Doma Summer School 2022

Overview

Brief

“The dream of autonomy has vanished. Everything is connected. Networked. The myth of an off-grid life. The myth of the outlaw. Thoreau went back to town. Robinson Crusoe left the island. Internet has taken over. There is no Outside. We inhabit the “grand interior” and, more than ever, pacific coexistence and bonds are needed. In 1977 O.M. Ungers and Koolhaas, among others, proposed the manifesto The City in the City - Berlin: A Green Archipelago (1977). The proposal dealt with the idea of a shrinking city, focusing on the intensification of its nodes. Islands, islands, islands. Taking the Archipelago as a starting point, we’ll focus on the sea around. We’ll speculate with the in-betweens. With the “χώρα”, the intervals, the space beyond, the bonds. The new diffuse condition of boundlessness where an involuntary and complex Ekumenopolis has formed. Think of Lewis’ Carrols empty chart depicting the ocean as a frame, as a space of possibilities. A boat could cross. Cultures could meet and merge. Zooming in, some plankton. No island at sight. Was this really the ocean?”

Outcome

Students developed short films that explored the city of Athens under the perspective of expanded forms of domesticity, taking as a starting point the notion of Archipelago. The films were projected on an open-air cinema, constructed by the students. By utilising -mainly but not only- found and reused materials, that later on were covered with white fabric to generate space, the cinema was an invitation to action, to a shared joy of a hands-on and ready-made architecture.

Watch here the making-of video.