Unclaiming the natural waterfront landscape: Thessaloniki’s manmade east waterfront

Abstract

This article focuses on the transition of the natural landscape of Thessaloniki’s east waterfront to the artificial urban landscape that draws a straight line between water and land, while noting the developing rigid homogeneous multistorey buildings as a background image of the city in contrast to the former porosity and architectural variety of the late 19th-early 20th century mansions. The transition is captured either as a commentary on the new landscape or as a memoir of a lost era by cinematographers, such as Takis Kanellopoulos in his film “Parenthesis” (1968) and Theo Angelopoulos in his film “Eternity and a Day” (1998) and photographers of the 1960’s such as Socratis Iordanidis and Yiannis Stylianou. Cover image: Theo Angelopoulos, Populated manmade waterfront, Film still, Eternity and a Day, Thessaloniki, 1998