The Story of Anafiotika

On the third day in Athens, when we were walking on the way to investigate，we run into a warm-hearted old woman, who showed us around Anafiotika and told us much interesting information about it. She is not the villagers, but once lived here for three months and wrote a book about Anafiotika and herself. Here I recorded the content of the chat with her.

‘The Architectural style is quite different from Plaka, because it built by stone masons from the Cyclades island of Anafi in the 1800’s. At that time, the islanders moved to the big city and found a place under the Acropolis and started creating a neighborhood using the architecture from their island, when the law stated:’ if you can build 4 walls and put a roof over it in 24 hours the land is yours.’ So even nowadays, after two hundred years, if you visit this place it feels like you are not in Athens but on a Greek island.

Today, Anafiotika is worth millions, but the house still belongs to the descendant of islanders, which can't sell or even if rent to the outsider, this is tradition. Although it is so close to Athens’ most famous site- the Acropolis -i I love losing myself in its narrow streets, among lemon trees and finally find a terrace to climb and overlook Athens from over there!

I'm poor, all my money and jewellery have been cheated out by my husband, but I'm very lucky, there are a lot of people to help me. A very old woman borrowed her house to me as studio a couple years ago. Please follow me, this is the entrance of this village, It is difficult to find because the villagers hided it intentionally. It is still a secret to many people, even who have spend their whole life in Athens have never visited it before. And this is the house I lived before, no windows, no doors, no water and lights. But I lived here more than three months and I can’t stop loving this tiny place. I like the Small Whitewashed houses with their own garden full of colourful flowers, lemon trees white stoned churches and cats running around, terrace walkways and unexpected view. It can be more charming in the spring. Freedom is other reason why it attracted me. And people here are very nice and friendly. Today, I come back to visit some old friends and show some new picture to them.

 I have walked through most of Europe, but have never been to the United States. In my eyes, this is the most ideal place to live. No cars, no noise, not only have good view, but also easy to access to down-town. Not many outsiders moved in and visitors also rarely come over to disturb. Everyone lived here know each other.’

Urban Informality Catalogue: Sham Shui Po

1. Street stalls

A street stall—a small dark green structure, a couple of steel bars rooted in cement, a makeshift construction somewhere between architecture and furniture.

In the 1970s, the government has licensed more than 50,000 stalls to vendors. The extensive application of street stalls have given a specific character to the streets of Hong Kong.

Continuous rows of hawker stalls divide the street longitudinally into three distinct sections, which not only have greatly increased the commercial value of streets, but also have provided unexpected public recreational space to the community residents.

2. Gap architecture

The limitations of urban area and the expansion of the population provided every inch of urban space in Hong Kong the possibility of redefinition.The temporary restaurants in the lane, locksmiths store in the stair case, house property intermediary company on the street corner, the attic built on the balcony. Most of them are the illegal structures desired to survive in the gap space. They are part of external urban space and constantly change the existing city appearance.

Compared with the ‘pet architectures’ in Tokyo, the construction condition of the gap architectures in SSP is worse and their volume is smaller. They are not only built in the ground level, but also developed toward vertical direction. It is hard to call them ‘pet’, because they normally show strong will to survive rather than quiet and peaceful like a lovely tiny animal.

The gap architectures are the direct products of daily life. Although they usually are ugly, temporary, cheap, were abandoned at will, also be regarded as foreign matters be banned and eradicated, they like the vine plant continuously have filled the city space, and transformed the existing building facades. In some way, they can be called ‘heterotopias’ as the theory of David Grahame Shane, which is the most important part of post-modernism city.

3. This is SSP

Through using the research method introduced in the book made in Tokyo, we began to slow down and appreciated these urban informality (street stalls, temporary restaurant in the back alleys, illegal housing between the buildings). They normally give a priority to stubborn honesty in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements, without insisting on architectural aesthetic and form. They seem to me to be better than anything designed by architects because they produced by residents or the city itself.

Different from the single buildings, informal structures is by-product of citizens’ daily life，which can really and directly reflect the characters of a area. They together made up a physical continuous spatial urban network.

By collecting and aligning them in urban opening by taking photographs and making drawings, the nature of an urban space might become apparent. Meanwhile, we are able to imagine how the area have been developed 。We become eyewitness of urban change. After documented various materials that are adapted to the social and urban texture, it is easy to speak out what is SSP and how it developed throughout the time.