... Since about 1993, I have regularly visited Syros at the end of August.

A Greek friend, Dimitri Manikis, who was born in Ermoupolis and came to Vienna via Athens decades ago, introduced me to the island.

This building struck me on my very first visit to Ermoupolis. What sort of temple is it? Directly opposite the port and the city, standing by itself amid the landscape, on the first plateau of a promontory emerging from the water in stages. A see-through construction consisting only of columns and rafters. As if its position had been chosen with care. Tiny from a distance, but attracting the gaze irresistably owing to its situation on the outline of the darker hill with only the sky as a backdrop.

I was also there to see what it is. An unfinished industrial building made of prefab cement elements. At that time, I did not yet know that it had been going to be an abattoir.

The esthetic fascination of the basilical prefabricated construction was one thing. But what interested me just as much as an architect and town planner was how it came to be that an industrial building was placed on such a prominent site, where it could be seen from the city, the waterfront cafés and the passing ships, as if it were on show. An abattoir. Crazy.

This is not a general criticism of industrial buildings. The huge shipyard towering over the harbor basin deters all tourists who cannot reconcile their ideas about holidays with the existence of an industrial plant. On the other hand, Syros has been far less ruined by tourism than many other islands precisely because it is not the only form of income.

The promontory has barely been built on past the counterbend of the harbor basin; there is no lack of space. Why was the planned abattoir placed on such a remote and exposed site? One explanation could be the direction of the wind and the fear of the nuisance caused by unpleasant smells.

The town planning of Ermoupolis classes the promontory in front of the city as inferior. This area has negative connotations from its past. Scattered over it are the ruins of a prison and a dilapidated quarantine building for sailors. The sanitary landfill in the interior, fuel storage depots, a precast concrete factory right on the waterfront and the airport behind the uppermost plateau of the hill have since been added. To be precise, the negative associations begin even before the bend, at the historical sheds of the former tanneries, of which only stone walls without a roof remain.

Recent building activity has been concentrated on the mountain slopes above the city, and blurs the contours of the two hills surmounted by churches in the old part of Ermoupolis that characterize the city. Up above, people race around in their cars, which means that , while driving through the narrow lanes of the old city, a critical point is established. Down below, there are traffic jams because only two roads lead upwards.

The piece of land that closes off the natural harbor basin, on the other hand, is ignored. This is despite the fact that you would think nothing was more urgent than structuring the other half in a similar manner to the old, evolved part. A free area along the waterfront, and behind it the buildings rise up, staggered, less steeply in correspondence with the topography.

Analyzing this situation became a recurrent mental exercise for me in the following years. /.../

The city can only be extended radially along the bay in one direction. At present, only about half of it is occupied by the solid block of the historical center and its frontages following the line of the shore. /.../

On the other half, it would be possible to give the impetus for a gradual extension of the old structure using up-to-date means. /.../ The site of the cement skeleton that Kippenberger declared a museum would be suitable, and a Museum of Modern Art would have been a strong impulse for this town planning measure.

At some stage during the preceding years, I came across a sign, probably near the bus station: MOMAS. MOMAS? Of course, the abbreviation for the Museum of Modern Art in New York was well-known, but the sign could not be deciphered without background information.

Manikas would like to gain a business foothold on Syros as well, so he regularly meets with the local politicians in Ermoupolis in order to promote these intentions, as is usual with architects. With the obvious ulterior motive of wanting to be given a concrete building commission, he planned to prepare a symposium, and asked if I would take part in it. It was to be at the end of August the following year. The topic was »Innovation and Tradition« with the secondary title »Intervention in Historical Settlements.«

Five Austrians and five Greeks were invited. As usual, they were to give a short, improvised talk on the topic, and then general proposals for a Museum of Modern Art were to be elaborated upon and presented to the city council. With a real background.

It was no coincidence that people were thinking about a museum. Only after specific questioning did my Greek friend admit to having talked with Kippenberger about his MOMAS project during a dinner at Würthle's house on Syros.

The real background to this idea was structural reforms that the European Union was planning for the Aegean. It wanted to sort out over-divided and seemingly contradictory coexistences. The conflict between tourism and the shipyards was troublesome. The idea was even there of moving the shipyards to benefit tourism, to make the Aegean one big uniformly structured holiday El Dorado. This is actually a frightening concept, but, in this context, there are groups on Syros in favor of sophisticated cultural tourism. My Greek friend had at any rate sown the seed for a Museum of Modern Art. At the end of January of that year, two politicians from Ermoupolis came to Vienna. My Greek friend took them to the Vienna Opera House to see »Rigoletto.«

I said I would attend, knowing well that whenever and wherever anything was to be built on Syros, Manikas would stake his claim first. For this reason, and because I had decided on the site and the building and the absurdity associated with both, a theoretical project interested me more than anything that would really come of it. As was later shown at the symposium, in reality any building or conversion project to create a Museum of Modern Art in Ermoupolis is a thing of the distant future.

So why not play with the nicest possibility of all and site the project in the unfinished industrial temple, including the entire promontory while we were at it? This was the moment when I, after a hint about the site in my proposal and upon a tip from Manikas, asked Ms. Semotan for documents regarding the MOMAS project of Martin Kippenberger.

One or two summers before the symposium, I took a photo. I had again been musing grumpily about the beauty of the site of the cement skeleton and its diffuse possibilities, and had my Minolta on me. I pondered over the sense of taking a photo for a long time. Finally, I squeezed the trigger: from the place where the boats were moored over the harbour, the building a tiny eye-catcher in the far distance. Later, I had computer renderings made in three zoom stages on the basis of this photo. For reasons of simplicity or from a combination of laziness and the suspicion of deficient infrastructure and southern chaotic organization, the renderings were done in Vienna. I took them with me as a basis for drawings to explain my concept on the spot. My suspicion was justified; we didn't even get as far as drawing.

My contribution to the symposium was a concept and intended as a counterpole to the probable conventional museum and gallery ideas with the exhibition of colored pictures according to visitor numbers. After I received the documents, I was able to add the information that Kippenberger had already declared the cement skeleton I had in mind a museum anyway.

The museum was already there, only no one knew it.

With this spiritual value, it would also be the first and the only permanent exhibit. Other buildings should not be erected next to it nor should any other fixtures be added. With the magic of its see-through significance, it would remain just as it was when it was declared a museum. An important part of the concept was also the invisibility of Moba Museum itself, so as not to obstruct the view of the objects to be exhibited, as so often happens. So into the mountain with it. All the side rooms necessary for a museum - cloakrooms, toilets, depots, workshops, cafeterias, and above all shady rooms for contemplative walking and sitting around ? would be invisible, under the slope of the neighboring hill, with a garland of arcades perforating the foot of the mountain but not changing its silhouette.

The whole peninsula with the museum on the plateau would be an activity area, and because both lie in front of the city tiered upwards like a grandstand, it would be a museum that would not necessarily have to be entered. Its position would ensure it was always in view and visited.

I would have liked it to be a museum for smoke installations. Or for noises or smells or air. At any rate, the installations would possess great lightness. Like a huge outdoor cinema in front of the coffeehouse chairs in the harbor. Of course, everything would depend on who was in charge of the museum.

If Moba city council were to be of the opinion that a museum has to have regular opening times and sell admission tickets, then rooms for documentations of the transitory installations would be set up in the mountain. With light from above, through shafts adjusted to the position of the sun. The prefered manner of access would be a boat trip across the harbor and then a slanted lift, leant against the cliff, up to the plateau.

The early plane from Athens lands on Syros before seven o'clock. The café near the market is already open at that hour. As has become customary in the course of the years, the Cinquecento came to the airport and we drove back into the city together. They know the way. Because the street runs behind buildings standing on the coast before turning into the dock area, a free view of the cement skeleton was only possible for short moments. But after the third sighting it became clear: between August and August they had put on the roof, lined the walls, and cleared the surrounding area. Later, I learnt that it had now become the municipal sewage plant, as seems to be the destiny of all promontories. The changes in the grounds were caused by round cement containers for the agitators. The charm of the building has vanished. Now it is a normal industrial building, although there could be no objection to making an abattoir that had been declared a museum into a sewage plant. The site still worries me, however.

The whole discussion during the symposium revolved around the relevance of a museum or a gallery, and possible locations. One Greek colleague argued for a gallery, because not even Athens had a suitable building for housing, for example, an El Greco exhibition. He said that this was an opportunity for Syros.

Two buildings facing one another in a side lane to the right of Miaouli Square with the town hall, the already existing pinacotheca at the docks, and a fairly large block of land behind the military base with its walls and watchtowers on the edge of Ermoupolis were up for consideration. The question posed to the local politicians about the possibility of moving the sewage plant caused, as expected, some amazement.

What remains are the computer renderings in A3 format. Every so often I plan to work smoke installations into one of the copies. The Christmas card was a first attempt.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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