SOPAZ Requiem

Stavros Economou designed this building in 1961. One of the defining architects of Cypriot Modernism. Built for SOPAZ, the Cooperative Food Production Organisation, animal feed, cooperative economy, half a century of use. A fire in 2015. Since then, the Nicosia Municipality owns it. No decision has been made.

I went without knowing what I was looking for. I knew only that history would be lost if no one looked.

Inside, everything is where it was left. Machinery. Conveyor belts. Pipes. In the control room where the fire began, a panel, and beside it small replacement bulbs that were never needed. On the floor somewhere else, pigeon tracks pressed into wet cement before it set, now permanent.

The architecture remained. What it held has gone.

What guides the work is always the absence of those who built and laboured here, made present through what they left behind without meaning to.

The SOPAZ site in Nicosia seen from the road, with silos behind. Black and white photograph.

The SOPAZ building seen from the road

Pigeon footprints in wet cement inside the abandoned SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

Pigeon tracks pressed into wet cement before it set

Numbered compartments with pipes above them inside the SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

Raw material tubes and numbered compartments inside the SOPAZ factory

Round openings in the machinery of the abandoned SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

Tube openings inside the SOPAZ factory

Conveyor belts in a dim hall of the abandoned SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

Conveyor belts inside the SOPAZ factory

Pipes with painted markings inside the abandoned SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

Tubes with painted markings inside the SOPAZ factory

A worker's bench with tools left in place inside the SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

A worker's bench with its tools left in place

Industrial machinery in shadow inside the abandoned SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

Machinery inside the SOPAZ factory

A glove left behind inside the abandoned SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

A glove left behind at the SOPAZ factory

A dead pigeon inside the abandoned SOPAZ building. Black and white photograph.

A dead pigeon at the SOPAZ factory