A study in erosion

design research, Kostas Manolidis, 2015

 

 

The 1 km long breakwater of Volos port is a popular strolling route. It culminates however to a vacant, uninspiring platform, covered with gravel. The dull condition of this point offers no architectural correspondence to the panoramic view and the intense experience of hovering in the middle of the bay.

This project attempts to reimagine the architectural validity and the material connotations of this solitary piece of land. To this end, the artificiality of the platform is hybridized with the fragmentary quality of a weathered rock formation.

The main area of the plateau is treated as rocky reef permeated by sea waves. A network of cracks and fissures inscribed on the surface of a new concrete deck evokes an erosion pattern and allows seawater to enter the platform. Even so, the ferocity of natural disintegration is conformed to a geometric coherence in order to reconcile the wild with the civil.

The semicircular end of the platform forms a more protected area paved with marble slabs. Their layout echoes the distorted fabric of the adjacent carved ground.

By embracing the disruptive impact of natural forces this scheme is seeking a way to make concrete the latent friction between the centrifugal and confining tendencies unfolding at the site. The proposal aspires to a silence charged with tension. It wishes to establish a fragile equilibrium of a collapsed order and a meaningful chaos.