Mnémé | A memorial site in Mati, Greece
Project information
submitted by
Chrysa Gerakaki
Supervising professorship
Professur Entwerfen und Baukonstruktion
Advisors
Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Johannes Kuehn, Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Hans-Rudolf Meier, Dipl.-Ing. George Athanasios Nikopoulos
Degree programme:
Architektur (Master of Science (M.Sc.))
Project description
A devastating wildfire near Athens resulted in taking the life of 102 people, left many homeless, severely injured and emotionally drained.
The area, with its wounds from the fire, becomes a palimpsest of history and memory. Five interventions of various scales are scattered in order to create a larger image of a memorial site. A network of emblems, symbols of the handling some of the most critical moments of the disaster. Same in materiality and form but different in the function and experience they present. They incorporate all the individual and collective stories of the fire and encourage a discourse with the reasons that led to this catastrophe. They are votive inscriptions, simple containers of a difficult memory. They exist in the ambivalence of being soothing and emotionally challenging at the same time. Their allegory lies in their function, as they do not actually provide a functional or comforting spatial solution. Instead, they become a reminder of what was missing and act as an invitation to imagine what would have happened, had they existed on the day of the fire.
A lookout tower; a shelter; a bridge leading to the sea; a stair leading to the sky and a wound, a cut in the ground that leads the visitor into the earth through a series of gardens, along with an information and education center.
The project commemorates the past and envisions a better future. No matter how much time passes our wounds leave us with scars. Scars that should not be forgotten.