Bleeding shapes

A waterside route at Veria, Greece.

Design research

Kostas Manolidis, 2019

 

 

Tripotamos is a stream that runs along the north side of Veria. At the town’s edge, just after a derelict cotton-mill, the watercourse almost touches the town’s cemetery and then continues its way to the plain.

Even if the modern city is oblivious of it, an unplanned park exists there for centuries. Overgrown with plane trees, it was a favorite site for outdoors festivities until the 1930s. Now, the place slips in the uncertain state of abandonment and deterioration. It is visited only for the Epiphany celebrations, for the “blessing of the waters”.

This marginal place could serve as an informal hallway for the Veria’s cemetery, offering a more meditative approach to the visitors, away from the turmoil and traffic of the city streets. The park will let them enter the cemetery sideways, where the shabby tombs of the poor are gathered. A new austere stone-wall will support the worn-out slope of this side and announces the grievous territory.

The proposed route consists of two parts.

The first is a series of concrete decks and paths, protecting the walkers from overflows and rampant ground plants. Their broken and ripped outlines extend in the way of uprooted plants. They honor the corrosive momentum of water, reminiscent, at the same time, of the Epiphany ceremony and the holy cross thrown into the water. The second part, leading directly to the cemetery, is a linear irregular pavement of large stone slabs.