Tra archeologia e progetto urbano: la riscrittura del topos nell'Agorà Classica di Atene

Conceived between 1996 and 2001 within the plan for the “Unification of the Archaeological Sites of Athens”, the project for the “Arrangement of the archaeological site of the Classical Agora of Athens and the surrounding neighbourhood”, by the group Atelier 66 - Dimitris and Suzana Antonakakis, Atelier Yannis Tsiomis Architecte and Yorgos Andréadis and Partners, Manos Perrakis and Yorgos Triantafyllou, seems to constitute an authentic paradigm in the relationships between archaeological and urban design. A paradigm whose exemplarity would reside above all in the uncommon theoretical and methodological tensions that characterized it, and through which it is possible to recognize its contribution in the further clarification of a point of view which has its roots in the masterful experience led by Dimitris Pikionis, during the ‘50s, with the arrangement of the archaeological area around the Acropolis and the hill of Filopappo. This point of view defines itself starting from the recognition of the “topographical” reasons of ancient Greek architecture, and finds effectiveness through a modus operandi that declares the centrality of the “understanding of historical topography”. Through the “historical topography”, which is characterized by a double character, cognitive and operational, and invested with a double value, archaeological and urban, this project concisely resolves some issues that are only apparently disjointed, such as the formal definition of the archaeological site - and therefore the identification of its ‘measure’ -, the ‘integration’ of its space within the city - and therefore the determination of its limits and its thresholds - and last but not least the enhancement of its ruins - and therefore the restitution of meaning to spaces and forms, even assuming the condition of partiality of the fragment.