City of Tables: A Proposal

"His table became the world. Everybody came to his table, and they talked about everything. Once you put coffee on the table it became public space. If you put food on the table it became a home. With papers it became an office. Then you put a networked screen on the table and suddenly the world came to your table. Trees started to grow on the table and it became the base for a landscape. His table became the world"

Here's the proposal I submitted together with Point Supreme Architects, for the Greek Pavilion 

in the Venice Biennial of Architecture.

Taking Sejima's theme of "People Meet in Architecture", 

we chose the table as the par excellance vehicle for meetings. 

The idea was simple: Almost all public space in Greek cities 

is organised with the placement of tables, whether they are cafeteria tables, taverna tables or just fast food.

We proposed to inhabit the Greek pavilion with this city of tables. Some of the tables would function as display cases for projects, others tables would be displays for books, there would be tables for visitors to sit around,  rest and chat, maybe even have a light lunch. This city of tables would be a vehicle for displaying, discussing and researching architecture. A brief typological list of tables would include:

The Urban Table: Public space and its shifting functions would be the theme of this series.

The Environment Table: Architecture in the time of shifting climate 

and the economies behind Green.

The Archive Table: would present an eclectic survey of Greek architecture.

The Screen Table would evaluate the ways that nowadays 

we inhabit our screen as much as our buildings, with a sharp focus on social media.

The Meeting table would be a place to discuss the problems and solutions of this years Biennale.

The Table of Tables would evaluate all the above typologies of tables and more

etc.

Collaborators for this proposal included 

architect Keller Easterling (Yale), author of "Enduring Innocense" and much more, 

Sotiria Kornaropoulou, member of 51N4E

architect Markus Miessen, editor of "East Coast Europe", "The violence of Participation" and more

critic and writer Spyridon Papapetros (Princeton)

artist Angelo Plessas, Social Media and internet domination.