Unswept House

Unswept House (Asàrotos òikos) is a second century BC mosaic by Sosus of Pergamon. It depicts the floor of a room covered with the remains of a feast, including fish, fruit and other fragments of food. We propose a similar mosaic for the new floor of Athens Downtown made of the broken pieces of existing sidewalks.

We imagine a completely pedestrianized car free downtown. The tormented floor of our public space in the center of Athens will be redesigned as a continuous, homogeneous carpet that won’t need to distinguish between sidewalk, road surface and arcade floor. A new absolutely level floor made out of a cast material from recycled local aggregates, completely permeable and breathable in reference to the soil bellow, will become the new carpet of Athens. The multiple and uneven levels, the broken sidewalk curbs, the dysfunctional ramps, the multiple railings, the collection of heterogeneous elements of the urban infrastructure and the numerous poles will give their place to a well crafted urban floor. The now scattered elements of kiosks, bus stations, benches, trash cans and poles will find new locations organized, coordinated and consolidated to reduce their footprints and the urban planting system will be reinforced to perform as a cooling agent for local microclimates.