Filtering and differentiation at borders shape the composition and multiplicity of living labor, as well as the formation of often exploitative labor regimes. The relation between migration and the garments and textile Industry in the area of Istanbul, the center of textile and garments production and simultaneously a destination and hub for migration is exemplary of this condition. Transnational economic, labor and migration policies are reflected in the spatial manifestation of the textile and garments sector in the area of Istanbul. This leads to a heterogeneity of practices in the organization of the production system with main suppliers, subcontractors, retailers, home based worker’s networks and logistics, creating dense industry clusters extending deep into residential areas converting them into assembly lines, turning neighborhoods into machines. While technology is advancing rapidly labor conditions have remained problematic and outdated production models account for overproduction and waste.
Architecture can address these socio political and economic issues and these in turn shape architecture therefore it is worth it to make an experiment and let the systems networks and methods of garment production contaminate architecture: How is architecture transformed by using and reshuffling networks and production processes of the garment industry? What does a hybridization of these production processes and systems uncover about them? Which parameters can be manipulated for architecture to act as an agent in improving labor conditions and production processes?
This context sets the frame for discussing issues such as transitions in labor and production models, genericness, mass customization, flexibility, high-tech versus low-tech sparking a debate on how we fabricate architecture.

The fragmented urban landscape of the metropolitan area of Athen and Piraeus with its local specificities is strongly related to demographic flows. The arrival of more than 220.000 refugees in the metropolitan area of Athens and Piraeus after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the population exchange that followed the Treaty of Lausanne posed the great challenge of refugee rehabilitation since the population of the area almost doubled in a period of limited financial resources due to the preceding two Balkan Wars and the First World War. This led to a rapid expansion of the city, signified the beginning of the history of social housing in modern Greece, and contributed to the acceleration of the procedures for planning legislation in Athens.
46 refugee settlements resulted from the imperative need to house this population. Housing units ranging from unauthorized self-housing and almost slums to prefabricated wooden parapets, to single-family buildings, to organized apartment buildings influenced by the modernist movement, emerged. Nowadays, these morphological and typological forms have survived and constitute a considerable part of the city.
To synthetically provide information, show relations between the different forms of housing rehabilitation, and answer the question of how the refugee housing rehabilitation in Athens and Piraeus was realized and how it evolved historically this paper will analyze the urban footprint of these settlements by examining plans, maps, photographs, and through textual secondary sources, the criteria and policies that shaped them, giving an overview of the extent and influence of these areas to the contemporary image of the city. The focus will be sharpened on the architectural scale, by examining housing typologies, including self-housing and social housing, through archival material and photography. The housing typologies, which emerged will be divided into categories and analyzed based on one representative example for each of them. These will be illustrated with consideration of the actors and policies involved in the creation of the housing, the location and organization of the settlements, within which the typologies are to be found, their architectural characteristics, their transformation throughout history, and the situation encountered today.
The thesis will shed light on the origins, historic development, and transformation of these settlements throughout their 100-year long history and argue on the arising topics, mainly the involvement of the state in contrast to the lezzes faire, the influence of the settlements on the city’s urban structure, the architectural characteristics of the housing, the subsequent decline of the social housing sector in the city and the notion of sociability and neighborhood ties. The qualities and faults of these spaces and the policies that created them will be assessed. The thesis will argue for the significance of these parts of the urban fabric for the collective historic memory and their preservation and adaptation, as well as an interpretation of their qualities as a countermodel to prevailing housing developments.