Reinventing Modern Architecture in Greece

Reinventing Modern Architecture in Greece: From Sentimental Topography to Ekistics

This lecture will focus on the work of Constantinos A. Doxiadis, Alison and Peter Smithson, Iannis Xenakis, Takis Zenetos, Aris Konstantinidis, and Dimitris Pikionis. It aims to show the role of interdisciplinarity in their creative strategies and the interplay between literature, philosophy, architecture, urban planning, and ecology in their thought and work. It will pay particular emphasis on how Doxiadis introduced ‘ekistics’ as a novel approach to understanding the science of human settlements.

The lecture will examine key figures in 20th-century architecture and urban planning, focusing on Constantinos A. Doxiadis, Takis Zenetos, Alison and Peter Smithson, Iannis Xenakis, Aris Konstantinidis, and Dimitris Pikionis. It will explore the connections between architecture, urban planning, philosophy, literature, and urban sociology, drawing upon the work of 20th-century intellectuals such as Albert Camus, Henri Lefebvre, and Cornelius Castoriadis. It will shed light on how architecture and urban planning have interacted with society, history, culture, nature, ecology, social equity, and democracy. The research on which this lecture focuses is based on extensive archival research and will be of interest to architects, artists, researchers, students, and scholars in architecture, architectural history and theory, art, urban sociology, cultural theory, science and technology studies, philosophy, ecology, cybernetics, and aesthetics. The lecture also explores the role of urban mobility, environmental concerns and the expansion of urban networks in the debates that took place within the framework of the Delos Symposia. The main research object of this lecture is the examination of the relationships between the changes regarding the epistemological object of architecture within the Greek context and the corresponding transformations within the international context. The lecture draws upon the questions that are addressed in Marianna Charitonidou’s book entitled Reinventing Modern Architecture in Greece: From Sentimental Topography to Ekistics (London, New York: Routledge, 2025). The lecture is based on extensive archival research and delves into the modernist reinterpretation of the myth of Greece.

Dr. Marianna Charitonidou (PhD, MPhil, MSc, MarchEng) is architect engineer & urban planner, historian & theorist of architecture, urbanism & art, philosopher, expert in sustainable environmental design, curator & urban Sociologist. She is the founder and principal of Marianna Charitonidou Think Through Design Studio.

She is a licensed architect engineer, urbanist, and historian/theorist of architecture and urbanism. She holds a PhD Degree and an MPhil Degree from the National Technical University of Athens, an MSc Degree from the Architectural Association, and a Master’s Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is the author of many books, among which are: Reinventing Modern Architecture in Greece: From Sentimental Topography to Ekistics (London, New York: Routledge, 2025), Architecture, Photography and the Moving Eyes of Architects: The View from the Car (London, New York: Routledge, 2025), Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices: Architecture’s Changing Scope in the 20th Century (Routledge, 2023) and Drawing and Experiencing Architecture: The Evolving Significance of City & Inhabitants in the 20th Century (Transcript Publishing, 2022).

She has been teaching at the University level since 2011. She has been a Lecturer and Researcher at ETH Zurich, Princeton University, Columbia University, École française de Rome, the Getty Research Institute and the Canadian Centre for rchitecture. She has received numerous awards for her research, teaching, conference presentations, and writings on architecture and urban studies. She curated the exhibition The View from the Car: Autopia as a New Perceptual Regime at ETH Zurich.

For online attendance, please book your ticket before 18.00 on the day of the event. A link to watch the talk online will be sent to attendees before it begins.

Tickets on the door cost £15

Picture: View of Erechtheion and Alison Smithson, Acropolis, Athens, Greece, 1951. View as seen entering through the Propylaea. Photograph taken by Peter Smithson. Credits: Smithson Family Collection.