The Technical University of Crete started its development from the historical centre of the city of Chania and moved later to a 300 Ha campus at Akrotiti 10 km from the city. As opposed to both the case of Ioannina - the typical new-town pattern - and that of the new University of Thessaly - the idea of urban renewal and rehabilitation of existing buildings -, the master plan of the Technical University of Crete at the Akrotiri campus was based on the idea of autonomous ‘islands’, like villages (such as the first kernel of the campus designed be the S. and D. Antonakakis ‘Studio 66’ office) or cloisters (such as the first building of the School of Mineral Resources on the other side of the site). The so-called ‘islands’ are planned to enable the fast development of an urban atmosphere in each ‘island’ and, most of all, and to allow their designers to follow architectural patterns and time-schedules not necessarily related to each other. Following the above Master Plan, the first two academic “islands” have been already developed combined with the first housing complex and other supplementary buildings across the main pedestrian axes of the campus. The experiment proved to be flexible in terms of a peaceful coexistence among different architectural principles and realistic in terms of time schedule, featuring a third acceptable type of campus design beyond the autonomous city and the urban network.

Publications

• Architecture in Greece, 30/1996, p. 142

• Architecture in Greece, 36 (issue specialized on A.Kotsiopoulos’ work on university buildings) / 2002

• A. Giakoumakatos, “City and knowledge: university buildings and urban tissue” in: Architecture in Greece, 36, 2002, pp 58 - 64