The Evros River as a unifying element of complex tactile systems prompting us to approach our times with an alternative humanitarian notion, – Danae Toursoglou Papalexandridou maps the future of architecture, starting from Thessaloniki and culminating in Evros – the scope of her project’s application.

Toursoglou, who holds a master’s degree in architecture from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, won the Grand Prize (first place) in the New York-held international competition Unbuilt Visions in 2016, while her work Robo[eco]logy: assemblages of an emerging ecology was presented during the international conference Days of Architecture held this year in Sarajevo.

Focusing on an architectural philosophy which is interpolated with modern art and circumvents museological conceptions, Toursoglou places her work in the heart of hot-spots, in the midst of areas resonating with throbbing intensity, by deploying a powerful theoretical arsenal. Having at its core the migration crisis, particularly at the Evros River crossing point-point, the Robo[eco]logy project notes the shifts in lands and populations. In Robo[eco]logy, natural and artificial elements are aggregated nomadically, transitionally and transformatively, leading to a technologically-advanced and ultimately humane network of passages, pathways and corridors.

By centering her discipline on the human element, Toursoglou leans upon the refugees’ ordeal, striving to lessen, perhaps even eliminate, the trauma of loss; we’ve all seen the ominous news reports about refugees and migrants who go “missing” on their quest for freedom.

Architecturally speaking, Robo[eco]logy proposes a spatioterritorial augmentation built upon the already-existing structures. By challenging the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, Toursoglou’s project creates a new and ever-evolving territory.
At the border of the Greek town Orestiada, where the Evros river loops and runs into Turkey, where the flow of de-territorialized humans is never-ending, where hope changes step with despair, Toursoglou creates a new and unruptured geography by bridging and supporting the segmented environments, by ultimately crafting a new language in a world of land and landlessness.