Nowadays, people came across unexpected decelerations-pauses of their movement, when they have to wait, something that they rarely choose to do voluntarily. Waiting is an unintended interruption, a disturbance of the programme of everyday life. Its start can be unmarked and unnoticed and its end is frequently uncertain.It is the ‘meantime’, the interval in between present and an anticipated event. It is often named ‘wasted time’, however it is the only case in which time passing is strongly understood, compared to movement and the environmental development.

At the beginning of this research, an attempt was made to record the ‘waitings’ that a man experiences and to create a list of as many points and situations as possible, where someone has to wait. Hence, a list emerged which organizes and distinguishes ‘waitings’ by theme, by duration, by the human body posture during its experience and, last, by the space in which it is experienced. Those lists where enriched during the development of the research and they were further analyzed with references to time theories, art, typical behaviours that are developed by people while waiting. The results of the in situ observation of waiting rooms were also used in order to create an archive which could constantly be enhanced.

The purpose of this thesis was not the complete record of every existing waiting, but an attempt to collect waiting instants, through which the variant aspects of waiting experience and, as a result, its role and meaning during modern life could be understood.