The first MOMAFAD took place in the abandoned terminal of the Ellinikon International Airport of Athens designed by Finnish modern architect Eero Saarinen in 1968. Both the architectural value of the building and its emotional salience as a site of public memory contributed to its selection. Lying vacant since 2001, the former East Terminal was designated as a national heritage site in 2006 yet remained abandoned until only recently when it was incorporated into the large-scale Ellinikon redevelopment project. As the texts that follow will explore, the space is a site of contradiction, history, memory, and fragility, private, civic, and public ownership.

The photographs of the ephemeral installations, newly commissioned texts, and archival material comprise MOMAFAD’s final form, a publication, which aims to become an archive in its own right.

MOMAFAD invited and presented as part of the exhibition “SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible”, Arts Letters & Numbers at the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Biennale of Architecture.
The inauguration of MOMAFAD with the presentation of the documentary film and the open discussion took place at EMST – Museum of Contemporary Art (link) in Athens on November 18, 2021.