The Beach Machine - Making and Operating the Mediterranean Coastline

Aggressively rebounding after recessions and the pandemic, sprawling landscapes of tourism in the Mediterranean continue to build upon the iconic spatial typology of sea & sun vacationing: the beach. But behind the leisurely scattered bodies and the quiescent summer shores, beachfronts are assembled as intensely ordered infrastructures for the heavy machineries of tourism. Approaching the beach as an operational socio-technical landscape, this book unpacks stories of construction, programming, and maintenance: from traces of moving sands in Lefkada island to mirror postwar developments in Delos and Mykonos islands, and from historic and bodily excursions to workings of the Athenian riviera to rituals of eco-certification under Blue Flags. The texts frame the beach as a machine, one with protocols of function and metabolic needs, studying how it directs the capture of land and bodies, while establishing forms of environmental control.

Flying Flags, Fixing Sands
by George Papam

Moving Sands: Ammoglossa
by Eleni Grapsa

Delos Symposia
and Delos LTD:
Making Global Leisurescapes
by Petros Phokaides

Beach Making:
The Naked Body on the Rocks
by Phevos Kallitsis

Beach Effect
by Hannah Freed-Thall

Hello Hygiene:
A Guide for Bathers
by Lydia Xynogala

From the engineering feats that shape coastal zones to the social dynamics and environmental challenges that redefine the beach as we (think we) know it, each text in this book provides a new perspective on this spatial typology. By approaching the Aegean shores as a microcosm for global coastal cultures, the authors challenge distinctions between engineered and natural, urban and rural, leisure and work.
– Elvia Wilk, 2024