COMPOSITION 0F THE JURY

A Jury will be set up, its members being appointed by the Cultural Capital of Europe Organisation, except for one member who is appointed by the international Union of Architects.

The Jury is constituted in such a way as to respond to the criteria defined by the theme and the urban situation, in order to protect the interests of the projects.

The Jury will examine all the proposals which comply with the terms of the competition and its decision will be final.

- Prof. Carmen Pinos, architect, Barcelona, Spain.

- Prof. Dimitrios Fatouros, architect, representative 0f the Organisation for Cultural Capital 0f Europe "Thessaloniki 1997" (alternate, Prof. Lois Papadopoulos, architect).

- Theofanis - Rizos Matikas, architect - planner, representative 0f the Thessaloniki Master Plan Organisation (alternate, Polyxeni Zeikou, architect).

- Electra Zikopoubu, architect, representative 0f the Municipality of Thessaloniki (alternate Dimitrios Kabalabidis, architect).

- Angelos Sismanopoulos, architect, representative of the Association of Architects 0f Thessaloniki (alternate, Dimitrios Simonis, architect).

-Two international alternate members:

Prof. Bernard Huet, architect, Paris, France

One architect - town planner appointed by the U.l.A.

COMMENTS OF THE JURY

Jai Won Cho

Dimitrios Fatouros

"We deal with an urban core within a dense urban environment. We have to design an axial linear, pathway from the sea to St Demetrius site and emphasise within the axis a main event, a main place. This can be done through the revival of the large excavated Roman and Hellenistic site. Within this dense urban tissue, the element of contemporaneity should be introduced as a main design scope."

"Looking at the list, we can distinguish between three categories of projects. 1. Those which propose a very traditional approach based primarily on classical vistas. 2. Those which offer an excavation sensitive awareness of the site, which are not many and can be divided in those who handle a traditional design and those who combine technology or a future vision of the excavation. 3.Those which propose thematic design solutions. My view is that whatever you put beneath the existing situation should offer the possibility for the new to exist also."

"We are not working in the desert but in a historical site. The axis is existing. It was planned and for historical reasons was not implemented. If we ask the competitors to do the project this is because the axis was never finished. Therefore we are facing an urban problem that has a tradition of almost 100 years and that will continue to exist.

We have to understand the new condition which was not existing in Hebrard’s time. Archaeology is the future. The problem is not to rebuild the agora but to deal with this huge piece in the city, to think the long term dimension for the redesign of the Aristotelous axis.

We have to re-integrate this piece of archaeology, to re-cycle it in the urban life. Here in Thessaloniki this challenge can be sustained, but we have to understand that archaeology is just a part of this city. "