“Coming Together in Mouttalos”

Abstract

This open-street event in Mouttalos, a residential neighborhood in the center of Paphos, Cyprus, used vacant open spaces for a series of festive activities, events and workshops. Inhabited by Turkish Cypriots until 1974, Mouttalos now provides a “temporary” place of residence for displaced Greek Cypriot refugees. The festival, held in 2017, aimed to generate interest in the underdeveloped area through an enhanced urban experience, and to initiate long-term investment, both social and financial.

Keywords:

• street festival
• place identity
• temporary urban strategies
• community engagement

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angela Kyriacou-Petrou

Angela Kyriacou-Petrou, Assistant Professor, is also a practicing architect trained in London. Her research focuses on methods of recording rural and city histories, particularly in the Ottoman period in Cyprus, in order to understand how they define social and spatial relationships.

Maria Hadjisoteriou

Maria Hadjisoteriou, Associate Professor, studied at NTUA, Greece, and at Mie University, Japan as a Monbusho scholar. Her main concern, in practice, teaching and research, is “research by design,” with an emphasis on social sustainability and the role of landscape urbanism in the design of cities.

Sevina Floridou

Sevina Floridou is an adjunct faculty member with an M.Sc. in Architecture (UASG, Bulgaria) and a specialization in Historic Preservation (Cornell, US). Research on arrested modernity and cities in conflict inform her work on community actions, historic building restorations and historic irrigation (contributions in Landscape and Interaction: Troodos Survey, Glasgow University, 2013).