a wolf in sheep's clothing- the FIX building conversion into a museum

The history of the Fix building and the national museum of contemporary art (EMST) In 2000, the long deserted Fix brewery, a remarkable industrial building in the centre of Athens, created by the architect Takis Zenetos,(1926-1977) a pioneer figure of the post-war architecture in Greece, was selected as the permanent house of the newly founded EMST.  The 1957 design, stressed the horizontal aspect of the structure along Sygrou Avenue with linear glazing. With his work, Takis Zenetos wasn't merely seeking to house an industrial unit, rather, in the context of his broader philosophy, he was interested in the future functions of it under various conditions.

Despite the demolition of one part, the building offered significant unified spaces  of 20,000m2 and  a volume of 90,000m3 which allowed the gathering of the Museum's main functions, such as permanent and periodical exhibitions, administration, archives, library, an auditorium, laboratories, an art-store, cafeteria and restaurant e.t.c

The Architectural Design

On the banks of the river Ilissus (presently Kallirrois Avenue), EMST comes to inhabit the old FIX brewery. Something new is being born through such intercourse. The facades designed by Zenetos on Syggrou and Frantzi are maintained. The two new elevations of the building reveal  the forgotten topography of Athens. The "section" of  the river bed with the sedimentary bed rock  after  centuries- long subsidence  "re-emerges" from the soil and is suspended as a giant "curtain"- within its folds the Museum exhibition spaces lie hidden.  At the level of the street, a water wall slides into the vacuum between the volume of the exhibition and the ground.

Today the FIX building "floats" amidst a sea of vehicles. A narrow pavement, which encircles it like  the "wake of the boat" and the Bus Interchange constitute its surrounding space. What  it lacks in space outside, it is offered inside. The Museum returns to the city what it has taken away: a foyer and a space of "epic" dimensions (almost 30 m high), which reveals perpendicularly inside of the building "the archaeological findings'' of the plot: Zenetos's elevation  on Syggrou. From the top floor one can reach the first level of the flat roof and hence move up to the Sculpture Gallery. The latter inhabits the "ground" of a garden-labyrinth, which reveals furtive views to selected points of Athens.

The Museum as an edifice is not a tabula rasa where it is unimportant whether one is in Helsinki, Barcelona or London. It is a significant element of the preservation of the city's collective memory. The past, as it is maintained in the Fix building cannot naturally be kept intact; if so it would be a Fix- building museum. But the fact, that the building is now in the process of being reconstructed to serve another purpose, signifies that the space bears the memories of the period of its birth and it is hence enriched.

Kalliope K. Kontozoglou
BA (Hons), AA Dipl (Hons), RIBA I,II,III, Member of ArcUK, TEE
Studied at the School of the Architectural Association (AA) where she graduated with the Diploma Prize(1981), was then invited to teach design at both Intermediate and Diploma Level of the School (1982-1986). Collaborated with Tim Ronalds on a number of projects (1982-1988), her last one of which won the 1988 The Sunday Times-RIBA Community Award, sponsored by the Prince of Wales.
Upon her return to Athens (end of 1988) she joined T.Spanomaridis and I.Zachariadis as a partner for a year before starting her own practice. In 2003 she merged her practice and became a partner with A.B. Stylianidis and K.Sionis. They formed 3SK Stylianidis Architects, until recently, when she started operating as a free-lance architect again both in Greece as well as abroad. Visiting lecturer at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University in 1993. Organised and taught at the First (1994) and the Second (1997)Athens Workshop for the School of Architecture and Fine Arts, University of Western Australia, as well as the Studies Abroad Program for the School of Architecture, University of British Columbia, Canada (1998). Member of the Advisory Board of the NGO SARCHA (School of Architecture for All). Completed and current work includes office buildings, shops, theatres, art museums, luxury hotels and tourist developments, and private houses in groups or for individual clients. Her work has won a number of architectural prices and has been exhibited and published both in Greece and abroad.

BIG! BAD? MODERN:

The Academy of Fine Arts, Institute for Art and Architecture will throughout the 2010-11 academic year debate and suggest new ideas in order to revisit the cultural heritage of modernism, its built and un-built utopias.

Modernism has produced some of the largest single buildings of our times.

Today architects continue to speak of their achievements in terms of size and square meters. City developments are measured in hectares and acres, when concerning emerging economies even in square kilometres.

Le Corbusier's allegorical ocean liner became the normative and even litteral reference in many debates on the city and its architecture. Megastructures, as autonomous systems of dense living, working and existence became the basis of many architectural theses. The metabolists, the archigram group, the situationists and many other thinkers/architects such as Rossi and perhaps to the present time Koolhaas have described through various models the potential of projecting in cities.

The lecture series BIG! BAD? MODERN: will explore the Modernist belief in architecture's capacity to absorb the city scale. It will do so by presenting various speakers who are addressing the issue from different foci.

Nasrine Seraji | Head of Institute

11.04.2011 | Lecture Stefan Gruber
09.05.2011 | Lecture Kalliope Kontozoglou
23.05.2011 | Lecture Sabine Kraft
15.06.2011 | Peter Leeb, Architect, Professor | Vienna
30.06.2011 | Shelley McNamara, Architect | Dublin

www.akbild.ac.at/ika