Interurban Spaces - travelling through Athens and Patras
Research Paper, University of Patras, School of Engineering, Department of Architecture, Patras 2008
By Elli Vassalou
supervisor N.P.Kazeros
read the paper here [Greek only]
Travelling creates a discontinuity in our everyday lives. Interurban space consists a heterotopia and heterochrony. It is the intermediate space that connects urban, rural space and natural environment. It is always in transition.
This research paper deals with the notion of interurban space approaching it through personal experiences and embodiment. As case study, I deal with travelling through Athens ↔ Patras, a route that I often used to do as a student in the University of Patras by public transport.
Through personal observations and interviews with other travellers, I study perception and signification of Interurban space.
Mobility and contemporary notion of travel are the subject matters as well as the interpretation of space as a “construction” developed by the means of transport moving through land and the conception of landscape through movement.
My main concern is to analyse and highlight the qualities and capabilities of interurban as ground of common existence and as a meeting place with otherness.Interurban space as a transitional space is fully functional when people are in full antithesis with their traditional time. This way it provides a topos to create experimental situations, social relations and communal experiences as a resistance in the privatization and individualism of all aspects of modern life.