Military base in the Mediterranean
Leros is a small Greek island in the southern Aegean Sea with a very rich architectural and military history. Because of its excellent location, in 1932 the Italians built in Leros the largest military base in the Eastern Mediterranean. The island is also known for the “Battle of Leros”, the last German victory of WWII, and the infamous Psychiatric Hospital, which became the epicentre of the psychiatric reform in Europe.
When the Italians built the G. Rossetti Air Base in the island of Leros (Lepida), they faced the challenge of housing the officers and their families. This need led the Italian authorities to build the new town of Porto Lago (today known as Lakki). This was the largest urban planning project the Italians undertook in Greece. Porto Lago, created as an independent entity to meet the civilian needs of a military community, in terms of both architecture and urban planning is a rare example of rationalist architecture in Greece.
The urban plan for Porto Lago was approved in 1934. By 1936, there were 7,500 people living there and, in addition to the military installations, it contained all the administrative, cultural, and social services of a town. There were special residential areas for higher ranking officers (one and two storey houses), lower ranking officers (two storey complexes containing four apartments each), and workers (two storey apartment buildings).
Mario Lago (Governor of the Dodecanese) had determined that the architecture for the buildings of the new town should be in “modo razionale”, in accordance with the facist regime’s policy, which had chosen rationalist architecture as the official architecture for its public image. Cotrarily to the case of Rhodos and Kos, in Porto Lago the architectural design did not follow an architecture of integration, i.e. contemporary Italian trends influenced by the second exhibition of rationalist architecture.