The village and cliff. The village as a «rock»

Travelling was always and maybe the most essential part, of the incessant education of an architect- al­though, it is not exactly knowledge, but another form of "formation" that we gain during our small and big travels: Travelling forms our relation to the world. The journey-architectural workshop, organized by Maltepe University in the end of Summer 2014, guided us, students and tutors from Turkey, Greece and ltaly, from Istanbul to the old settlements of the Phrygian Valley, to ancient lonian and roman cities, to the Aegean coast and finally to the other side of the sea, to the island of Chios. This dense compact experience of old landscapes, places and spaces-living places with multilayered his­tory, and abandoned places, altering at last with the silence in the vacant stone village of Avgonyma that was the piace that hosted us, createci the background for our project: Anavatos, the object of our "investigation" is an almost deserted medieval settlement, built on a steep rock formation, with a suspended presence and a dramatic history. A protected monument in our days, an archaeological site with partly restored and numerous ruined structures, a mysterious compact mono­lithic appearance hidden in the surrounding rocks. Anavatos is for us, in its state of abandonment above ali, an object of reflection, a "generator" of questions. On practices of protection, on the possibility or the paradox of conservation, on change and transforma­tion, on qualities of space and matter, on "use" and appropriation, on the value of informai strategies, the concept of "life" as an alternative to tradition.