THE ARCHITECT AS AN ARCHIVIST AFRODITI MARAGKOU Afroditi Maragkou, Architect, University of Thessaly Abstract Everything nowadays is treated in terms of the archive: houses, cities, images, libraries, index records, statistics, maps, lists of materials and household goods, purchasing guides, blogs, concentrations data, surveillance systems, storage units etc. In these we can identify some of the key features of the triple condition and function of the archive, as described by Jacques Derrida in his book DzArchive Fever: A Freudian Impressiondz That is to mean, they have a place of archival material ȋthe privileged area or place, where someone has the DzauthoritydzȌ, an interpretation and a collection. In today's reality, these archival recordings are displaced within the architectural practice by transforming the architect who creates the space into the archivist of this space. The inherent and imperative need of the architect for mapping and understanding each space turns him to assume the role of a researcher - detective in order to compose archives and narratives capable to establish and interpret areas. From the modern constructions of metropolitan cities till the ruined landscapes of suburban areas, the architect - archivist collects evidence, findings and traces with the purpose to compose a topological archive, which will be an activating mechanism of these specific sites in the public sphere. The archival practice as an architectǯs modern role and methodology, leads to the formation of a layout system, an apparatus capable of producing interpretations of the space, the landscape and the city. This apparatus, as an "interpretation griddz creates the conditions for the participation of both the research objects (sites and groups operating there) and the subjects, the archivists themselves. Analyzing and researching a place as an archive the architect is asked to read multidisciplinary concepts that make this place influential and significant. In this way we could say that the architect becomes part of a broader set of narratives and interpretations, able to activate not only sites but also political and social practices. Archival interpretations The interest of art historians and intellectuals linking the concept of the archive to art and cultural production has been established since the history of modernism and the historical avant-garde. Featuring and most iconic are the writings and projects of Aby Warburg and much more of Walter Benjamin. The interest from Benjamin for objects and archives has a modernist perspective associated with the development of industrialized societies and cities. Benjamin based his study on the profile of the industrial society into an archival project, the emblematic Passagenwerk, making the archival method identical to the method of interpretation of modernism. Benjamin, through archival practices of collecting, confrontation and classification introduced a "literary montage" as he called himself. He attempted an understanding on the construction of historical objects, which includes the "mediation of the imagination of the author," which was always beyond a clear narrative formation. )n a similar direction moves WarburgǮs Atlas of Memory, a history of art without words, an atlas consisting of 60 tables with more than a thousand pictures. Warburg