urbandrift

Maria Papadimitriou is an artist whose previous work has revolved around the notions of parody, the paradox and personal identity. The Temporary Autonomous Museum for All (T.A.M.A): social facilities for itinerant populations in Greece is a project which has developed through her personal engagement as she started to apply her past experience to social matters: Attracted by the locality of Avliza in Menidi, a shabby area in western Athens used as a pied-à-terre by migrant populations such as the gypsies and the "vlach-Rumanians” from Veria, she has developed a large interdisciplinary network to develop the facilities and the structures not yet available in this peripheral area. ‘A network without electricity` is what she describes as having developed between artists, architects, and the makeshift settlement, though Papadimitriou acts as the lynchpin, making the needs of the community known to her associates, negotiating with the mayor for planning permission for ‘compact buildings` - an architecture which fulfils basic needs. It is the area`s changeable ‘emotional topography`, and the beauty of the makeshift settlement - a kind of mobile, post-urban city, which she feels can and should be communicated to a wider audience, and which can inspire collaboration and urban action. The mobilisation of a community actively interested in the regeneration of this peripheral urban area, and in communicating it to a wider public, requires engagement and motivation to extend the boundaries of urban planning and architecture through such a collaborative network.