Interacting narrations on the boundary on the island of Ioannina

Student: Vasileiou Anna
Supervisor: Alexandra Alexopoulou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki _ Faculty of Engineering _ School of Architecture
Presentation date: October 2015

On the northwest of a preserved settlement of a coniferous forest and a family of reed, a rock, a boundary between the lake Pamvotis and the hinterland of the island of Ioannina, receives and gives meaning by new to human existence through a different understanding of the place, in this diploma thesis. An interacting spatial narration, inside, outside and close to the boundary, gets shaped by a path articulated by building types-building non-types encouraging the environmental education.

The path is formed through a typological analysis of the spatial qualities traced on the island, natural or man-made, such as the limits and geometries, the textures and vegetation, which ensure the feeling of it as a place for monasticism and recreation as it is. The thesis focuses on a new understanding of the already experienced space through the suggestion of a continuous movement inside, outside and close to the boundary-rock and the creation of transitional areas-of building and non building type-as a reference to its horizontality and verticality. A 'meteorism' between different spatial and temporal realities is made possible. Thus, the network of pathways running across the island and connecting the village with the forest and monasteries gets completed.

The rock is treated as a space-a volume of distinct geometric features and a peculiar section. In its core, an environmental education center is placed promoting the research and awareness on the environment. It is a room-in-room penetration, adding a motion opposing to the static boundary. It consists of a central axis which coincides with the rock' s symmetry axis emphasizing its horizontality and distributes the horizontal and vertical movements in the volumes and levels, ensuring thus the connection between the two entry points. The building is organized on three levels following the terrain's spatial features so as to be smoothly integrated with the landscape. Therefore it is always in retreat or in continuity with it, and never exposed. Three perpendicular to the axis volumes abolish in transverse the lateral boundary of the rock's fronts and negate the introversion the rock generates.

The spatial functions are organized on both sides of the central axis in a tripartite manner in the three building volumes crossing the rock in transverse, being the reception, information (amphitheatre-exhibition space) and eating spaces on an intermediate level, the administration, education and research spaces (workshops, general library / specialized research) on the upper level and the required auxiliary rooms on the lower level.

Free spaces are shaped both out of the building as plateau carved into the rock allowing the observation of the landscape and between undercut solid tumors, to ensure the lighting and ventilation needed, to set aside the introverted atmosphere of the more common uses and enrich their spatial value. At the same time they offer a new perspective of a already experienced place.

The typology and scale of both the building volumes and the free spaces respectively follow the proportions of the ones of the preserved settlement with the intention of their completely integrating with the physiognomy of the island' s landscape.