Conference | Yannis Tsiomis: Architecture and the City

The symposium “Yannis Tsiomis / Architecture and the City” is an international gathering focused on the thought and work of an architect, researcher, and professor who began his studies in Athens and worked primarily in Paris, constantly navigating between two cities and two cultures—bridging politics with urban planning, and architecture with history. The event is an initiative of the School of Architecture, connected to the donation of his foreign-language library to the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), and is organized in collaboration with the Hellenic Institute of Architecture, six years after his passing.

Yannis Tsiomis (1944–2018) was an architect, urban planner, and historian of cities. He studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (1963–1967) and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was forced to relocate in 1967. He was a professor of Architectural Theory and Urban Design at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-La Villette, and Director of Studies in the history of modern and contemporary Greek society at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Beyond his academic and research work, he remained an active architect and was awarded in several international architecture and urban planning competitions. He was a member of the French Academy of Architecture and, in 2002, was honored with the Gubbio International Prize for European heritage. In 1985, he organized the major exhibition “Athens, a European Affair”, when Athens was named the first European Capital of Culture. He published books on cultural heritage, Le Corbusier, Athens, and urban design. His major work, Athens, a Stranger to Itself: The Birth of a Neoclassical Capital, was translated into Greek in 2021. Yannis Tsiomis’s architectural and urban planning archive is housed at the French Institute of Architecture, while his Greek-language library has been donated to the Fondation Hellénique, the “Greek House” at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris.

Friday, October 18, 2024, 10:00 – 7:00
School of Architecture, NTUA, Kaftantzoglou Hall (42 Patission Street)