Thisvi Proimou, "Tourism pressures. Weaving the urban fragments through play in Platanias, Chania", Diploma Work, School of Architecture, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece, 2021
https://doi.org/10.26233/heallink.tuc.89293
Platanias village, alongside the adjacent settlements that connect it with the city of Chania, interweaves a uniform linear landscape of hotels, shops and restaurants. This tourist ark, exempted from the distinctive qualities of the greek landscape and the illusion of an authentic identity, is more reminiscent of an a-local paradise with tropical features.Investigating the developing mechanisms of such a hybrid site, two residential phases in conflict become apparent, an initial core at the top of a hill and its modern extension along the coastline, which turn towards the Road and the Beach, the main “backbones” of the urban ensemble. Our project is placed in the area of their overlap and functions as a transverse, zigzag, intermittent mechanism that does not redesign, but on the contrary (para / re) interprets the existing conditions and the relationships between them. Thus, in the intermediate spaces, which currently appears in a latent state in terms of functions, forms, topographies and time, critical points and paths are redefined, framed by new structural elements and landscapes, composing a playful design, which either organizes the symptomatic or reverses it dialectically.