SpaceStories

Her­mitage Syka­minea — Hub of crea­tivity

In the Hermitage on Lesbos, a long-term project by German-born visual artist Andreas Sell, small teams find a project space for meetings or workshops that goes far beyond the scope of dull event rooms.

by Ulrich Knoll in February 2023

In the far­thest corner of Europe, only ten kilo­metres from the Turkish mainland, lies the small fishing village of Skala Syka­mineas. A quiet village on the north-eastern edge of the Greek island of Lesbos with pre­do­mi­nantly elderly inha­bi­tants, who live from fishing, sheep breeding and olive growing.

In one of these olive groves lies the dre­amily located Her­mitage Syka­minea, a long-term project by German-born visual artist Andreas Sell. Here, from spring to fall, he wel­comes small teams looking for a project space for mee­tings or work­shops that goes far beyond the scope of dull event rooms.

From here, the view sweeps over the ter­raced slope and Skala Syka­mineas, out to the waters of the Gulf of Edremit, whose colours change con­stantly with the time of day and the weather. For a long time, the eye of the beholder remains glued.

One quickly gets lost in thought at the sight of the sea and the spec­tacle of the sky. Sun­rises and sunsets are just as cap­ti­vating as the light that falls on the slopes in com­pletely dif­ferent ways depending on the time of day and the season. In between, birds of prey soar in circles high in the air, cats roam past. Beetles, ants and many other insects scuttle scurry by.

You can hear sheep bells, dogs barking from the village, the sound of the wind.

The cries of seagulls and the engine noises of the small fishing boats drift up. And you can hear the tra­velling gre­eng­rocer spruiking his wares over the loud­speaker.

A slight smell of salt is in the air. In spring the sun’s rays tickle your skin, in summer you enjoy the pleasant shade of the trees and the breeze blowing in from the sea.

In the evening, as the heat fades, you can stroll among the olive groves. Or go down to the sea along the old paths made for donkeys to transport the olives during harvest time. Down there you can go for a swim and then enjoy a drink on the platía, the village square.

The deve­lo­pment process of the Her­mitage

The fact that this accom­mo­dation, this space, is any­thing but random is closely related to the founder of the Her­mitage. After self-chosen years without a per­manent home and many years of tra­velling through various countries, Andreas Sell arrived on the island in 2012 almost by chance.

With its moun­tains, forests, hot springs and lush flora and fauna, the island held a special attraction for him. And so he set out to find a piece of land where he could build a summer house for one person. The remo­teness of the plot of land he chose not unju­s­ti­fiably sug­gests the idea of an escape, alluding to the romantic search for a life away from the usual social con­ven­tions. For Andreas Sell bought this land in order to build a retreat – a shelter that both creates and fills an empty space. His house or houses are arche­typal con­s­truc­tions, shelters that shield against external adversity and separate the private from the public. The concept of the Her­mitage is one of sim­plicity in its entirety and aims to create healing solitude.

So, from 2016 onwards, one or two guests have been able to spend time at the Her­mitage during several summers. In 2022, the facility was expanded so that since then, groups have also been able to spend time tog­ether. Two summer pro­grammes in which archi­tects, artists, curators and desi­gners dedi­cated them­selves to spe­cific work pro­jects in 2020 and 2021 tipped the scales in favour of this trans­for­mation. Since then, from spring to autumn, the Her­mitage has been a meeting place for creative people working on themes such as ecology or art, organize team mee­tings or hold work­shops.

A balanced life

From the beginning, the Her­mitage was con­ceived as a work of art based on its use. The Greek curator Galini Notti describes the work of Andreas Sell and at the same time the Her­mitage as follows:

“Andreas Sell works on the pro­duction of space. He builds, maps, arranges and presents a space that accom­mo­dates the self and the other; a phy­sical, mental and sen­ti­mental space that can be revealed or pro­tected, visited or inha­bited. In this way he explores per­sonal and social rela­ti­onships and reflects on peo­ple’s rela­ti­onships with their sur­roun­dings. Drawing on his per­sonal expe­ri­ences, he engages with pro­cesses of tran­sition, adapt­ation, attachment and detachment.”

Sell himself describes the begin­nings of the Her­mitage in this way:

“Alt­hough I come from a family of archi­tects, I had never built a house myself; and it didn’t seem right to design it sitting at a desk. I wanted to get to know the place where I would be building and fami­liarise myself with it. That’s why I built a structure out of wooden slats and plastic sheets, a kind of model of the house. I wanted to find out what the climate was like around the house.  I wanted to see how the light moves and which direction the wind comes from.  Then I built the 1:1 model and lived in it for a summer. In this way I slowly got to know the place. Building the house was a deli­berately slow process. Thanks to the model I had gained enough expe­rience to know where I would put the windows in the house and where they should face. The inte­gration of the house into the sur­roun­dings was also cen­trally important to me and was the result of the model expe­riment.”

“When I was thinking about building the house, Martin Heid­eg­ger’s essay ‘Bauen, Wohnen, Denken’ [ Building, Living, Thinking] often came to mind. In it he describes that living is building. That you build by moving things around in your household. After six years without a per­manent home, building a house gave me the oppor­tunity to reflect anew on my basic needs. The desire for shelter from wind, rain or heat. But I didn’t just think about building a house, I thought about all the items in the house. How many spoons do I need? How much water do I need? How much light?”

“Because of my needs, I became aware of the objects in the house. And by noticing them, designing and also making many myself, I found out how many objects I need and where each object’s position should be. This order is never fixed. It is con­stantly changing. For example, since there are no water pipes in the house, a water con­tainer above the sink in the kitchen has to be filled and after use the water has to be carried out of the house. In this way, both each guest and I know how much water is used in a day.”

Nature-con­scious, ver­na­cular con­s­truction

The Her­mitage Syka­minea curr­ently con­sists of two wooden houses, a bath­house and a pergola. They were modelled on agri­cul­tural store­houses built by farmers on the island. The buil­dings are mainly made of wood, which creates a warm and natural atmo­sphere. Self-made wooden fur­niture rein­forces this effect.

Since the two buil­dings each have a common room and four bed­rooms, they can accom­modate up to eight people, making it ideal for smaller groups. Fol­lowing the prin­ciple: small bed­rooms and a large common room. This con­fi­gu­ration was adopted from Berlin house com­mu­nities from the 1990s, where com­munal rooms were shared, and each resident had a private room. The olive grove, among other things, serves as an extended retreat or working space where one can find peace in a hammock with a view of the sea. All in all, the Her­mitage offers a lot of space to be tog­ether or for oneself. In summer, of course, most of the time you live outside. Then you will also find a fully fur­nished, spa­cious room under the pergola, where you can lie on a sofa next to the trees or work with equal amounts of con­cen­tration and crea­tivity. The tran­si­tions between indoor and outdoor space are fluid throughout the entire complex.

The cubic struc­tures adapt to the slope of the hill. The starting point of the wooden struc­tures is the cube built in 2015, which is dis­torted by the slope. The wooden façades them­selves take on patina over time and turn dark. Thus, the buil­dings no longer stand out from their sur­roun­dings; rather, they dis­appear into the land­scape.

The interior of the house, which was built in 2015, con­sists of three levels: a sleeping gallery, a kitchen-living room and a level with shelving for clothes. The ori­en­tation was chosen so that a pleasant climate pre­vails in summer. The wind, which comes mainly from the north, then flows through the large doors, which run in a north-south direction. Shutters provide shade. An external bath­house next to the wooden house pro­vides running water. Its was­te­water is chan­nelled into two dif­ferent tanks. While the toilet water is dis­posed of via a septic tank, the shower water can be reused for watering the garden and the olive trees.

All in all, the Her­mitage offers simple comfort. The sim­plicity of the buil­dings and the resulting life­style require visitors to take their time and pay attention to everyday needs.

The power supply, for example, is pro­vided by bat­teries that are charged by a pho­to­voltaic system and supply 230 volts. The water for the Her­mitage comes from the village of Syka­minea, which draws it from a ground­water reservoir and as such is also a pre­cious  com­modity. Only organic cleaning agents are used in the house – because the was­te­water is used to irrigate the herb garden. The herbs, in turn, can be used for cooking. This is the way Andreas Sell has been thinking, planning and building with for years – in cycles whe­rever pos­sible. For him this is simply a given.

The heart of the Her­mitage is the pergola, which func­tions as a common room and outdoor kitchen and inte­grates the bathroom. Since people live and work outside in the summer anyway,  walls are merely hinted at. These blur the boun­daries between indoor and outdoor areas and incor­porate the entire olive grove with its many areas for taking a rest. It then becomes an extended living and working space.

What looks obvious today, despite all the intended sim­plicity, was of course not. One of the biggest chal­lenges was to get the building mate­rials onto the site in the first place. Because the small dirt road and the ter­raced olive grove with its steep slope only allowed access for small vehicles, all the wood had to be carried up the ter­races by hand. Since Andreas Sell is not only the builder and designer but has also regu­larly worked on the con­s­truction site himself, he is well aware of the efforts involved in the creation of the paradise it is today.

This is how the Her­mitage Syka­minea gra­dually became this unique place – slowly but ste­adily evolving over the years. It is always changing, but always offers space for quality time with with like-minded people and work col­le­agues.

When you arrive, the dirt road leading to the olive grove seems like a path leading to another world. The seclusion and the breath­taking land­scape make it easy to switch off. 

Above the Her­mitage, the heritage listed village of Syka­minea, with its old buil­dings, as well as the entire expe­rience of life on the island, convey this impression: to be living in another time, to have fallen out of (normal) time.

Author: Ulrich Stefan Knoll, February 2023

Photos: © Marco Pina­relli (1 — Titelfoto, 6, 13, 17, 19, 20, 22, 25, 29), © Fotis Milionis (2, 12, 16, 18, 28), © Wolfram Sinapius (4, 5), © Patroklos Kazazis (15), © Andreas Sell (3, 7, 9 – 11, 14, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30 – 33), © Kor­binian Bscheider (8), © Estela Stavrinou (21)