The Island

"The stream will turn into an island.

 An island, meaning a place that stands separate.

 Inside the city it will be, by why dress like the city?

 The island won’t show its face to the visitor,

 unless they decide to land in it.

 Dressed in mist it will be,

 not to be seen from the two main passages.

 More seductive it will appear, wreathed in its mystery.

 Once you cross the gate, you enter somewhere else.

 There will be no phones inside the island.

 There will be no internet inside the island.

 There will be no clocks inside the island.

 Time will be no dynast inside the island.

 Powerless within your freedom if you feel,

 don’t be scared.

 Give your spirit a chance.

 If you miss the city,

 stay away.

 There are other places for you."

                                                    Foivos Galinos Paparounis

This is a series of sketches and drawings, made for a landscape architecture project we finished about a year ago. Foivos and I, envisioned a sort of fairytale-like park, here in Thessaloniki, and worked hard to turn it into something buildable and realistic (as realistic as we thought it would do no harm), yet mysterious. Foivos, focused on building our thoughts, our ideas, our philosophy, our dream, and then expressing them through words and text, being the visionary force. I focused on visualizing this dream on paper, through the sketches and drawings that you see here. He was the writer, I was the illustrator. Here, I tried to exhibit all the pieces, in the order they were created, showing the whole process, from the searching of the atmosphere, the patterns and geometries that would create spaces, to the final plan and the materials and construction ideas.

This is Foivos' place. You can find him there.