Selected Work - Architecture — 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 pursuing a Master in City Planning & a Master of Architecture at MIT, & am a recipient of the Onassis Foundation Scholarship. I hold a BA in Urban Studies from Stanford University, where I graduated with departmental honors & distinction, & was awarded the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Research.
Through academic research, teaching, large-scale installations, performances, & audio-visual investigations, I have explored the effects of urban change on the natural environment & society. My work has been exhibited in Athens GR, Cambridge MA, Stanford CA & San Francisco CA.
I have honed my skills in planning & design at firms in London, GB, New York, NY & Athens, GR, working as an Architectural Assistant at Foster + Partners, an Urban Design Intern at WXY, a Neighborhood Strategies Intern at the NYCEDC, & as an Architectural Intern at Potiropoulos + Partners.
Alongside my partner, I develop work for Oo-PS, a collaborative research & design practice working across scales to produce narrative-driven artwork, writing, music & objects as ways of anticipating future socio-environmental challenges & designing theoretical methods to meet them.
I write, record, produce & occasionally perform music under the alias Shrinking Violet, a project that moves between ambient, dreampop & indie rock in an effort to create music about spaces, distance & uncertainty. Performing solo & alongside bandmates, I have opened for artists such as The Hellp, French Cassettes, & Illuminati Hotties.

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cgallis@mit.edu Instagram

Oo-PS

Shrinking Violet

Influences
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Architecture
Speculative Work Across Media

Center for Constructed GroundBoston, MA
[w/ A. Kenna]
An environmental & cultural center on Boston's Fort Point Channel, designed to inhabit unstable, increasingly inundated landfill terrain. Drawing on Lacaton & Vassal's practice of using lightweight structures over durable cores, the project pairs concrete anchors with a demountable timber system that yields over time to a semi-constructed landscape of walkways, kiosks, & follies.

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Monuments of TransmutationCambridge, MA
A family of concrete micro-monuments that treats destruction as a mode of construction, with chipping, smashing, carving, & casting cataloged as vital moments in each object's material life cycle. Drawing on Gordon Matta-Clark's Building Cuts, the work was made while reflecting on the patchwork quality of Athens' concrete fabric alongside the ongoing destruction of war, considering repair as a parallel act to ruin.

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Looking At Each OtherCambridge, MA
A proposal for MIT's School of Architecture & Planning split into two masses, an archive rising from the ground & a research center descending from the sky, facing each other across an empty courtyard. Drawing on Aldo van Eyck's "Productive Void" & a productive misreading of Diller & Scofidio's Slow House, the project treats knowledge production as something that happens between parties rather than inside a single building.

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Only Passing ThroughCambridge, MA
A deconstructed chapel along Cambridge's Broad Canal, shaped as a series of discretized rooms connected by a snaking boardwalk that privileges procession over arrival. Inspired by Homer's Tomb and Pikionis' Acropolis Pathway, the project dissolves any single sacred location, & was developed alongside original songs written to sonically predict the character of each space.

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Stair To ForeverCambridge, MA
A three-week response to the riddle "a stair to there, a stair to nowhere," conceived as a staircase made of one continuous surface that perpetually loops around itself. Initial concept models were folded & scored from single sheets of paper, then translated into a concrete mold designed to cast the form in one fell swoop, without multiple components. The final object is entirely concrete, treating mass as a two-dimensional surface that emulates the angles & gaps of folded card.

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Sand JamArles, FR & Cathleen Stone Island, MA
[w/ S. Shen, J. Wan]
A rapidly deployable structure made to withstand extreme wind, made entirely of sand & fabric. Inspired by principles of In-Situ Resource Utilization, the structure is made of lightweight canvas, & filled with sand found on sight. Following a reversible process of filling three 6-foot columns, jamming them using a tensioning system, & then attaching a lightweight enclosure to the columns, the team deployed the structure on Cathleen Stone Island, MA during 30 mph winds. Previously, a different arrangement was deployed in Arles, FR & withstood 55mph winds.

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