Proposals for the regeneration of the old port in Thessaloniki, Greece

GENERAL INFORMATION

• Location: Old port, Thessaloniki, Greece
• Workshop project | group project | 2016

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Under the lens of place-making the group approached the port of Thessaloniki, a non-place, where vast abandoned areas alternate with remaining cargo activities. Place-making is regarded here as a form of urban planning and design that engages with the people that are going to make use of the spaces and give them meaning. To have people closely involved in the process and directly addressing their needs and desires is a form of city making based on social sustainability. For that reason, interviewing the locals was the baseline of the design.

Another principle used for this project was the urban acupuncture technique. In times of constraint and uncertainty, our group aimed at generating a series of interventions, both affordable and flexible, activating the site by opening it to a diversity of public uses. This strategy adapted to the existent physical situation and remaining uses of the port as well as to possible future scenarios of change and development.

DESIGN PROCESS

The proposed masterplan included the areas of interest where detailed proposals are shown. The masterplan had more the form of a smarter plan that acted as a detonator of further transformations and could incrementally develop in time. It subverted the idea of the masterplan, normally associated to larger and more expensive transformations but likely to end up in incomplete and untimely interventions, with no regard to the affected people.

FINAL THOUGHTS AND CONSIDERATIONS

Speaking with local people can be a useful tool in urban design. Site analysis becomes better informed when people’s views are included as well. Practicing your soft skills is important for a nice and smooth interviewing. Giving people the time to think and share their views is also important; rushing through an answer can give false results since sometimes people have the tendency to share other people’s thoughts than their owns. It is the interviewer’s responsibility to read between the words and extract the valid piece of information.