CASE STUDY

For the specific application in the Piraeus highway we have set as initial conditions three questions regarding two different levels of the city. The first concerns the wider body of the city and refers to the axis of Piraeus Rd. while the second refers to a specific block adjoined to the road.

These questions, as we have already mentioned, outline an action of redefinition that leads to an instant object. Images produced through this action work as rules or "competitors" for the local choices emerging from the story of the city. They define what we call internal representation of the system, the space where the examples that construct the intervention are evolving. We should note that each level of transformations that compose a preceding-image is corresponding to an "internal" or factual time that exists somehow independently from "real" time. This gives us the ability of developing a different descriptive quality regarding time.

Our questions are registered as "degree of deviation", "degree of interconnection" and "degree of centralization". Because of the lack of efficient and detailed information, the definition of the problem of Piraeus area, as well as the formulation of the questions, was made through plainly empirical observations. What we had in hand were local examples via which we tried to discover and simulate hidden knowledge about the description of space.

In general the questions are described as following: the "degree of declination" refers to the degree in which the area of Piraeus is open to the entire city or it has a self- referring function. The "degree of interconnection" defines the degree in which different units that characterize the place are tuned. Finally, the "degree of centralization" expresses the degree in which actions and events are accumulated.

In the following pages we present a sample of this application. We are not presenting the whole thinking about resolving the problem of Piraeus highway nor we are explaining our specific architectural choices. We only try to clarify the function and procedures followed for the activation of the plan.