The IMAGE OF THE CITY series selects and presents student works that reimagine the urban environment offering visionary reinterpretations of contemporary Greek cities.
The contemporary city is shaped not only by its buildings and infrastructures, but also by the memories, landscapes, movements, and relationships that unfold within them. The four projects presented here explore architecture as a means of revealing and transforming these often-hidden connections, proposing new ways of experiencing and inhabiting the urban environment. Christina Marasoglou develops narrative routes that bridge fragmented territories of Athens, turning movement into an act of urban exploration. Paraskevi-Maria Kampouri & Maroulina Kyriakidou reactivate the collective memory of Nea Ionia through a network of shared public spaces. Alexandros Margaris & Panagiotis Tziritis reclaim Volos’s waterfront through water-oriented landscapes of bathing, recreation, and collective life. Marina Kokkinou & Konstantina Myrianthousi reinterpret Nicosia’s divided landscape as a space for dialogue, memory, and coexistence. Together, these works approach architecture as a catalyst for connection, collective experience, and new urban possibilities.
Tell – Tale Hearts: Narrative Bridges between Ilissos and Hymettus
Diploma thesis by Christina Marasoglou | Supervised by Ifigenia Mari & George Parmenidis | Department of Architectural Engineering, National Technical University of Athens
This diploma thesis explores the analogy of the city as an exhibit, seeking to reveal its visible and hidden contents by uncovering relationships between seemingly unrelated urban fragments.
Through an initial reading of Athens as an urban field, the Ilissos River and Mount Hymettus emerge as significant elements that define a transitional zone between the city centre and its surrounding neighbourhoods.
The thesis focuses on bridging the areas of Pangrati, Vyronas, Kaisariani, and Zografou, where multiple urban centralities coexist between river and mountain.
Through bibliographic research, field observations, and personal exploration, photographs are transformed into abstract diagrams and keywords, which are subsequently connected to form narratives across the urban map.
These narratives combine historical information with experiential encounters and are analysed through text, photography, sketches, diagrams, and dramaturgical structures.
Their intersection reveals nodal points, leading to two case studies: the area between Saint Fotini and the First Cemetery of Athens, and the urban centre of Vyronas.
A comparative analysis of these sites demonstrates contrasting possibilities for public-space intervention. While the city centre allows for a continuous spatial connection, Vyronas generates a fragmented network constrained by its dense urban fabric.
The thesis therefore focuses on the Athenian centre, proposing a continuous experiential route connecting Ardittou Street, Saint Fotini, Anapafseos Street, and the First Cemetery through a series of spatial interventions.
Ultimately, the project develops urban design typologies and adaptable strategies for bridging heterogeneous places while preserving their individual identities, transforming movement through Athens into an experiential act of urban exploration.
Be-Commoning Through Memory: Urban Transitions in the “Squares” of Nea Ionia, Magnesia
Diploma thesis by Paraskevi – Maria Kampouri & Maroulina Kyriakidou | Supervised by Vasiliki Geropanta | Department of Architecture, Technical University of Crete
This diploma thesis explores the dialectical relationship between memory and urban space, examining how residents’ lived experiences contribute to the identity of the city and shape forms of collective life.
The refugee settlement of Nea Ionia in Magnesia serves as the field of study, where historical traces and traditions of collectivity remain embedded in the urban fabric from the settlement of the refugees to the present day.
The research is grounded in the concept of urban commons, understood as a process through which residents reconstruct collective relationships through the shared use and management of urban space.
Focusing on the historical “Tetragona”, the study documents spatial elements, memory narratives, and everyday practices to reveal a network of tangible and intangible characteristics that can reactivate public life.
The design proposal develops a network of small-scale shared public spaces, connecting pathways, urban voids, existing squares, and abandoned or historic buildings.
A primary route links the squares and functions as an axis of social encounter, incorporating a modular metal structure—a symbolic “rail” recalling the historical movements of the refugee population. Each Tetragono is reorganized around a central communal space, surrounded by planted zones that mediate between public and private life.
The strategy is structured through past, present, and proposal, allowing historical memory and contemporary urban conditions to inform new interventions. Through planting, paving, circulation, and the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, the project seeks to transform memory from a passive record into an active design tool, reconnecting the neighborhood with its collective past while fostering new forms of social interaction and shared urban life.
Bains Mixtes
Diploma thesis by Alexandros Margaris & Panagiotis Tziritis | Supervised by Vasilis Bourdakis and Evelyn Gavrilou | Department of Architectural Engineering, University of Thessaly
This diploma thesis proposes the reclamation of the Anavros waterfront in Volos, addressing its environmental degradation and historical fragmentation while transforming the coastline into a vibrant, inclusive, and water-oriented public realm.
The project draws upon the area’s layered history, from the segregated wooden piers of the early 20th century to the post-earthquake beaches, reinterpreting these traces through a contemporary relationship between water, landscape, and collective life.
Water is conceived not merely as a natural element but as a dynamic spatial and social agent. Ecological reefs, terraced waterfront infrastructures, and adaptive park interventions incorporate tidal movements and environmental processes into everyday civic experience.
Central to the proposal are two major interventions. The first introduces a public seawater swimming pool, designed to accommodate both organized sports and informal swimming, while creating spaces for movement, observation, leisure, and social interaction.
The second extends the park into the sea through a public bathing structure, reviving collective bathing as a social practice and establishing a gradual transition between public and semi-private spaces. Its accessible roof becomes an elevated platform for walking, gathering, and viewing the sea.
Between the breakwaters, new accessible beaches provide spaces for recreation and socializing while allowing tides, waves, and weather to become integral components of the spatial experience.
Along the waterfront, park improvements incorporate rainwater harvesting, irrigation systems, an open-air cinema, sports areas, parking, a redesigned skate park, and references to the Neolithic settlement.
Together, these interventions establish a cohesive coastal interface that reconnects environment, history, and collective urban life, transforming Anavros into an active and inclusive public landscape.
Stitching a Divided City: Nicosia
Diploma thesis Marina Kokkinou & Konstantina Myrianthousi| Supervised by Miltiades Katsaros & Emmanouil Stavrakakis | National Technical University of Athens
This diploma thesis explores architecture as a dynamic framework through which complex spatial, social, and political relationships can be interpreted and renegotiated. Focusing on Nicosia’s Buffer Zone—a landscape of historical trauma, cultural stratification, and enduring political division—it asks how architecture might transform a territory of separation into a space for coexistence, memory, and dialogue. At the heart of the proposal lies a historical coincidence: the contemporary Green Line traces, in significant parts, the former course of the Pedieos River. Rather than reconstructing the river as a literal landscape, the project extracts its spatial and symbolic qualities as a strategy for reconnecting Nicosia’s fragmented urban fabric.
