Dimitris Th. Pikionis

Born in 1887 in Piraeus. In 1906, he became the first student of K. Parthenis, and in 1908 he obtained his degree in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He left for Munich and then for Paris, where he studied drawing and painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. At the same time, he joined the studio of the architect G. Chifflot and attended the course on architectural composition at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1912, he returned to Greece and began his first studies on the architecture of the modern Greek tradition. In 1921, he was appointed Assistant to Professor A. Orlandos for the course in Architectural Morphology and Rhythmology, a position he held until mid-1923. In 1925, he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in the Department of Decorative Arts. In 1930, he was appointed to a permanent post in the same department. He retired in 1958. In 1966, he was elected a full member of the Academy of Athens (Class of Letters and Arts) in the Chair of Architecture. He died in August 1968.

Among his best-known works are the Karamanos House in Athens (1925), the Primary School in Pefkania (1931–32), the Experimental School in Thessaloniki (1933–37), the Xenia Hotel in Delphi (1951–55), the Potamianos House in Filothei (1953–55), the landscaping of the area around the Acropolis and Philopappos Hill (1954–57), and the Filothei Children’s Playground (1961–65). In addition to his architectural work, Dimitris Pikionis has also left behind a very significant body of written work