Back to the Garden

(...) "The Persian and Hebrew versions of the word 'paradise' carry the meaning of 'garden'. In some contexts the word refers more specifically to enclosed and secluded gardens, places where the concept of time becomes that of a pause.

Referring briefly to Christian tradition, paradise is a place that is either lost or promised. In an analogous way the city park represents a different kind of idealised promise made from the vacuum. It participates in a vision of a temporary cessation of history and is organised as an exit from the community.

Athens seeks a new, open, experimental relationship between its existing free space and the various communities that could visit it or inhabit it. A new, different kind of urban culture could begin in these empty spaces of the city centre." (...)

 Quoted from uncubmagzine: Athens and opportunities for new urban strategies by Aristide Antonas