Public intervention, ongoing 2012 –
While passing through Pedion tou Areos in Athens, one can experience a noticeable difference in temperature, particularly at night. The park seems to produce its own microclimate: vegetation, soil, moisture, shade and air movement interact to create environmental conditions that differ from those of the surrounding built city. This observation becomes a starting point for Ecological Practice: From Balcony Ecosystem to Living Landscapes, an ongoing artistic investigation into the capacity of plants and other living organisms to actively shape their environments.
Since 2012, the project has explored composting, cultivation and the transformation of everyday spaces into living ecosystems. The research began on the balcony of a rented apartment in Athens, where food waste was transformed into compost and ordinary containers became sites for growing trees, vegetables and edible plants. Over time, the balcony developed into a small, evolving ecosystem, generating plants that were subsequently donated and transplanted to other locations.
The balcony thus became not only a place for cultivation but a site for observing how living processes gradually transform their surroundings. Compost altered the material conditions of the soil; plants changed the use and appearance of the space; and the circulation of plants extended the ecosystem beyond the boundaries of the apartment. What initially appeared as small acts of domestic cultivation became a way of understanding plants as participants in the formation of environments.
The research subsequently extended into public spaces, where cultivation became a practice of care, exchange and collective participation. The project now asks how these small-scale ecological processes can be understood at the scale of the city. Rather than treating plants as passive elements added to an existing environment, it approaches them as active agents that participate in regulating temperature, moisture, soil, air and other conditions of urban life.
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