AKINITO
A project by a group of architects, artists, lawyers, urban planners, economists and house projects initiatives.
Concept/ organized by: Sofia Dona
(facebook event)
Cohabitation and co-ownership in a building is a model of habitation practiced in the Mediterranean and Greece since old times and mostly lived and applied in the family frame. This model is very interesting when translated into economic terms. The members of large families are often co-owners (tenants in common) with undivided shares of various types of buildings such as old Athenian houses, neoclassical houses, or even typical apartment buildings (polykatoikia).
Co-ownership often creates misunderstanding and miscommunication between family members and a disfunctionality which often leads to the abandonment of buildings. On the other hand this very model of co-ownership and mis-communication is used in anti-gentrification house projects in various cities such as Leipzig or Zurich, in which many people are involved in complex and often controversial processes of buying a building, protecting it from its future sale and return to the market.
The question is whether these anti-gentrification house projects developed in northern European cities can be applied in Athens – in a context where decrease in real estate prices are boosting investments and sparking gentrification.
In this context, the proposed project focuses on a new house project model for the city of Athens and its realization through a series of workshops.
A working group of architects, artists, lawyers, urban planners, economists and people that have already realized of house projects will try to analyze the elements and processes in Athens, in order to question how to create one or more possible new models of inhabitation in Athens and work on the process to realize one.
The title AKINITO refers to the Greek legal term of a real estate or landed property as defined in relation to the fixed/immobile connection to the ground (in German: lmmobilien, in Italian: immobile). Under this title the project tries to redefine immobility as a core component of new structures and practices of co-ownership and co-habitation.
MEETING I
MAY 29 2016
AT BAGEION, 18 Omonoia Square
PRESENTATIONS
11am-14:30pm @ Ballroom
Tobias Bernet (anthropologist and historian)/ Ivo Balmer (sociologist and geographer)/ Stefanie Müller-Frank (journalist):
“New Models for Cooperative Housing in Germany and Switzerland”
Marcel Seehuber (miethäuser syndikat)
“The apartment-house syndicate: Humane living space, a roof over the head for everyone.“
Constantina Theodorou (architect-researcher and member of the group Co-app Building):
“Athens: a shrinking city?“
Marjetica Potrč (artist and architect):
“Community-Based Projects in Participatory design“
Inputs by: Stella Nastou, Co-App Building
WORKSHOP
4:30pm-7:30pm @ Ballroom
The workshop will be held by Marcel Seehuber in collaboration with the other speakers and the participants, focusing on the realization of a house project in Athens both by forming the concept/aim of the project and the various ideas and also by solving the practicalities that will appear in terms of legal issues, organization, budget, sustainability etc. In this workshop the aim will be to research on a new model of a ‘house project’ in the city of Athens that will reflect the needs and aspects of the city and its inhabitants, and to form the group of people interested to realize one version of it.
CoHab Athens 