The New Groung?

Student: Georgia Gkotsopoulou
Supervisor: Demetra Katsota
School: Architecture Department, University of Patras
Date : February 2012

The notion of landscape has made a strong comeback in contemporary architectural thinking and practice, primarily as an answer to ecological and urban issues. Nowadays, architecture what can be observed is a tendency to be more sensitive towards landscaping and the integration of architecture in the landscape, whether it is natural or urban.

Landscape as well as architecture cannot be interpreted or approached unilaterally. That is the reason why correlating one with the other is a laborious task. In the particular project the correlation between landscape and architecture is to be studied under the prism of ground negotiation, as a key element of both landscape and architecture.

The transition from the pilotis system to the "structure-landscape" system for the study of ground manipulation leads to interesting observations concerning which properties render architecture as landscape and the new spatial experiences that come to light, depending on the ground manipulation gestures implemented.

The presentation of three contemporary, architectural works -all of which share the ground as the basic element of their composition- illustrates the ways in which architecture transforms and is perceived as landscape.

In the specific research thesis what can be ascertained is the way in which architecture exists as landscape by means of the new ground. It is a structure, a platform that functions strategically towards activating conditions, such as spatial coherence, surface unity, continuous circulation, intense surface topology and various views and aspects of the landscape, which result in perceiving architecture as landscape.

Read the whole research project here or in flipbook