Para[site] landscape

Students : Dini Paraskevi,  Manari Paradeisia
Supervisor: Vergopoulos Stavros
Aristotle university of Thessaloniki, School of architecture
Presentation Date: October 2009

The project refers to the stream Litra Doksis that is developed along Kautantzoglou Street, between Ag. Dimitriou and Egnatia Street, Thessaloniki, Greece. The site can be characterized as an urban remaining, an area that could not be integrated into the city's organism. The interpretation of this relation between the city and nature's remnants is illustrated with the concept of the "parasite landscape" which led to the process of the project. The landscape becomes the parasitic organism that inhabits the city-host. The scope of this project is to reach mutualism, a state where the interaction of each individual organism derives a fitness benefit.

The process of the parasite's growth is developed with the use of voronoi diagrams. The points-cells are set and their interrelation and interdependence in the two-dimensional space is emerged from this mathematical organization. Voronoi diagrams deliver benefit for this project in two ways. Firstly, they obtain the geometrical cellular configuration of the organism. Secondly, they involve self-organization for the parasite during its growth by means of cell division - mitosis.

Through this process the characteristics of this landscape, water, terrain and green are set as the organs of the parasitic organism. Sculpting the terrain provide new water deposits and tanks, organizing thus a watering network for the planting areas, supporting their further expansion.

These new terrains employ the same as the existent land uses redefining though their interconnection with the landscape. Starting from Egnatia Street, the landscape is described more as an urban park, while this aspect is decaying along the stream's formation, on the way to Ag. Dimitriou. The urban park is followed by an area organized as a park for the neighborhood, leaving more space for the natural, concluding to the "intimate" gardens, an area where the feeling of privacy and the natural existence is dominant.