Boundaries and Bonds in a Boundless World: The Relationship of Place and Community to Landscape.

Introduction^[1]

Tinos is a Cycladic island in the Aegean Sea that has been deluged by tourism every summer in recent years. Kampos is a village located approximately 5 miles from the main port of Tinos, in an area 1000 feet above sea level. The Cycladic sea is not visible from the village and there are no hills protecting it against the cold, north wind. This is possibly the reason why the village remains ‘introverted’, built towards its ‘interior’ but also the reason why there are just a few front facades standing between its built boundaries and nature. 

Over the island’s long history, there is a communal perception of the value of land that hails from the period of Venetian occupation (1390 - 1715) (Sarafi, 2008, 21). The Venetians created a community there as part of a strategic plan to defend against the Ottomans and secure their dominance in the Aegean. At the time, the inhabitants of the island were described by travelers as being one of the most enterprising communities in Greece, in that they transformed most of the mountainsides’ rocky and hostile terrain into terraced farmland that could be cultivated (Sarafi, 2008, 242).

Kampos is one of the island’s oldest farming villages. The boundaries created by low stone walls and alleyways that define the farmland’s boundaries are an integral part of village life. The landscape appears semi-artificial because of thecountless rows of cultivation ridges and terraces. The exploration of the community life and the landscape surrounding it starts with the study of very formal narratives. These are contracts and testamentary wills that reflect the interpersonal relationships of the villagers in relation to sharing water and land. 

Narratives of possession/ownership and the nature of boundaries

Contracts, legata[2] and testaments were the island’s first written descriptions of farmlands and water. Moreover, these documents also provide an indication of the villagers’ perception of the value of land and water, but also of the surrounding landscape at that time. Elements from each text reveal how the perception of the value of the land and water has changed in some cases, while in some others still remains the same, reflecting the villager’s unchanged everyday habits and tasks.

Until 1960, both water and land were calculated in temporal terms and were recorded as such in all official contracts and testaments. Land was measured in the number of days it took two oxen to plough the arable parts of a field. Usually, it was described through the crops and trees that had been planted. This type of measurement stopped being used some years before Greece joined European Union, though water is still measured in the same way even today, that is through the time it takes for it to flow into the villagers’ cisterns or cultivated land. 

In 1979, farmers and land owners had to measure their land in metres. Surface springs at the outskirts of the village provided water for the nearby gardens, while water was also collected in water tanks or reservoirs that were built at the gully by a running spring or stream. Water, even today, appears as a form of property only through its flow, except in cases of private wells and taps. 

The stories of Kampos, as recounted by the villagers themselves, mention conflicts and agreements regarding the village’s indefinable and disputed boundaries. Common water and land create a different type of bond for the villagers, not only with their land, but also their community and their village’s landscape. In reference to property, Steinberg (1995, 9) writes about the law of property and about how it enters every aspect of daily life and, moreover, our understanding of place. He also claims that the complexity of nature can make property an extremely misunderstood, even unreal issue (Steinberg,1995, 5).

What lies between and among boundaries, as well as in the space that the boundary itself occupies, are village stories of conflicts, contradiction, disputes, love, collaboration and friendship. This contributes an additional dimension to ‘place’, something that gives meaning to and shapes the history of its landscape and experience. 

Metaphor, narrative, fiction in architectural thinking: a methodology for understanding life and a changing landscape

The six excerpts that follow derive from fictional narratives based on the villagers’ own metaphors of their reality, including my own personal experience in the village as a variation of truth. These fictional narratives were created out of their stories, their spaces, their life with animals, and the life they have together. However, the plot is imaginary so as to connect the various situations and events with each other with the purpose of bringing to light another dimension of truth about this place.

This methodology reveals the complexity of life with nature and its changes in Kampos through narratives. Ricoeur talks about how words in a sentence can reveal a discourse in the world, allowing language to create images (Ricoeur, 2003, 213). Metaphors bearing a communal perception of place become a natural language of sharing a communal way of living connected with the natural and built environment. Stories connect language with mimetic action, habit, which again connects our bodily and mental experience with the environment, but also with place and space. Merleau-Ponty (1962, 177) writes that in language there are shared emotions and attitudes within every group and that learning their language is a way to share their world and become part of it. In this chapter, the village space is brought to life through excerpts of narratives created from the villagers’ stories and metaphors about village life and its farming landscape.

Excerpt 1 from the fictional narrative, ‘The Animal that I Lost’^[3]

‘This early Monday morning, Gioura Island could not be seen on the horizon over the low hills that surround the village. This, for the farmers of Kampos, was a sign that heavy rain would soon arrive. An hour later, it started to pour. It always torrentially when the levantes arrived, a restless and cold strong easterly wind that scared the villagers and made them rush to put their mules and donkeys in the safety of their stables. Any day now, Tassos was expecting one of his cows to give birth. Despite the heavy rain, he went to check on the cow every five hours, even though he was tired from his heavy work in the fields. He knew that calving time was approaching. He could read the signs on the cow’s body and her behaviour. He wouldn’t risk a minute of his animal’s life by not being there, ready to help it give birth and remain alive.

Tassos would spend the night in Livada, at ‘the country house,’ as they like to call it. This house is among farmlands, over the hill at the north of the village. It was built above the stables, close to the fields where their animals graze. This is where they spent every day and night in the summer, when the sun sets very late, waiting for the sunset, because it is always better to milk the cows after sunset to prevent the milk from turning bad. Ioanna, his wife, who helped him with the breeding and farming, had remained behind in the village. Her two younger daughters had arrived from Athens and she wanted to see them.’

<Figure 1. here>

Excerpt 2^[4]

‘Thirty minutes after midnight, it was time to check on his cow again. He put his boots on and, carrying his jacket and a big torch, went down to the small stable to get the stick he used to walk over the rocky terrain and occasionally to prod the animals. Sometimes, the stick was more useful than the torch to help him walk at night. That night, the moon was a fine line in the sky and this made it hard to discern the dark outline of the terrain from the even darker skyline. The cow was in one of the bigger stables on the west side of the field. In a small enclosure made of stones and concrete, all the cats were lined up on the cement wall by the stable. There was an atmosphere of perseverance, supported instinctively by all the animals. Possibly, this would be the night. He went into the stable and switched on the light. He calmly approached the animal. The soft tissue around the tail head of the animal had sunk, allowing the pelvic bones to widen out. The time had come. Leaving his stick behind, he ran back to the house. He climbed up the steps and picked up the phone next to the kitchen door. He called Ioanna and shouted, ‘Call Manolis, Marcos and Giannis, tell them to come. The cow is giving birth!!’ 

Half an hour later, the light of five torches bobbing up and down and advancing slowly appeared at the edge of the field. Their lights broke the endless darkness between the sky and the earth that made it so difficult to distinguish anything. The levantes had dropped that night. When the three men and Ioanna arrived at the stable, the cow was on the ground on a thick layer of straw. The stable was humid and cold. Tassos felt somewhat relieved now and he observed the cow carefully, checking her every reaction. The three men stood around, waiting attentively. Ideally, the cow should either have the strength to stand on her own legs, or the four men would need to lie on the floor to help her give birth. 

Sooner than expected, Tassos realized that the time had come to pull out the newborn calf.  

‘Ioanna give me the rope.’

Kneeling on the floor, Tassos pushed his two hands deep into the cow's womb and tied the front legs of the yet unborn calf. This was something that only a few villagers and breeders could do. That knowledge was passed down by older breeders with many years of experience. Manolis took off his jacket; Marcos and Giannis rolled up their sleeves, and checked the space behind them. Breathing fast and acting very quickly, they kneeled on the wet concrete floor behind Tassos. Even though the cow was unable to stand up, the calf was big enough to be able to escape on its own from its mother’s body. So, the four men would attempt to take out the calf by pulling on the rope that was tied to its legs. All the living beings in the fields, including the dogs, chickens and cats, seemed to be waiting patiently for something. Four pairs of male hands pulled on the rope in the warm air of the room with careful and precise movements and a steady and persistent effort guided by Tassos’s voice and instructions.

Eeeeooooop,’ a loud cry of coordinated effort was heard.

‘Check its head’, Marcos sounded worried.

After a deep, endless ‘moo’ by the cow, the calf lay on the floor wet, with its big dark eyes wide open and its legs still tied. 

Excerpt 3[5]

 ‘Who exhumed the body of their deceased recently, Ioanna?’ Tassos asked.

‘I think Manolis exhumed his father a few months ago. It’s been five years since his father’s funeral and he had to put his bones in the ossuary. There was an empty spot next to my parents, so he made a nice new marble case with all the family’s details inscribed on it.’

‘What did you treat the villagers to in the memory of your father, this year?’

‘Nothing,’ Ioanna said with a lazy voice, ‘we decided with the girls that since my father is not in a tomb any more, but in the ossuary, it is not necessary to offer something. There are so many treats offered every year... enough for me after five years.’

That day, Ioanna finished all her work cleaning the animals earlier and left Tassos alone to do the milking and then join her with their younger daughters later at the cemetery. She wanted to arrive home on time to get ready for the ceremony at the cemetery. It was around 5 o’ clock when Ioanna, with three of her daughters, left their home. Walking in the main alleyway of the village, they met Eleni and her cousin, Foteini. Foteini was holding a huge platter of xerotigana.’

Excerpt 4[6]

Darkness had started to fall when the villagers began making their way back to the village from the cemetery. The commemoration would continue at the leschi, the communal room by the side of the road separating the village from its farmlands. At the leschi, everyone sat down at tables set out in the empty room with its high ceiling. The villagers whose ancestors they were commemorating began to offer everyone sweets.

‘Sto sychorio tou, Foteini,’ Ioanna mumbled checking her small handbag to see if she had brought a small plastic bag with her, so that she could accept all the sweets. Manolis offered raki and Foteini offered xerotigana dipped generously in honey. Villagers exchanged sweets and wishes for the forgiveness of their descendants and gossiped about both happy and sad things happening in the village.

<Figure 2. here>

Excerpt 5 from fictional Narrative, ‘The smell of honey was in the air’^[7]

All the women got together on Wednesday at 7 o’clock at the leschi, a room provided by the church for communal use, located opposite to the entrance of the village, right across the main roadway. Everyone was on time, though some were absent. Our president from the village’s official representatives was there, too, as he needed to note down all the ingredients for the recipes. However, nobody had the recipes, or the measurements of the recipes from last year’s festival. They had been lost, so everyone had to figure out again the measurements for each sweet. Fragiska always managed to resolve such issues. She took her notebook and looked at it, saying: ‘Let me know if something does not sound right. Fragiska, in other words myself, and my mother will prepare ten kilos of melomakarona; Maria will make three kilos, Antonia and Roza five; Georgia will prepare five kilos of pasteli; Maria and Ioanna will make six kilos of halva with semolina; Anna and Poppi, three kilos of pasteli; Margarita and Agni, psarakia; Rosalie and Rita, ravani, Katerina, two kilos of pasteli; Marina and Lambrini, melokarido; and the pastry chefs of the village will help as well, they always offered to help in the preparations for this special day. So, do you want me to add or change anything before I give the list and the quantities for each ingredient to Nikos over the next few days?’

Excerpt 6^[8]

It was 5:30 in the afternoon by the time we left home and walked through the alleyways and narrow streets. We realized that we were the last ones to arrive. The streets smelled of honey, and a hint of cinnamon floated in the air. When we arrived at the village’s coffeehouse, the only place where the street widens up, allowing enough room to stand and look around, we met Popi with her daughters carrying melomakarona. The smell of nuts then overpowered the smell of the cinnamon that had started to dissipate in the breeze. By the time we arrived at the plateia, most of the women were already there, decorating the tables to display the various types of sweets. A few of them were also on the tiny balcony of the small village office, trying to figure out where to put their dishes. They would start by offering xerotigana,followed by pasteli and then melomakarona, melokarido, psarakia and halva. They had to be careful with the portions to ensure that there would still be sweets left late in the evening, until after midnight.

It was around 6 o’clock when Fragiska and Eleni started heating up the oil to start frying the first loukoumades. The oldest couples of the village started arriving to make sure that they would find a seat and be able to attend the festival for most of the evening. After a few minutes, the band arrived. They sat next to the chairs, leaving enough room for a dancing area, and began tuning their instruments. Right next to them, five huge caldrons over a fire kept the honey syrup warm.

<Figure 3. here>

Village life as a way of understanding place, architecture and climate emergency.

Do we as architects understand enough about how people engage with the landscapes that we are called upon to serve? Are we close enough to nature, to communal life, to death as is often commemorated in the village of Kampos, so as to witness life together with humans, animals, nature? Do we allow room to be shaped by peoples’ stories before we shape space? Could architecture break free from the obsessions of fashion and form, and reignite the imagination of architects so that they may understand, reconnect and reconcile themselves with local cultures, beyond political and social preoccupations (Pérez-Gómez, 2016). Is this a way to help people reconnect with nature, inhabit the landscape and share a common understanding of the emergency facing the climate?

<Figure 4. here>

The farming landscape: A place of awareness and inhabitation.

The villagers of Kampos inhabit a world in which they move daily or seasonally beyond the inner boundaries of the village core. Our capacity to move around within and use a space without having to consciously think about what we are doing creates, according to Merleau-Ponty, an understanding of the environment connected to one’s body (Merleau-Ponty, 1962).

The breeders know that, during the winter, you cannot take the animals to a place exposed to the wind. It must always be sheltered and so they move towards a headland.  When the summer arrives, they guide their animals uphill. They follow the seasons. They are aware of the water which needs to be transported over land, about the small cots in the fields that can shield against the strong summer heat. They also know that their animals need to be protected against the summer insects, which penetrate their skin and causes them intense pain. These are just some of the many factors that breeders must always take into account. In winter, when the days are shorter, their work is less exhausting.  During summer they often return home at midnight after having spent the evening milking.^[9] Furthermore, over the last decade the winter snow that fell when sheep usually give birth, has led to a great loss of animals.

All this movement and transportation of the animals in the landscape over time has shaped villagers’ habits and has made this landscape habitable, endowing it meaning and continuity. As Crossley (2001) claims habits provide a set of meanings and preferences which affect our choices and the ways in which we inhabit the world. Clearly, what is common to indigenous oral peoples everywhere in the world is a common understanding and a sense of inhabiting of the landscape they live in (Abram, 2010).  But Abram (2010) also observes that technologies do not allow us to connect with the flow of the earth’s cycles.

Paying attention to the flow of the wind over the land, noticing the first temperature change of the wind and predicting which of the seven winds have reached the island, affects their daily routine. This awareness relies on a very long tradition of breeding on the island, inhabiting the landscape and the place. 

<Figure 5. here>

Moving from the house to the fields: Engaging with a landscape structure

Up until recently, the value of land in the village was not measured in terms of surface area, but in terms of how much of it could be farmed. The value of the land today is relative to its size and to how much can be built on it. The boundaries are marked by high, stiff, concrete walls that seal off the natural and social environment.

In the surrounding landscape of the village, just beyond the houses and further away from the centre where the vegetable gardens end and the larger fields begin, lie small stables and stalls, used mostly as cattle shelters. There is a constant movement of villagers and animals from the village to the cluster of gardens and orchards, and beyond, to the cultivated land and the fields. This is also because each family’s property is made up of small lots spread over the surrounding area of the village. A farmer and breeder has to follow a specific route every day to reach them. ‘Every farmer had plots from 4-12, that means 15 minutes-2 hours to move from one to another.’^[10]

There are three professional breeders in the village of Kampos. These work with the animals, selling their milk, their meat and tending to their reproduction. These men take care of their animals on their own, milking by hand, guiding them and cleaning up after them.

The landscape is conceived and understood differently through farming and breeding. Working with nature on a daily basis, which for this island and village is an arid landscape that sees little rain, farmers develop a close bond with what they can never own: nature. Farmers work constantly on the earth: they follow an annual sowing schedule for every plant, they wait for the rain, they plan fallows for their land, share machinery, but also water and land. They enter into agreements with those who own wells so as to secure water and offer in return farming products. All this activity is based on the need to cultivate. Boundaries become permeable in order to obtain the products of nature such asvegetables and fruits, and to make wine and olive oil. This is probably why there is an understanding that everything must be created through a constant labour - even when farmers use machines on their land. The surface area of the land is never big enough for a proper farming machine and the small machines they use are never powerful enough to do all the work for them. 

‘From the earth and the sea comes everything. Bread, vinegar, olive oil, everything needs work to be made. Only God spoke and created, man needs to make,’^[11] as one of the old farmers says. Although they live in an era when everything is available at the supermarket, work for their own vegetables, vinegar, wine and olive oil is carefully planned. In an effort to procure the products of nature, the village’s boundaries disappear from the villagers’ everyday routine, their house and family names extend to the fields. The property boundaries of water and land are merged for the sake of a good production.

<Figure 6. here>

The honey festival at the village square: a common world to be shared. 

The honey festival is organized through the participation of all the women of the village and the support of the island’s municipality. For the festival to take place, the municipality and local women must work together. This festival came to life ten years ago when a village representative made a proposal to the municipality as food festivals where being scheduled around the island. Honey production was rich in Kampos and there were a few farmers who were good beekeepers. This made honey the basic ingredient of a communal event that brought centre-stage the daily life of the villagers and their village’s ‘image’ through a series of events that they had never imagined before, given that tourism and local visitors were unknown in this area. 

Before this festival, Kampos was known only as a farming village. Within the structure of this introverted village, a large festive event represents a different way for the inhabitants to connect with each other. Yet simultaneously, the same event underlines the village’s boundaries between ‘us’ and the ‘strangers’ visiting the village on the festival day. There is a relationship between inside and outside, which now involves the village and the outside world (Dubisch, 1993).

But honey also becomes an object of negotiation and mediation for the local festival and the identity of the village. The villagers and festival participants capture honey but the honey can also be said to capture them. Boundaries dissolve through honey. They manifest their bond with the village community and communal life spaces together by possessing and being possessed by their communal space and the honey festival.

Pérez-Gómez (2016) suggests that inhabitation derives from our bodies’ habitual interaction with the environment. Furthermore, actions become habits which endow human beings with adaptability (Pérez-Gómez, 2016). Action and habits become traces which in turn preserve the histories of previous lives whose richness informs design, they are present testimonies that carve out a space for a regionalism with meaning (Pérez-Gómez, 2016). Ricoeur in Architecture and Narrative (Ricoeur, 1996) claims that a successful architect is able to turn his work into a reflection of the stories of people whose lives are connected to the places they live in. Perhaps Ricoeur can be seen to be responding to the crisis that architecture is facing today, its loss of novelty and its search for a highly technological, sustainable function that remains disconnected from humanity and environmental reality.

<Figure 7,8,9. here>

Epilogue

Life in Kampos appears as a structure of measures, relationships and distinctions that remain in a dialectical relationship with the perpetual continuity of earth, sky and seasons. Within the economy of possibilities, these possibilities are propitious for activities, largely understood through necessity, habit and custom. 

Arendt (1998) claims that living together in the world means that our world of things lies in between those who have something in common, as a table between those who sit around it. This world that lies in between has the power both to relate and separate people. This applies to the stories that describe the village space, the surrounding landscape and daily life events. What if through some magic trick the table vanished and the villagers sitting opposite each other were no longer separated and realized that they are entirely unrelated to each other by anything tangible (Arendt, 1998).Arendt refers to the koinon, that which is common to all. The existence of a public realm and the world’s subsequent transformation into a community of things, which brings people together and relates them to each other, depends entirely on permanence (Arendt, 1998). This is a permanence established through possession, participation, inhabitation that allow the villagers of Kampos to fully engage with the world they live in.

Language and narrative forms can become tools for understanding and revealing the truth of these societies in relation to architecture and the environment.  As the spatial nature/element of boundaries in stories, narratives and their interpretation, architecture can be used to achieve a deeper and better understanding of the different realities of a village, town, or city that are related to life and its complexities. It is another way for architects to bring forth the social and ethical function of architecture, related to humans and the environment, without responding to architecture and dwelling merely through form and the dominant architectural trends. This can lead to interpretations in architecture and design that are more intimate and connected to human living, closer to the actual complexity of life and the environment, to an awareness of seasonal changes, and to an understanding of the climate emergency as something that we all face and care to respond to.