including the latest plans for the thirteen Greek regions
that have an important landscape assessment and landscape
planning element. So [the ideas are] slowly filtering through.
LAA: The landscape architecture profession is quite small in
Greece. At present, where is the majority of work located?
TD: It’s in private practice. I would say that 80 percent or
more of that is in tourism-related projects, because that’s
what is driving the economy, and the part of the economy
that requires landscape design. Within tourism we have two
big markets – one is private homes and the other is resorts
of various scales. There is some public realm work, but it’s
limited – the economy is destroyed and the public sector
has no money, so there’s much less of that than there used to
be. There are also a few mega projects, for example the new
Hellenikon Metropolitan Park that we’re involved in, which is
partly to do with tourism, because it’s being developed with
private funds [but is also] a public park.
LAA: Could you tell us about the archaeological park you’re
currently designing for the ancient city of Milos?
TD: That’s a very interesting project, and beautiful beyond
belief, because you have a gorgeous landscape of terraces,
stone walls, fields, olive groves and churches, surrounded by
three late medieval villages, all of which sit atop the ancient
town of Milos. With Milos, the historical settlement happened
outside the walls of the ancient city, so the city is still there
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Doxidis Plus’s design for a new
archaeological park for the
historic town of Milos aims
to render legible an ancient
cultural landscape through a
series of choreographed walks
and lookout points. Image:
courtesy Doxiadis Plus.[buried but] intact. Our work is about creating an overlay that
identifies the ancient elements that are there and establishes
a connected system [of access points], so that ultimately
everything from the medieval castle all the way to the ancient
harbour will be a beautiful series of walks. It’s a long-term
plan to change a place that is illegible and extremely difficult
to visit into a very beautiful [and accessible] archaeological
walk through minimal and very sensitive means.LAA: Where is the main fight happening in landscape
practice in Greece today?TD: Even though there’s been a lot of progress, I think the
challenges remain the same. [We’re still fighting] for native
landscapes, native plants and historical places, fighting to
get them valued and for them to have a status in the culture.
A second fight which has been added to our thinking – and
we are still struggling with it in terms of what it could mean- is the fight for humans and society. Especially in southern
Europe, we’re extremely challenged in economic terms –
and this brings out a lot of social problems. We keep asking
ourselves what landscape can do about it. This is more about
the public realm and about changing policy. And the third
[challenge] which is rolling in and that we’re starting to get our
head around is climate change. We’re involved in the Greek
national strategy for climate change adaptation and through
that, trying to understand what in fact might happen and
what we [as landscape practitioners] could conceivably do
about it.
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