May_1966 — Page 58

MYKONOS AND DELOS

a study in architectural contrast

M

YKONOS, in the Cyclades, is five hours by sea from the Piraeus. The name is given to both the island and the port which is also the main centre of population, numbering some 4.000 souls.

It is the stepping off point for a visit to Delos, an hour's trip away by caique. The double visit provides the architect with an exciting and per- haps disturbing study in contrasts.

Delos is the mythical birth place of Apollo, and a ranking holy place with Delphi and Olympia. It was once a centre for a great annual fes- tival and quinquennial games, where the city-states paid their tribute to the god and where there grew up a great centre of culture expressed phy- sically in architecture and sculpture of no less quality than the rest of an- cient Greece. But it is a Delos now virtually uninhabited. a grazing ground for the sheep and goats of Mykonos: its monuments flattened and arranged in pieces in the appro- priate places by the archaeologists, as if awaiting shipment for erection else- where. It is a place of the dead. cold, abstract, having no connection with reality.

Warm and Human

Mykonos on the other hand, with no pretensions to a classical ances- tory, is a warm, human place, where man has worked out his own destiny in his own fashion. Its buildings are purposeful, soft, friendly, welcoming, describable in human terms. This is

a strange reversal; the settlement of Mykonos should be more appropriate to the civilization of Delos. 2,500 years before, and of Delos to that of today.

Perhaps in Mykonos we see the real answer to man's position in life, whereas in Delos and in fact London, New York, Paris all is artificial, false and mostly unnecessary. Of course when we speak of Delos, we speak of a place, the apearance of which comes only to our imagination.

After the Grand Tour of Europe, having continuously risked one's life

on

the autostrada, fought off the parasites that feed on the financial blood of the tourists in Italy, and seen the historic sites of mainland Greece. Mykonos seems like an earthly Olym- pus, where the inclination is to do nothing, but sip retzina and eat souv- lakia, surely the rectar and ambrosia of ancient times. It takes an effort

to go to Delos, when once establish- ed in "rooms" on the island which. foreswearing the comparative opul- ence of the tourist hotels. is the thing to do.

A good time to visit is early Oc- tober, when the rest of Europe is safely back in its offices and factories. The skies are still an aquamarine and the sun is warm, although the mel- temi brings boisterous white caps to the almost black sea, making sweaters and windproofs desirable garments in non-leeward locations.

The air is fresh and competes with the hedonistic influences of the place itself: the spirit urging activity and the body denying it, with the body winning.

Description Difficult

In describing Mykonos difficulties arise in terminology, the inevitable planning terms which come to mind, town centre, residential area, are in-

MYCONOS 1965

adequate. and

The

inapplicable. word town, is often defined as an area providing certain services and facilities and categorised by the num- ber of its population.

Such a cold, rigid definition cannot be applied to Mykonos that settled area around the small harbour where houses are not really houses, hardly "cottages". perhaps "dwellings" Streets are not streets, nor "alleys" which has a derogatory connotation. And how should one describe the nar- row "paths" that separate the build- ings? Perhaps "passage" is the near- est to it.

Squares are not squares; not large, nor imposing, but informal, irregular- ly shaped, open spaces.

The first sight of Mykonos is of a mass of low, small, dazzling white planes and cubist forms, seeming to be constantly on the move before a screen of solid pure aquamarine, that is the sky. When the eye ceases to respond to this excitation, the planes

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Far East Architect & Builder May, 1966