The stadium as generator of urban form. The case of the Panthessaliko stadium in Volos

The Panthessaliko Stadium was built in Volos, a city 325 km North of Athens, to host some events for the 2004 Olympic Games. It is settled in the neighborhood of Xirokampos, on the northern fringe of the city. The area is defined by a variety of typologies and scales that represents very well the urban development of the Greek city since 1970s that has driven to the final loss of any urban morphological coherency. The objective of this paper is to investigate the urban form of Xirokampos with the scope to reframe the typology of the stadium - a special building at a very large scale - as a civic building that may play a crucial role in the city. To understand the impact of this typology on the urban environment is relevant in order to reframe its cultural, social, and formal meaning, both in reference to underused existing sport infrastructure as well as to new planned developments. The paper will investigate, at first, the historical evolution of the urban form of the examined area of Volos in order to understand the relationships among the various parts - characterized by different typologies, forms, and spaces - that compose the neighbourhood, and it will conclude with the presentation of the results of some studies conducted at the Department of Architecture at the University of Thessaly, where students had to analyze and challenge the impact of the stadium by re-designing the surrounding city.