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URBAN PROTOCOLS

September 5, 2012
The concept of Urban Protocol names a strategy concerning the condition of Athens today. It
would serve as an experimental pseudo-methodology that faces the condition of the city. The
Urban Protocols are meant to introduce legal temporary occupancies of the abandoned city center
that will be accepted and controlled by a municipal authority; the purpose of an Urban Protocol
would be to establish cluster-like mikro-legislative constructions with communal functions. Urban
Protocols are formed as systems of rules. Using a video game terminology we may say that the
Urban Protocols are play-tested in the city, performed and improved via Internet. The system of
rules they represent could be transformed and re-established easily.

A first example of Urban Protocol was proposed with the Athens Terraces project. The major
part of this protocol was consisted by the legislative unification of the terraces of typical Athenian
blocks; an existing, typical athenian blocks terrace is now divided to the number of buildings that
form it. The protocol of a unified block would construct the communal representation of a unified
legislative entity, the field of the blocks terraces. This unification may extend to other neighboring
blocks or can be repeated elsewhere in the city. The unification can also be enriched by a covering
system of sophisticated canopies. The project proposed a reuse of the existing metallic grids of the
city for its cover. It can also include photovoltaic surfaces that could produce electricity for
common use of the blocks inhabitants.

A second example of Urban Protocol was proposed by the Antonas office with the Urban Hall
project. An area of the city was announced as open to a systematic change of function. The
municipal authority or a selected voted board would be responsible for the programmatic change
of function. A division of time makes here possible a the coexistence of different functions in the
same space. The Urban Hall can become an open air public hospital for a month or program a
music scene or a theater space depending to the decisions of its board.

The Urban Protocol challenges the relation between the city and the Internet; the concept of user
would function better for its performance than the one of citizen. Nevertheless its most
sophisticated part would have to deal with the relation between user and citizen. Its most
challenging legislative part is ruled by the relationship between the Internet and the state; the
Internet is understood as the quick functional basis for the formation, installation and function of
an Urban Protocol.
Why could a city like Athens needs Urban Protocols in order to enter a phase of a new function?
Scarcity made obvious that alternative initiatives were more welcomed than any bureaucratically
conceived systematic action in the city. Nevertheless the initiatives cannot form a frame for a city
change. The Urban Protocol would be the name of legislative schematization of urban initiatives. It
function as an invitation to think the city in a different scale within the relation between a crucial
municipality board and a power given to Internet users in order to operate in the city field.

The concepts of provisional, improvisational, guerrilla, unsolicited, temporary,


informal, DIY, unplanned, participatory, open-source, used abundantly in Athens
during the last years do not only name a trend of not canonical architecture. Architecture seems to
propose its own end if we forget its power to produce programs. An uninteresting lessez-faire will
be the result of such an idealization of the free initiative. A city was conceived as a system of
coexistence and its legislative system is already old. The Urban protocol could be first and
foremost the call for a new legislative phase for the city of the future. Athens is only a good
example.

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This entry was posted on September 5, 2012 at 8:31 am and is filed under AA, antonas, aristide
antonas, article, , urban protocols.

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