Critical Regionalism Abroad: Aris Konstantinidis without Greece

Written by: Stylianos (Stelios) Giamarelos, Associate Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Since the 1980s, critical regionalism has been globally celebrated for imbuing modern architecture with local sensibilities. After rising to international stardom, however, several critical regionalists soon began to erect distinctive albeit "placeless" buildings around the world. This book examines how Aris Konstantinidis (1913–1993), a Greek architect less well known outside his home country, instead propagated his vision of regional modernism to global audiences on his own terms through his publishing and teaching beyond national borders.

Critical regionalism emerged as a theory from the work of Greek architects in Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre's 1981 essay 'The Grid and the Pathway', and was further advanced when Kenneth Frampton recapitulated this terminology to advance his ideas about the future of modern architecture in a postmodern age. The ensuing worldwide celebration of critical regionalism in the 1980s gave rise to the 1990s question of critical regionalism abroad: how could architects make meaningful use of this modern and regionally specific design approach beyond its originary locus, in an increasingly globalised world?

Konstantinidis is one of the very few Greek architects who became well known internationally without having built a single project beyond the confines of their home country. His work has been discussed either in inward-looking terms of 'Greekness' or as a unique synthesis of modernism with local cultural identity. This has left the outward-facing aspects of his publishing and teaching practices beyond national borders historically overshadowed.

This operative history of Konstantinidis's life and work outside Greece retrieves these aspects of his architectural theory and practice, which hold the potential to inform alternative practices of critical regionalism abroad in the 21st-century context of climate emergency, but have so far remained inaccessible to global audiences owing to language barriers. The book covers his career from his studies at the University of Munich (1931–1936) to the end of his life in 1993, bringing together original research in the architect's private archive, extensive oral history interviews with his son and recontextualisations of his published writings.

About the book

This book is published by gta Verlag, ETH Zürich (2025) as part of the gta edition series. The series gathers peer-reviewed short monographs that take a fresh and provocative look at seemingly well-known aspects of architectural history to engage in contemporary historiography and develop architectural theory. 

This publication has been peer reviewed according to the standards of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The project was funded by the Schwarz Foundation, The Bartlett School of Architecture Research Fund and UCL Open Access Services.

Image: Mauro Gilardi, model for a floating provisorium on the River Limmat, Aris Konstantinidis’s fourth-year design studio at ETH Zurich, spring semester 1969–70 from Aris Konstantinidis' private archive