for Cultural Theory and Experimental Humanities and the Volos Art Association, with assistance from the staff of the Museum of the City of Volos. For more information, see here.
Graphics: Katerina Giannitsi
The 4th International Workshop in Theory and Sound "Waves", 26-28/08/2025 at the Paou Monastery, is co-organized by:
- The “Mobility Studies” Postgraduate Programme and the Social Anthropology Lab (Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology), University of Thessaly,
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The Department of Culture, Creative Media and Industries, University of Thessaly,
-
The Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly,
In collaboration with MOMus Experimental Centre for the Arts.
theoretical ↔ artistic workshop
The 2025 ISTW focuses on the topic of “waves”, exploring its analytical potential for the study of music and sound in the (Eastern) Mediterranean and across their transnational trajectories and resonances. The wave, a performative materiality enacting sound’s reproductions, transmissions, diffractions, dispersions, vibrations, interferences, velocities, echoes, periodicities, frequencies and oscillations.
The workshop is aligned with the sound festival organized by MOMus Experimental Centre for the Arts in January 2026. The festival also focuses on the topic of “wwwwavessss” and will host projects designed in the context of the IWTS workshop.
Invited speakers:
- Jessica Swanston Baker (University of Chicago)
- Gavin Williams (King’s College London)
- Jean Paul Thibaud (AAU Cresson, University Grenoble Alpes)
For more info please refer to the website and the programme.
Student Projects Final Presentations ΑΣ1512_ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN IV-VI IB: Collective Inhabitation Models: Architectures οf Care
Students presenting their projects:
MARIA AGIOPETRITI / ILIAS KALOGRIAS / KATERINA MELINA-KARAGIANNIDOU / EMILY KOUREMENOU/ MONIKA NIKOLAIDI / ELEUTHERIA NTENEKOU / GEORGIA PETRIDOU / MARINA PLARINOU / NIKOLETA SAMARA / GIANNIS SILITZOGLOU / ANTONIETTA STEFANI/ VASILIS STYLAS / DANAI TASIOPOULOU / MARIA TSERVENI / KONSTANTINA HATZIFOTIADOU / ASIMINA HRISTOFILOU
Commentary:
Dimitris Gourdoukis, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Arch., AUTh
Instructor:
Petros Phokaides, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Arch, UTh.
Proposals for a museum dedicated to Giorgio de Chirico are presented in an exhibition that opens at Art Space δ (Hatziargyri 4 - Iasonos) on June 12, 20:00.
The exhibition consists of selected student projects developed at the Department of Architecture as part of the course Architectural Composition III-V ΙB: THE ENIGMA OF THE CITY. The aim of the course was the design of the Giorgio de Chirico Museum in Volos, which will be a pole of attraction for visitors and a laboratory of cultural empowerment, providing at the same time a new architectural landmark for the city of Volos, and internalizing concepts, atmospheres and emotional moods that characterize the most creative period of de Chirico's painting.
The exhibition is curated by Kostas Manolidis and Faye Tzanetoulakou and will last until June 24.
See the poster of the exhibition here.
SPETSES 13-20 JULY
The Anargyrios Korgialenios School of Spetses (AKSS) and the Department of Architecture of the University of Patras are organizing the first Spetses Architecture Workshop SAW 2025 from 13/7 to 20/7 at the AKSS facilities in Spetses.