Tenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

The Ancient Greek Sites, visited by hordes of tourists, lie in some breathtaking landscapes; amongst olive groves and vineyards, on precipitous rocks or on windswept barren islands, squeezed between factories and refineries, surrounded by noisy, living cities. No matter how beautiful or ugly their contemporary setting is, their presence is always overwhelming. Is it the sense of place? A reciprocal relationship of the topos to its meaning? For the Greeks everything had its place in the world. Otherwise, it did not exist. But not any place, it had to have its proper place, its “topos”. Not to possess a place, was to be “a-topos”, to lack memory, unable to grow roots, to bury one’s ancestors. Utopia meant the lack of place. This paper examinex some of these sites, their history, topography and mythological connections with the old and the contemporary world. Delphi, Olympia, Epidavros, Elefsis refer to locations but also designate a cultural universe. Here lies the possibility of an exchange amongst humans, who may speak, or not, the same language, through the landscape and man’s interaction with it. The myths accompany us through this journey: Oedipus and Electra, the Sphinx, Medusa’s head, Persephone speak through our shared subconscious. They constitute a cultural infrastructure that has forever marked our public lives, as much as the physical ones have. Like the great railways and electricity networks, which crisscross our countries, these places reveal themselves through multiple readings, artistic, natural, linguistic, each one to suit our ever more heterogeneous and globalized collective.