Christos Kakalis (Edinburgh) is an architect (University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece). He obtained the interdisciplinary MSc ‘Design, Space, Culture’ at the National Technical University of Athens. He holds a PhD in Architecture from the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (E.S.A.L.A) His work focuses on the conditions of embodied experience of the architecture and natural landscape. For his doctoral research he has received the: David Willis Prize (2010) and the Richard Brown (2011) awards. He has participated, either independently or as a collaborator, in a number of architectural and artistic exhibitions and competitions. He has also published on themes related to the experience of architecture and architectural typology. Funded by Alexandros S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, between October 2014 and September 2016 he conducted postdoctoral research between McGill University and The University of Edinburgh on the role of silence in architectural experience. He is currently working on the forthcoming monograph Place Experience of the Sacred: Silence, Communal Ritual and the Topography of Mount Athos and the edited collection (along with Dr Emily Goetsch) Mountains, Mobilities and Movements (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). He is a Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape of Newcastle University.
Questioning the traditional mapping, drawing and modelling techniques he emphasizes the significance of embodiment in their redefinition. His work involves a theoretical understanding of experiential spatiality through diverse methodologies (ethnographic, archival, secondary sources and so forth) and how it can be transposed via a dynamic (re)combination of history, theory and design.
Stella Mygdali (Edinburgh) is a registered architect (University of Patras, Greece). She holds an MSc by Research (Distinction) from the University of Edinburgh. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. Her academic work focuses on the ways in which research on environments of intimacy and risk contributes to an understanding of the performative character of architecture. Stella has participated in group exhibitions in Greece and Italy. Her work has been published in the University of Patras Architectural Journal and in the book The Greek Photography and the Photography in Greece [collective work]. She has presented her work in the international conference ‘Dramatic Architectures: Places for Drama – Drama for Places’. Stella is also a founder member of the PAUST group, a multidisciplinary network consisted of architects, performers and artists, which researches, proposes and reflects on architecture, urbanism and space through the lens of performance and theatre, and vice versa.
Geert Vermeire (Brussels / Athens) is a Belgian curator, artist and writer, working between Athens, Lisbon and Brussels, referring to the concept of ‘the body as measure unit”, departing from the relation between performance, new media and social practices, including urban interventions, locative media, sound mapping, sound walking and sound-space installations, with the relation to body in public space as a key element .
Technology as a creative tool in the work of Geert Vermeire has paradoxically the intention to slow down, increase awareness and to invert time, making tangible the invisible and hidden layers of reality. Geert Vermeire creative processes involve often the collaboration of other artists, various experts of different fields and young artists & students within art universities, among other countries in Belgium, Germany, France, Poland, Romania, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Lebanon and in Brazil.
An artistic collaboration with the Belgian artist Stefaan Van Biesen, lasting now for over 15 years, leaded to a series of artistic walks, performances, installations, exhibitions, urban interventions, locative media projects, soundscapes and videos in many European cities.
Within the platform the Milena principle, founded together with Stefaan van Biesen, his field of artistic research and methodology extends to creative nomadic and urban laboratories, travelling through Europe, referring to the renaissance past of Flanders, when artists, philosophers and scientists travelled continuously with their work and made connections with the people and places they visited, simultaneously creating a network of solidarity and affinity.
He combines his literature with immersive formats of arts and extends this practice to a research about silence in contemporary cities in an interdisciplinary approach, stimulating creative collaborations among others between choreographers, sound artists, new media artists, architects and writers.
He realized as well a series of cultural and new media art projects involving literature, social interaction and public space for a wide range of museums, academical and cultural institutions inside and outside of Europe.