Center for Constructed Ground — Constantinos Gallis

Constantinos Gallis
Cambridge, MA & Athens, GR

Hello, my name is Constantinos, & I am a Greek-Swiss artist, musician & student based in Cambridge, MA & Athens, GR. I am currently a dual degree student at MIT, pursuing a Master in City Planning & a Master of Architecture, & I hold a BA in Urban Studies from Stanford University, where I graduated with departmental honors & distinction. I am curious about the effects of urban change on the natural environment & society, I have explored my interests through academic research, teaching, large scale installations, performances, audio-visual investigations, & practical work experience at firms in Athens. GR, New York, NY & London, GB.

cgallis@mit.edu Instagram

I am one half of Oo-PS, a collaborative research & design practice working across scales to produce narrative-driven artwork, writing, music & objects as ways of anticipating sets of future socio-environmental challenges & designing theoretical methods to meet them.

Oo-PS

I write, record, produce & occasionally perform music under the alias Shrinking Violet, a project that modulates between ambient, dreampop & indie rock in an effort to create music about memory, distance & uncertainty.

Shrinking Violet

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Center for Constructed Ground
Boston, MA
Nature & Culture Center
[w/ A. Kenna]

Over the course of several weeks in 4.153: CORE III instructed by Adam Modesitt at MIT, I partnered with Amelia Kenna to create the Center For Constructed Ground, an environmental & cultural center on the shore of the Fort Point Channel in South Boston. The site we were given was situated on filled land, which is emblematic of a broader practice across Boston of creating artificial terrrain using landfill.

Rather than treating our intervention as either a permanently fixed object or as a thoroughly ephemeral addition to the land, the project interrogates how architecture can responsibly inhabit a ground condition that is unstable & increasingly inundated by rising tides.

The design operates through two complementary architectural states [durable concrete cores that anchor services, structure & water collection, & a lighter timber post-&-beam system designed for disassembly, reconfiguration, & salvage as flooding intensifies.

Over time as the site transitions into marshland, the main building yields to a semi-constructed landscape of elevated walkways, infrastructural kiosks, follies, & ecological interventions, allowing the architecture to recede while supporting new modes of occupation & regeneration. The timber structures adapt or disappear, while the concrete cores stay firmly in place, adopting new functions or serving as anchors for future uses.