Amorgos Flux: Water, Tourism & Climate Change

Power Landscapes

By: Defne Narshap, Dilara Ucar, Ezgi Dumani| & Ioanna Protopapadaki

Studio:
"Amorgos Flux"

Prof. Dr. Anke Hagemann
Dr. Christian Haid
David Bauer

Habitat Unit SS 2023

Localizing Energy Use & Production

The Greek Cyclades, have experienced a significant rise in mass tourism in recent decades. These islands have become increasingly reliant on imported energy, goods, and infrastructure as they have undergone major transformations in their landscapes and urban development. Our case study, Amorgos, has been slowly developing in the same pattern.
      The renewable energy sector has been recently claiming its space in the Cyclades while promising to boost regional economies by offering an alternative to the tourism sector. However, the ambitious goal of turning Greek islands into energy powerhouses has also sparked conflicts in the local level. Following the prospect of the interconnection of the islands with the mainland electrical grid and the decarbonization policies of the Greek government, the tendency towards renewable energy investment has been rising.
      This project aims to show possible but contradicting future scenarios for Amorgos based on the variation of two critical parameters. First, the scale of investment in renewable energy systems and second, the total amount of people that the island hosts per year, including tourists and local inhabitants. We focus on showing the perspective of a future that uses new energy solutions, technology and the concept of tourism as means to sustain and enrich local provincial societies in the long term, instead of converting them into global power factories. It is imagined that the future could be driven away from power monopolies that claim space for their own profit. However such future could only be imagined together with the promotion of greater consciousness regarding the need to cut on consumerist lifestyles, as they can not be sustained in the long term or for the majority of a population.