This project takes you on a journey to the Eastern Mediterranean.

On this journey, the Sea in not only a beautiful container of water, but a complex pool of resources – on top and below of it - that constantly challenge and transform the material and institutional conditions of the surrounding coast. (These are no longer conditions of exchange but of separation.)

The new spaces and forms of sovereignty that appear on the water surface have transformed the Mediterranean territory into a diffused global space. The ability to measure and manage this diffused space is what I conceptualise as ‘Solidification of the Sea’. The way that this is happening, still remains unclear and blurry, so the aim of the project is to embed the liquid territory within the architectural system of the Mediterranean.

This is done by revisiting and updating the work of Constantinos A. Doxiadis.
During his studies and career – especially in the 50s and 60s - C. Doxiadis came up with radical ideas about planning and predicting the future expansion of settlements into a global city, which is known as ‘Ecumenopolis’. These very ideas were discussed every summer on the floating symposium of Delos in Greece, in an informal but productive atmosphere.

Participants of the symposium included Buckminster Fuller, anthropologist Margaret Mead and Sigfried Giedion – who all together signed a declaration about the decision that were taken.

This way of planning and envisioning new cities is still how architecture operates today - either by discussing on top of a physical model or in international conferences and other planning institutions. However, this way of thinking about our cities is no longer possible or effective and therefore an update of the ‘Ecumenopolis’ of the 60s is urgent. An update that not only involves the land areas, but focuses on the maritime territory as an extended space with no
borders and adapts to the global spaces that are controlled by the Sea.