ISLANDS OF EXILE Authors & Curators Beth Hughes, Platon Issaias, Yannis Drakoulidis

Exhibition Design & Production Valerio Massaro

Collaborators Seyithan Ozer, Cosimo Campani

Booklet Design Marios Diamantis

Supported by The Royal College of Art, London

Special Thanks General Archives of the State, Dodecanese County Archives, Rhodes, Greece. ELIA — MIET: Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive, Athens, Greece. ASKI: Archives of Modern Greek History, Athens, Greece. Exile Museum — The Museum of Political Exiles of Ai Stratis, Athens, Greece. Thanassis and Yannis Paraponiaris Private Archive, Leros.

ARF fund UCL/Bartlett School of Architecture, thanks to all the psychiatrists and social workers that anonymously shared information about the facilities with us, Enzo Bonanno, Mario Damolin, Vangelis Zacharias, Stefanos Levidis, Marios Diamantis, Adrian Lahoud, Godofredo Pereira, Susana Caló, DPR Barcelona — Ethel Baraona Pohl, Cesar Reyes Najera. ISLANDS OF EXILE THE CASE OF LEROS

RATIONALISING

BETH HUGHES

VIOLENCE

PLATON ISSAIAS REFUGEES ON AN

ISLAND OF EXILES On January 20, 2014 Fadi did they start rescuing survivors from Mohamed, a teacher and displaced the water. They also reported that coast individual from Afghanistan stood still guard officers fired in the air and pushed in the concrete peer of an island he didn’t and kicked people away from the rescue know the name of. The island is Leros, boat.1 Greece. In a video issued by Greek With an area smaller than 4km2 NGOs, he seems lost and stays silent the and with a population of 10 people, entire time coast guard officers wearing according to the 2011 population survey, surgical masks and gloves deliver protein Farmakonisi belongs to the Leros cans and water bottles to him and a few municipality. The entire municipality others on the peer. Fadi had just lost his includes mostly unpopulated islands, and wife and three children, when Gönzuru, covering an area of 74 km2 its total the small fishing boat that was carrying population is 7,900 people. Like the them from the Turkish shore to Greek entire Dodecanese cluster of islands and territory and the ‘safety’ of European soil the Turkish coast on the other side of the capsized near the island of Farmakonisi, sea, it’s heavily militarised. The small 12 nautical miles northeast of Leros. army unit, stationed on a 10-day rota on In total 11 Afghan civilians, 8 of them Farmakonisi’s isolated grounds, belongs children under the age of 12, died to the special forces engineering regiment that day. located in Partheni, a camp in the north In a press conference that followed of Leros island. Partheni is one of the on January 25 in Athens, the 16 survivors most notorious military installations in overwhelmingly blamed the Greek Greece, a ground marked by postwar maritime security force for this tragedy. political conflicts — a space of Together with many Greek and European displacement, incarceration and torture. NGOs, Amnesty International argued During the 1967-74 dictatorship, that there was sufficient evidence to bring left-wing citizens were exiled in Leros as this case to court, or at least to further political prisoners. Detained across the investigate serious human rights island these men and women experienced violations that took place in the cold, an institutional violence occurring within wintry waters of the Aegean Sea. a rather peculiar architecture. White, The migrants claimed that the rather simple, rationalist private coast guard not only did not help, but buildings, properly designed public caused their already sinking boat to infrastructure that included among others capsize when attempting to tow them back to Turkish waters at high speed. 1 These descriptions resonate with many similar cases in the Aegean and Libyan Sea. This dreadful event is only one among They also testified under oath that the hundreds, which surface, or remain unknown, every month in the coast guard, when realising that the vessel media to illustrate the migration crisis in Europe. Ongoing wars and conflicts in North Africa, Asia and especially the Syrian civil war have was rapidly sinking, cut the rope and pushed thousands to flee and find refuge on European soil, often with devastating consequences. The extremely important work of Forensic let them to drown. Only after stronger Oceanography, led by Lorenzo Pezzani and Charles Heller, has shown migrants fought back and started how the very protocol of ‘search-and-rescue’ missions and the extreme militarisation of the European security apparatus have climbing onto the coast guard boat, profoundly increased the risk of dying at sea. 7 a market, a generous theatre, a church, to further expand British colonial rule two schools and a tower clock, organised in the East Mediterranean.3 In his plans, a regular yet exotic township. Large the deep, natural port of Lakki/Portolago military barracks were scattered opposite was considered an essential asset for the of the town and the camp of Partheni, Royal Navy in an attempt to destabilise a with their facades often covered by post-WWII Turkey and eventually control characteristically large letters and their the waters from Bosphorus Strait and the interiors full of Fascist, Nazi and Greek Dardanelles to the port of Haifa and the nationalist propaganda and wall Suez Canal. paintings, some dating from the 1930s. Back in the early hours of January Before arriving to Leros, the exiled 20, 2014, the coast guard departed from would have heard of the Royal Technical Aghia Marina, Leros’ main port. This was School that operated in Lakki between the first European soil the 16 devastated, 1949 and 1964. Moreover, they were likely freezing refugees stepped on. Refugees to know of another equally notorious on an island of exiles. facility, the psychiatric hospital. In any More than four years later, in the case, its distributed facilities would have spring of 2018, more than 1,000 people been unmissable when entering the Lakki are kept in the so-called ‘Leros hotspot’, bay by boat. or ‘hospitality centre’ as the Greek The camp in Partheni and the little government calls temporary refugee town of Lakki were designed and built camps. Two different prefabricated unit during Mussolini’s Fascist regime, when types, organised in a series of streets the Dodecanese islands were part of on a regular grid system and confined the Italian sovereign territory. Between within a perimeter of a barbed-wire fence, 1912 and 1943, Leros was one of its most are placed in a large open field defined precious military stations in the Eastern by two large 1930s abandoned buildings. Mediterranean, with its heavy artillery In one of them, one can still read the and well-protected, hidden port of Lakki, large painted letters, now fainting: or Portolago as Italians called it, ‘Caserma Avieri’ (aviators barracks). becoming a myth in itself between naval The camp is enclosed by the coastal road officers, pilots, commandos, paratroopers of Lakki and the southwest limit of one and spies on all sides.2 Famously, Leros of the three sites of the Psychiatric was one of Winston Churchill’s Department of Leros Hospital, known obsessions in his attempt to intensify and as the ‘villas’. This essay presents the key findings 2 Its legendary status was captured in Alistair MacLean’s 1957 novel ‘The Guns of Navarone’ that was based on the battle of of a research project that started in early Leros, an event considered the last defeat of the Allied Forces in WW 2014 into architecture and urban form II. J. Lee Thompson’s critically acclaimed movie of 1961 based on the book, made the small island of Leros known internationally, possibly in light of contemporary militant for the first time in its recent history. Famously, Leros was one of Winston Churchill’s obsessions in his attempt to intensify and to further expand British colonial rule in the East Mediterranean. 3 This has been captured and discussed in many instances, In his plans, the deep, natural port of Lakki/Portolago was most importantly in: Anthony Rogers, Churchill’s folly : Leros and considered an essential asset for the Royal Navy in an attempt to the Aegean : the last great British defeat of the Second World War destabilise a post-WWII Turkey and eventually control the waters (London : Cassell Military, 2003). from the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles to the port of Haifa and the Suez Canal. 8 9 institutional analysis, mental healthcare the Rationalist town of Lakki/Portolago. and political history. Leros’ politicised What kind of architecture accommodates and traumatic existence has been defined military, security and mental healthcare by its service under various regimes. The institutions? What kinds of relations exist project focuses on the last century, from between these institutions and their the Italian occupation of 1912-1943 until architectures? Most importantly, today, covering a rather neglected case how does the particular military set up of Italian Rationalist architecture, namely of the town, the masterplan, and singular the plan of the town of Lakki/Portolago.4 buildings organise social relations, The project follows the transformation employment and an entire ecology of the infrastructure built by the Italian of detention, confinement and care? fascist administration, to notorious Finally, what is the role of mental mental healthcare facilities, camps for healthcare protocols in the development political prisoners and violently displaced of cities and towns? 5 children from mainland Greece, to The presence and influence of Felix current occupation as detention centres Guattari in the de-institutionalisation for refugees. Leros is a living testimony process of the Leros Psychiatric facility of all military, security and disciplinary in the early 1990s makes it an extremely apparatuses deployed by the Geek state interesting case study for how radical since the end of WWII. The brutality and psychiatry confronted what Felix Guattari unprecedented violence of displacement, called ‘a real psychiatric prison, confinement and bodily restriction exists a concentration camp, without the within an idealised colonial architecture presence of any medical staff, not even that celebrated a mystified, Fascist a psychiatrist’,6 when he visited the island pan-‘Mediterraneanism’. It’s a space and in 1991 during ongoing attempts to reform an exemplary landscape defined by water, the globally disgraced institution.7 geography and the south-eastern Mediterranean environment, and yet it performs a series of rather different functions — or not? The essay addresses a series of questions that frame the research project, investigating the role and agency of architecture in processes of 5 This last point has become particularly relevant through institutionalisation, de-institutionalisation the work of Susana Caló and Godofredo Pereira and their current research project on CERFI. See their recent article: Godofredo and subjectification in Leros, especially Pereira, and Susana Caló, ‘From the Hospital to the City’, Journal of Critical Thought, 2 (1), London, 2016, 50-58.

4 The town planning and the particular architecture 6 « véritable bagne psychiatrique, camp de concentration of Lakki/Potrolago is absent, or rarely mentioned in studies of Italian, sans la présence d’aucun personnel soignant, sans même un rationalist architecture, with the exception of the work of Vassilis psychiatre. », Félix Guattari, De Leros à La Borde (Éditions Lignes, Colonas. Colonas has done work on architecture of the Italian, fascist 2012), Préface de Marie Depussé, post-scriptum de Jean Oury, XX. period in the Dodecanese, but without expanding into the post-WWI 7 The psychiatric hospital on Leros became the centre history of the town. For more, see: of a scandal due to the 1981 visit of journalist Mario Damolin, Colonas, Vassilis. (2002) Italian Architecture in the Dodecanese material from this visit was later published in Der Speigal and Islands 1912-1943 (Athens: Olkos), 66 – 71. the Observer breaking international news. 10 11 THE PLAN AND THE OBJECTS Today a continuous crust of the most peculiar of all villages in the urbanisation encircles the waist of the Dodecanese, perhaps the Mediterranean. island of Leros, barnacled to the sides Planned around the gentle curve of the of its deep bays and harbours. harbour, with an axial plan that mirrors The remaining two-thirds of the island the curve of the bay, this small township are somehow imperceptible, unknown that can be traversed in minutes, is a and inaccessible, annexed from the unique and much overlooked exemplar central population due to large military of Rationalist Italian architecture. bases and infrastructure. This unusual An experiment in planning, imagined as configuration creates uneasy contrast the model village, and a strategic eastern to the typical archipelago tropes of out-post of a failed colonial power, Lakki, seaside and hilltop villages scattered and Leros, harbour a far more complex across dry island landscapes, quietly history than their modest size and hosting small, contained communities. reputation indicate. This agglomeration appears more as The village carefully positions a mainland urban development, like the subtly designed institutional and civic start of a city or campus. The island’s edifices (theatre, casa del fascio, school, vernacular is swamped by large church and market) in a considered plan, infrastructures for military, marine to support rows of prototypical villas and healthcare systems – housing filling along curvilinear streets. This in the patches between the institutions architecture from the Italian occupation on the campus. This anomaly is not is a exceptional form of architecture an accident but rather a clear function and planning, foreign to the traditional of the planning and urban development vernacular of other islands or the adopted strategies of the Italian occupation that neo-classical vernacular prevalent in the established a clear demarcation of rank, Dodecanese. Yet, these strange objects ownership and class across the island and, operate beautifully in the climate, settle through extensive programmes of perfectly in the weather and conjure expropriation and redistribution of land, a calm ease of occupation. The elegance built this rigid hierarchy into the territory. of the architecture belies the sinister The concentration of these activities is history that is palpable in the strange around the bay of Lakki, formerly known urban forms, the large military as Portolago. Agricultural redistribution infrastructures and the model town on and the extensive militarisation of the a forgotten Greek island. island pressured the remaining Prior to the Italian occupation of ‘traditional’ fabric into the thin stretch 1912, Leros was one of the more obscure between the harbour and remaining islands of the Dodecanese. Owned in the infrastructures. remnants of the Ottoman Empire, Leros The peculiarity deepens as one was in a strange cultural limbo and enters the harbour of Lakki. Four large existed relatively autonomously under and imposing naval barracks flanking one Ottoman rule. In the resolution of WWI side as ferries, boats and yachts dock at and many exchanges of land across 14 15 16 Europe and the Mediterranean, Leros, Historic archives of Leros and Rhodes as with all the Dodecanese, came under include extensive bathometry and Italian control. Italy’s occupation of the mapping from the Italians, recording the Dodecanese emerged out of unrest in its ideal strategic location and natural northern African colonies and in an effort formation of Leros’ harbour. The harbour to shore up and advance its power, Italy becomes the focus of infrastructural and pressed into the Greek archipelago civic efforts, with residential, public and wresting control of the islands from the medical structures on one side, and naval Ottomans. During the first half on the other. To complement the nautical of this period, Italy’s claim is tenuous strength in the south, an airstrip and and reinforced through military presence. military base secure the northern half of Leros, with the deep natural the island in Partheni. To this day, now harbour of Lakki/Portolago became used by Greek forces, this area is annexed Mussolini’s focus for launching his naval and hidden from the rest of the island, operations for the domination of with one road in and out of a controlled the eastern Mediterranean. It became territory. This has stunted all urban the centre for a strategic plan of a new development on the northern half of the state-empire, with a forceful Italian island, forcing all civilian life to the presence on the island as early as 1923 southern side. These two poles of defence with the establishment of the airbase in are networked and reinforced through Lepida. Central to all of Mussolini’s an elaborate system of defences and strategies for the construction of his state tunnels, built by the Italians during their and his legacy was architecture. 32-year occupation. Fashioning himself as the master-builder The Italian occupation of the of a new empire, Mussolini sought to Dodecanese can be characterised by two immortalise power, control and might phases. In the first phase (1912-1923), through the physical construction of a Italian control is imposed through new architecture and environment. The military processes and presence, in which beautiful village of Lakki, as alien as it is, Italy’s ownership of the territory is is now settled in a distinctly Greek ambiguous and not officially recognised. culture, is an experiment in this During this period the key building construction of a state image project is the airport in 1923 in Partheni — the model town. But the architecture on the northern edge of the island, giving and the planning of the harbour is more consistent and expedient access to the than just about symbolic power, it is island for the Italian military and rather an entire ecology, an infrastructure personnel. Following the official of buildings and services and policy and absorption of the Dodecanese into fascist economic frameworks that sustain Italy, the region becomes formally known a system dependent on processes of as the Italian Aegean Islands. This latter control and detainment, supporting phase of the Italian occupation of a perpetual cycle of exile. the island, 1923-1943, is characterised

17 by a fervent ‘Italianisation’ and a shift and concrete frame buildings, built in from military rule to political rule. the Italian tradition of construction with Italy imposes the fascist ideology brick floors, unlike the stone and brick through politics, culture and social vernacular, have a standard gridded activity. This period is when Leros is column and beam construction allowing rapidly developed by the Italian regime for flexibility of occupation and use.9 and is clearly reflected in the urbanisation The generic nature of these buildings of the harbour of Lakki, renamed and their monumental scale made them Portolago at that time by the Italians. practical and valuable buildings that The southern side of the bay is would go would go onto multiple efficiently developed as a naval base, with iterations after 1947, when Leros and the land acquired through extensive land the Dodecanese would become part of expropriations. The naval base is divided the Greek territory. The fourth barrack into two key zones: southwest for naval is of a slightly different architectural infrastructures and technical facilities, language, while the other buildings including two hangars for hydroplanes, are utilitarian in character, it is more storage rooms, offices, administration decorative, with mouldings to create and pilot quarters, and a northeast area a coronated parapet in a style very similar for housing. With the development of to other Italian buildings on Kos and the island, a transition in architectural Rhodes. This is the barracks for the style from neo-Renaissance architecture sea-pilots. In the front of the building is (Novecento) to a form of Modernism a formal forecourt and steps, the scene takes place that attempts to integrate of many official events and parades. with local and vernacular traditions as In the shift from military to seen in the early designs of Florestano political rule, Italian governance and di Fausto. 8 Some of these buildings still control is wrought through planning and host the Greek navy today, although in development. Following the curve of the a much diminished capacity. The main bay beyond the barracks to the north-east, structures of the historic naval base now the officers residential area is elegantly lie in ruin – four large imposing barrack laid out in a series of 1-2 storey generous buildings. Three of the barracks, closest villas, settled amongst rows of trees, to the peninsula, large, austere and exotic palm trees and garden landscapes. imposing blocks, are a counterpoint to the delicate scale of Lakki. Masonry 9 Giglio, Annalisa. “The Decorative History of Concrete in an “Other” Modernism: Italian Architecture of the Dodecanese 8 Colonas, Vassilis. (2002) Italian Architecture (1912-1943)”, Second International Congress on Construction in the Dodecanese Islands 1912-1943 (Athens: Olkos), 66 – 71. History, 1251-1269.

18 19 20 The compound includes entrance in two-storey complexes containing four guard-posts and swimming pools, apartments, and then workers living in a clear demarcation of rank and buildings at the periphery in two-storey authority. As Italian rule is formalised, apartment buildings. All of the houses are the Italian population swells, increasing very carefully designed for the climate, demand for housing for officers and their with some of the more higher-ranking families. To support this growth, and typologies enjoying generous high ceilings to consolidate Italian social, cultural with considered entrance spaces and and political life, the governor of the circulation, set in well-designed gardens. Dodecanese, Mario Lago, founds the new The rigid structure and carefully town of Portolago on the opposite shore choreographed stage-set, perfect for the of the naval base in the Rationalist style pageantry of reform and power, can be of the Italian fascist state. understood to create an equally rigid class The urban plan was approved structure in strict adherence to the in 1934, and by 1936 7,500 people lived principle of gerarchia (hierarchy) 10 in the new township. Formed of 6x6 as established by the Fascist manifesto. streets on a curvilinear grid, the town The settlement of the town was is like no other village, with almost all deliberately planned, with lands buildings designed by Rodolfo Petracchi reclaimed from Greek locals upon and Armando Berbabiti. The layout occupation in a process of land follows a strict hierarchy that arranges redistribution, to create a dedicated space civic buildings, a series of villa typologies of the colony, enforcing a clear hierarchy designed to support the different ranks between the ruling Italian population and of the population and community the subservient Greek population who infrastructure for sport, leisure and retail. are shifted to the periphery and excluded Key civic buildings (a casa del Fascio, from the life of Portolago. This physical theatre and school) line the waterfront, demarcation is further emphasised serving as the backdrop for important through a series of policies around parades and state visits. Behind this language, economy and politics that waterfront is an intimate street with denies access and equality to the local small-scale local shops and retail. population. The dedication to the The central axis runs perpendicular to principles of gerarchia is explicit in the harbour and forges up the topography, the formal arrangement of the exemplary flanked by the central market and church, pieces of Rationalist architecture and and leading out to fields and sporting its symbolic communication through equipment. Moving progressively out decoration and material. It is an from the central axis are the residential architecture designed to impart authority streets, with location and typology and to strictly regulate a person’s status arranged by rank: higher ranking officers in the central streets live in one to 10 Ghirardo, Diane. “Italian architects and Fascist Politics: two-storey freestanding houses, lower An evaluation of the Rationalist’s Role in Regime Building”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol.39, No.2, May, 1980 ranking officers in the middle zone (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press) 109-127. 21 and role – it is an architecture of control. and also opening up to the main access In the case of Leros, this is emphatically — presenting itself both to the water and represented through the urban plan, with to the street. As you continue up the axis a strict social hierarchy especially you encounter the market, perhaps the implemented around the bay of best piece in the collection, and terminate Portolago. There is intense and distinctive at the church. The gently domed space regulation and segregation of classes of the market opens into a central garden of society and military rank, reinforcing creating an oasis in the plan — a simple adherence to specific societal roles. layout offering such enjoyable space, This structure fosters the perfect ecology perfectly suited to the climate and for an urban form and reciprocal society, context. Today the courtyard of the designed to control and surveil. market hosts a cafe-neio, an idyllic setting The plan of Lakki is carefully for idling away time. accented with key civic buildings that Between the township and the give orientation, hierarchy and character villas is another significant piece of civic to the village. These five buildings are infrastructure, a large military hospital quite beautiful in their simplicity and campus, one of the key medical facilities considered use of indoor and outdoor of the Dodecanese. Elegant courtyard spaces suited to the Mediterranean structures are thoughtfully designed with climate. More humble in scale and climate in mind. The extensive scale language than other Italian colonial of the hospital site is significant relative architecture, the buildings of Lakki are to the population of the island, the legacy a sensitive response to the Greek context of which will earn Leros its greatest and vernacular. notoriety. The new school sits at the entrance Extending beyond the concentrated to the site, its curved colonnade set back efforts of the harbour of Portolago, in against the hillside. The interior spaces an extensive network of infrastructure, offer a generous and unique space of supporting buildings and military education. Open courtyards and breezy apparatus were developed across the corridors create opportunity for classes island between the military base and taught outdoors, the proportion and scale airport of Partheni to the north and of each space is very well considered. the bay of Portolago. Underground Today these spaces are used for the local a series of tunnels as part of the defensive school and the courtyard is filled with strategy burrowed into the terrain, children learning Greek instruments on hilltops are a series of surveillance, and Greek dance-classes. offensive and measuring apparatuses The theatre and casa del Fascio to watch, hear and pursue oppositional frame the main central axis back away forces. from the corniche into the landscape. As an epilogue to the description Again, the use of the curved form allows of the architecture and its the building to detach itself from its implementation, it is important to note neighbours, highlighting its position the relationship to the local population 22 23 — Italian architecture for an Italian military community, clearly designed to impose their ideal living conditions on the island. The land for new settlements, towns, buildings and infrastructures across the Dodecanese were acquired through land expropriation and a series of policies that gradually wrested land from Greek locals into Italian settler ownership.11 Greek farmers were pushed out of their farming lands into a new class demographic, clearly established through these policies — land planning and reclamation becomes a mechanism for once again exerting gerachia. Greek farmers are forced into labour for construction and become the new workforce to implement the many building plans. These policies forced the Greek population into subservient labour roles and denied them their independence and subsistence, typical on other islands. In 1943, after 20 years of occupation, the local population were no longer accustomed, educated or equipped for the subsistent lifestyle of agricultural production, but rather entrenched in a system of employment and labour — Leros had a ready-made unskilled labour force that could be readily employed and utilised in the creation of new Greek institutions that emerge as part of the rebuilding of a new nation.

11 This approach was far-reaching in particular in relation to agricultural lands where a series of legal impositions systematically took agricultural land from the local population to hand over to the Italians: 1924 decree forbidding Greek landowners from planting seeds or cultivating their land; 1928 decree handing over any land left fallow for three years to the Italian government and passing these over to Italian farmers; and a 1929 decree expropriating all lands held by Greeks and handing it over to Italians who wished to introduce new kinds of farming or crops. Colonas pp 71,72 24 25 DISPLACEMENT DISPLACEMENT 28 In September 1943, Fascist Italy On March 31st 1949, the Ministry collapses, and with the resignation of of Social Welfare announced that there Piertro Badoglio the Dodecanese come are 340,000 abandoned children under German control until the in Greece. In the wake of WWII and capitulation of Nazi Germany to Britain the ensuing civil fighting in Greece, in May 1945. For the third time in four the nation faced a crisis of orphaned years, the island falls into the hands of children. The case, the destiny and the a new administration, overseen by personal and collective histories of these the British state until 1947, when the children is still heavily politicised issue Dodecanese are handed back to Greece in Greece; often and from the opposing in the redrawing of the nation’s camps, both state run institutions and boundaries. On March 7th 1948, the military forces of the Greek the island is officially incorporated Communist Party have been accused for into Greek national territory. child kidnapping. In October of 1947, But from 1944 to 1949, Greece Queen Frederica of Greece started a is in a state of civil war. Extremely fundraising programme, The Queen’s impoverished and internally conflicted Fund, to address the plight of the refugees on many fronts, the ensuing 25 years and orphans – this funded the first seven until the fall of the 1967-1974 military orphanages, paidoupoleis (children’s dictatorship, are defined by perpetual cities), food distribution and two training political turmoil, a quasi-continuous schools.12 Purported as the saviour of civil war of various intensity and levels long-suffering children, these orphanages of democratic or authoritarian ruling. in fact served as centres of The deep divisions between the right indoctrination.13 There is evidence and the left in Greece are visible and to suggest that many of these children acknowledged even today. Leros is caught were in fact not orphans but children of in the confluence of this contested communists who were in prison or exile, landscape. The large infrastructures officially declared ‘dead’ by the Queen’s delivered by the Italians serve as the ideal Fund because of their political leanings.14 hosts for new modes of detainment, By 1950, the Queen’s Fund had financed confinement and control in the name 54 paidoupoleis across the country, nine of patriotism and progress. This violence of which remained operational until the will continue many years after 1974 and end of the 1950’s, with few open until the the fall of regime of the Colonels. It plays 1970’s. The children were raised in a strict out not only in forms of discipline of militarised and highly political the citizenry, but also economic reform environment aimed at raising loyal policies that seek to buttress and 12 Queen Frederica of Hellenes, (1971) ‘A Measure of consolidate the many islands of the Understanding’. Macmillan, London archipelago to bring them into the fold 13 Danforth, L.M., Van Boeschoten, R. (2012) ‘Children of the Greek Civil War, Refugees and the politics of memory’ and clearly establish them as part Chicago University Press, Chicago and London of modern Greece. 14 Ibid

29 30 subjects that would follow Greece’s specially chosen officers from the Greek traditional values. They often wore Army. The explicit remit of the school, uniforms, slept in dormitories of up to as articulated by the King himself, was 30 children in each room and ate in to re-educate and reform young leftists shared dining halls adorned in nationalist and to bring them ‘back into the national iconography. In addition to studies and family’. After visiting the school in 1950, prayers, they were assigned to work the British ambassador’s wife to Greece, details and had little exposure to life Lady Norton, praised the school stating, outside the compound — much like life ‘communism must and will spread. in a military barrack.15 This is the only country in the world Also in 1947, King Paul set up the where real creative work is being done Royal National Foundation to ‘raise the to combat the cancer of bolshevism.’17 moral, social, educational and living Students were trained as standards of the Greek people’. As part carpenters, bricklayers, house painters, of this, the King established the Royal tailors and electricians, and graduates Technical Schools on the islands of Crete, would receive a diploma signed directly Kos and Leros. Financed by the Queen’s by the King. Correspondence outside was Fund, they opportunistically occupied censored.18 The students’ life followed whatever buildings were available, from military protocol with units, groups and barracks and hospitals to lavish villas.16 unit leaders sleeping in military bunks on The most famous of the Royal Technical straw mattresses with military blankets, Schools, Leros, opened in March 1949 their uniforms made from recycled in the former barracks of Lakki/Portolago military equipment.19 At any given time, harbour. The Italian Naval barracks the school was training 1,300 students. 20 of Leros, large-scale building designed The Royal Technical School to accommodate sizeable numbers of of Leros remained operational until people, were ideal for hosting and training December of 1964, allowing for the last vast numbers of children — it was soon of its graduates to complete their studies. to become one of the largest and longest After 15 years an estimated 16,000 were running such institutions in Greece. re-educated in Leros. Today the The school differed from the orphanages orphanage (barracks) is in total ruin, programme in that it was for older boys, having been unused for over 40 years. aged fourteen to twenty, often young The floors and ceilings are collapsing, leftists, captured partisans from jails and as are parts of the stairs, making it internment camps, in parts transferred inaccessible. The walls are still covered from other paidoupoleis. Leros Technical in murals and decorative slogans School ran under strict military encouraging obedience and dedication to discipline, staffed and- managed by the motherland. Beyond the re-education

17 Ibid. pp 102 15 Danforth, L.M., Van Boeschoten, R. (2012) ‘Children of the Greek Civil War, Refugees and the politics of memory’ 18 Ibid. pp 170 Chicago University Press, Chicago and London 19 Ibid. pp 170 16 Ibid. pp 198 20 Ibid. pp 170 31 of the Greek youth, the paidoupoleis asylum, orphanage and political prison, and technical schools served as essential the island population grew 23%. This is propaganda of the monarchy’s good not only due to the additional population works. The activities and successes of the institutions, but the employment of the schools were documented and offered meant that the local population disseminated through a dedicated remained in Leros, whereas the trend in magazine, awash with images of other islands was one of mass the regents visiting the schools, depopulation. While figures vary, demonstrating their benevolence and at least 60% of the island’s workforce the success of the programme. The formal was associated with the asylums. In 1988 spaces, generous waterfront promenades the per capita income was relatively high and building forecourts, proved especially in comparison to the rest of Greece effective for the ceremony of a royal visit, (280,000 drachmas vs 200,000). just as they had for the Italian occupation The island enjoyed almost no prior. unemployment with people often having In 1957, as part of a state several jobs.21 programme of economic invigoration Whilst the historic Italian buildings for regional Greece, there is a concerted were large and therefore convenient, they effort to decentralise key services were not fit for purpose. The children’s and institutions from Athens. Leros is hospital, PIKPA, with many patients identified as a key site for mental suffering from physical disabilities as well healthcare. In 1958 the State Mental as mental concerns, had multiple storeys Hospital opened, transferring people from without lifts or ramps or handrails, other areas of Greece. Housed once again meaning that non-ambulant patients were in former barracks and hospital buildings, confined to their rooms on the ground the psychiatric facilities in Leros would floor their entire lives; the eating areas confine over 3,000 patients at a time, were next to the toilets; there were endless making it one of Greece’s largest mental problems with heating; the electrical institutions. The facilities were expanded wiring was inadequate, outdated and in 1961 with the establishment of the dangerous; tap water was not safe for ‘institution for maladjusted children’ drinking and there was generally no hot — the Leros Child Care Centre (CCC) water; and the kitchen was in a separate of the Patriotic Foundation for Social building with food transported in buckets. Welfare and Care (PIKPA). Many of The hospital was predominantly staffed the children were not strictly psychiatric with untrained locals from Leros, their patients, but rather cases of Down role being more to surveil than to support. syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy. There were very few professional Some of the original patients continue healthcare workers in the hospital and to live on the island in the same facility the conditions in the adult psychiatric today, with a total of 914 children admitted over a thirty-year period. 21 J.Tsiantis, A Perakis, P.Kordoutis, G.Kolaitis and V.Zacharias, The Leros PIKPA Asylum, Deinstitutionalization With the introductions of the and Rehabilitation Project. pp 11-43 32 facility were particularly atrocious. total isolation, watching TV twice a week, Infamously known as the ‘island of the no canteen or independent space or the psychopaths’, Leros was the last resort smallest opportunity for autonomy, letters for the mentally ill or infirm where the were censored by hospital staff and rarely ‘incurables’ were sent, as patients were passed on, and if a patient was given leave never expected to leave. 22 to enter the town, the local population In 1982, when photographer and refused to serve them. At the time journalist Mario Damolin visited the of Damolin’s visit, there were only a total island he took a series of photographs of two doctors, seven nurses and one of the patients of Leros and wrote an social worker for the 1,000’s of patients article that was first published in the detained on the island. The nursing staff German newspaper Frankfurter used to be tradesmen or fishermen, Rundschau in August 7 1982, and then often without even having completed picked up by Der Spiegel. Damolin’s a high-school education, they traded pictures showed inmates (patients) their precarious life for the steady chained to beds, naked, hosed down employment by the hospital. Adjacent by staff to manage their waste. The to the historic Italian building was a publication of Der Spiegel article small, detached pavilion, built by the precipitated a flurry of journalists to the Greek state, known as the ‘house of island and an international scandal broke the naked’, were approximately 80 men with a publication in the Observer in lived naked all year round, segregated response to the atrocious conditions in and fenced off left almost to fend for the hospital. The main men’s psychiatric themselves. Interviewed in 2015 for this facility, in a former barrack at Lepida, project, Damolin was still shocked was the site of the most shocking and by his experiences in Leros over 30 years difficult events. ago, and adamant of the significance Overcrowded and crushed with of the islands history. people, additional temporary facilities The press coverage caused a wave had been built at the bottom of the of public outcry, and having recently building. Patients were kept in joined the European Union in 1981, dormitories of one hundred or more the backlash from the European press men in a permanent state of squalor, forced Greece to review not only the with vomit and excrement left on the practices in Leros but all of Greece. floor. The varying illnesses and needs In 1983, the reform regulation 815 was of the patients were not considered, with passed, outlining anew practice for patients of all capabilities and conditions mental healthcare, which also coincided lumped together in a space of control with the establishment of a National rather than support, with no means to Health System, which was influenced differentiate treatment or care depending by British legislation. The legislation on ailment. The patients were kept in aimed to reduce the quantity of hospitals, the number of beds in psychiatric clinics 22 Damolin, Mario Frankfurter Rundschau in August 7 1982 and to develop mental health care 33 34 facilities in general hospitals and at the whole. During a whole era, the few rare primary care level with in the community people that denounced the scandal experienced severe retaliation, even care, combined with vocational training physical. The shepherds and the fishermen and rehabilitation. Leros was to ban all find it normal to guard the crazy like new admissions, to improve conditions an animal park. In truth they respect far and develop reliable training programmes more the beasts. We have fear of the crazy, and a more consistent provision of we mythify their presumed violence, they medical care. have the ‘bad eye’. Epileptics in particular are considered an evil influence. 960 people But reform was met with huge live in direct dependence of the resistance from the island, and this was concentration camp, and the economy one of the greatest impediments to of the island rests on its activity. change. The changes implied significant impact to employment and the island Over the ensuing years, the island responded with hostility towards the of Leros underwent a challenging process reforms due to fear that jobs and income of de-institutionalisation, including would be lost. The change in mental the slow reduction of scale of facilities healthcare was thus slow and failed and considerable reform of its practices. several times due to local resistance and Central to this process was to shift the ineffective implementation. The 1988 approach and attitude of the staff, European report on the reform of Leros, with extensive training programmes following European funding to support implemented to transform the patient the reform, was extremely critical. relation to their carers. Today, the mental To address the issues in Leros and Greece hospital still operates but in a completely as a whole, a conference 3Ist October different form. The large psychiatric 1989 of psychiatric experts was convened hospital in the former barracks was shut in Leros, and included a comprehensive down, reducing the patient population visit of the island’s institutions to review to 700 by 1998. Facilities are now hosted the facilities. Central to this group of in the former officers’ villas built by the experts was Félix Guattari, who Italians. Here patients live in a share- documented his visits to the island in house arrangement and are free to come diary format in ‘Le Leros A la Borde’, and go as they want. Some patients live which included photography of the there permanently, having now been patients taken by his wife Josephine decades on the island, others come from Guattari. Despite the shocking conditions neighbouring islands for a short stay of Leros and the immense troubles of less than a month. PIKPA still operates it faced, Guattari insisted that the but does not take new patients, it is institution can be reformed and remain supporting the ‘children’ that are now open, he writes: middle-aged adults, having been institutionalised their entire existence. An important dimension in the problem of Leros is the complicity of the 9000 A group of the PIKPA children from inhabitants, that relay, in some way or Leros have been set up independently another, the complicity of Greece as a in Athens in a share house where they 35 lead autonomous lives outside the boundaries of an institution — these are all necessary steps in a process of institutional reform. While the conditions in Leros were undeniably shocking, it is crucial to put this in the context of global practices in mental healthcare. At the beginning of the ‘deinstitutionalisation’ to date, mental healthcare around the world was disconcerting. Institutions such as the PIKPA reflect the common understanding in the first half of the 20th Century, that children with disabilities or ‘disturbing behaviour’ be moved (and isolated) in institutions to protect society from them.23 But by the mid-1940s it became clear that long-term institutionalisation had a seriously detrimental effect on cognitive and emotional development of children and the landscape started to shift. However, only in 1971 with Article 23 did the UN General Assembly declare that people with disabilities should have ‘to the maximum degree of feasibility the same rights as other human beings’ (Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons) and it was not until 1989 that articles referred to the rights of handicapped children in regards to rights of care and education. Guattari emphatically noted the fact that Leros, whilst extreme, was not alone in this horror, in his papers, as he advocated for reform not closure.

23 Szymanski & Crocker, Medical Psychiatric Practice, edited by Alan Stoudemire MD & Barry S. Fogel MD, 1989

36 CONCLUSION ‘PURITY IS

THE ESSENCE

OF

THE SOUL’ This problem of reform and the Tens of thousands of people exiled, questions of what an institution is, which detained and isolated and surveilled parameters define it and how a particular in Leros and the town of Lakki/Portolago, institutional architecture — if this occupying, living, by most importantly category exists per se — responds to being serviced, policed and confined change of protocols, habitual practices, by a series of institutions — the Royal and even definitions or conceptions Technical School, the Greek Military, of the ‘normative’, is central to our study the Psychiatric Clinic, the national and of Leros and the township of Lakki/ European police and security apparatus Portolago. What is crucial here is to of control of the refugee flows – that understand exile, detention, confinement, employed local population. The inaugural indoctrination, and the architecture that moment of the Italian military town, set allows the above not as accidental up these relationships permanently: or even pragmatic developments, but class, labour, gender segregation, multiple as relational, diagrammatic conditions zones of controlled and restricted access, that operate in an infrastructural field military and civilian infrastructures of possibilities. Leros testifies that interwoven with a multiplicity of scales: the logistics and the logics of warfare as the Med, the archipelago, the island, well as the project of displacement and the town, the village, the building-object the very conception of “undesirables” itself. Ultimately, the role of the Lerian, and the “displaced” produce first and has become one of the guard foremost two things: the legal and social the discipliner, the cook, the cleaner, apparatuses that produce these subjects, an extremely precarious service provider, and spaces that this violence is exercised. her and himself in exile and completely Therefore, it’s always within the dependent on these institutional forms. asymmetric relations of labour that both If the Greek state pushed tourism, leisure the subject of the confined and the one and small-scale construction industry for of the guard is produced. most islands and towns on the mainland The project does not claim that as the main economic activity, there was architecture is the cause of this. a much different strategy for Leros; And while the architecture of the Italian to become an island of exiles. Rationalist period has its own qualities, The population is so economically it is also constructed within a very inculcated in the process of control that specific diagram. What is our interest it has become a self-perpetuating here is not the degree in which “fascist” demand. The argument is thus that architecture of various degrees could neither one thing in or of itself is of exist, or even if any kind of architecture substantial scale – neither the population, could be more or less “fascist. Rather our the large barrack infrastructures claim is that the relationships established well-suited to this application, nor the by the plan and the architecture, the strict Rationalist architecture in and of itself, imposition of gerarchia, established is unique nor the cause, but rather a unique urban form and social fabric. the coexistence and confluence of all 40 these factors have created a campus of surveillance and exile. It is precisely the interdependence and co-existence of architecture and labour that perpetuates the island’s role as an apparatus of control.

41

THE CASE OF LEROS