THE WIND AS A MUSICAL MAPPING TOOL OF THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA. THE EXAMPLE OF THE CITY OF THESSALONIKI, GREECE

The subject of the present work is the establishment of a relation between the urban environment within the city of Thessaloniki and the wind. Thessaloniki is a mediterranean city and one of the main features of the mediterranean climate is the wind. The urban area of Thessaloniki is affected by a particular northwest wind which appears when some particular climatological conditions are present in the greater area, i.e. a high atmospheric pressure in the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula in relation to the Aegean Sea region. This particular wind is named “Vardaris” and it usually lasts for 1 or 2 days. It may reappear after a short period. On some very rare occasions, it may blow continuously for 3 or 4 days [1].
The wind may be associated with the production of sound, an effect that can be achieved using appropriate installations outdoors. Several sound installations can be found in the mediterranean area, taking advantage of the wind coming from the Mediterranean Sea. Two typical examples are the Arpa Eolica di Mazzano in Verona, Italy [2] and a Salvador Dali’s project near the Quermancó castle in Figueras, Spain. The Aeolian harp is a widespread sound producing structure. It is a musical instrument stimulated by the wind that was first built in ancient Greece [3]. Thus, the relationship between wind and the organized production of sound (i.e. a set of frequencies with specific relations between them) in the mediterranean area attracted attention from ancient times. The art which deals essentially with the relationship between sound frequencies within the human hearing range, is music.
Although there is intense activity in the exploitation of the wind energy in many cities and regions located mainly in the mediterranean islands, several mediterranean urban centers can be identified where there has been no consideration of the wind in the configuration of their architecture. It is noted in Thessaloniki that such a persistent wind like Vardaris, has not been taken into account at any stage of the design of its urban environment. Urban and regional planning regulatory studies have been conducted starting from the large urban restructuring that took place in Thessaloniki after the end of the Ottoman era in 1912 and especially, after its destruction by fire in 1917. This great fire which broke out on the northwest side of the city burned 120 hectares of the most important part of the city center and eliminated permanently the traditional structure of Thessaloniki, as 9500 buildings were completely destroyed. The reasons for the very fast spread of the fire were reported as follows: summer drought, water scarcity, lack of organized fire protection, the town planning itself, building materials and finally, (and perhaps the most important reason), the blowing of the characteristic northwest wind Vardaris [4]. However, this important wind was not taken into account at all in the large-scale redesign of the city environment which followed this major disaster.
In the present work the relationship of the aforementioned particular northwest wind to the urban environment of Thessaloniki is considered, through a process of determining certain wind quantities that are affected by the modern form of the urban web. The objective is to define a correlation between sound frequencies produced by the movement of wind Vardaris around specific buildings in the city of Thessaloniki. The wind frequency was calculated for the buildings selected using empirical rules derived from certain basic flow experiments reported in the literature. Reference to the art of music was then made, aiming at defining a relationship between the urban environment of Thessaloniki and the wind Vardaris using music theory.