Thirty-one years after the death of the internationally renowned architect and urban planner Konstantinos A. Doxiadis, and to mark the exhibition of his work at the Benaki Museum, Ikaros Publications presents a lavish volume on his life and work.
The book includes twenty of his essays on architecture, urban planning and the science of housing, most of which are accompanied by rich illustrations.
The editor, Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis, Associate Professor at the University of Athens, has written the introduction and an extensive essay accompanied by photographs and drawings that present the life and multifaceted work of Konstantinos Doxiadis. It also includes a complete list of the Greek urban planner’s publications and an index of names and place names.
This publication brings back into the spotlight a figure who played a central role in the first three decades following the Second World War. Konstantinos Doxiadis served as Deputy Minister and general coordinator of the reconstruction projects for war-torn Greece from 1945 to 1950. From 1954 until his death in 1975, he acted as an advisor to some forty governments, as well as to the UN and the World Bank, on matters of urban reconstruction. He founded one of the largest development and urban planning consultancy firms, which carried out numerous projects in 32 countries. There are very few urban planners worldwide whose work can be compared to that of Constantinos Doxiadis in terms of the number of master plans, international presence, and the thematic diversity of their studies.
This book, featuring texts, drawings and photographs of the major works of one of the greatest designers of the 20th century, as well as a chronology of the key milestones in his dynamic career, is an attempt to capture the breadth and substance of his multifaceted work, as well as his contribution to the theory of architecture, urban planning, geography and the spatial dimensions of socio-economic development.
- Pages: 504
- ISBN: 978-960-8399-35-8
- Publication: 2006
- Categories: Books, Illustrated, Λεύκωμα
Alexandros Kyrtsis
Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis, after incomplete studies in mathematics at the ETH Zurich, studied sociology (with minor subjects in social anthropology and economic history) at the University of Zurich. Bachelor’s degree (lic.Phil), 1978. He completed his postgraduate studies with a doctorate, which he received in 1981 (Thesis title: Regionales System und Globalgesellschaftlicher Wandel).
From 1976 to 1981 he worked as a research assistant and, in 1980 and 1981, as a teaching assistant at the University of Zurich; following his military service (1981–1982), he worked for a year as a programmer and analyst at an IT company in Zurich. 1983–1986: Served as an adviser to the Governing Board of the University of Crete for the organisation of the then-newly established School of Social Sciences. In addition to the University of Zurich, he has taught at the universities of Crete, Thessaly and Panteion, as well as recently at the ETH Zurich. He has been a visiting scholar at MIT (Program in Science, Technology and Society), the Department of Sociology at the LSE, the University of Edinburgh, the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society in Graz, and the Chair of History of Technology at ETH Zurich, with which there has been ongoing research collaboration since 2010. Since 1991, he has taught at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (1991–2005 in the Department of Economics and, from 2005 onwards, in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration).
He has undertaken research and consultancy projects on behalf of major banks, reinsurance companies and IT firms, as well as for the European Commission, the General Secretariat for Research and Technology and the Hellenic Bank Association. Most of these projects are directly linked to his research interests in the sociology of technology and the sociology of financial systems. He also curated the exhibition on the work of the urban planner Konstantinos Doxiadis at the Benaki Museum (2006–2007), an activity linked to his work on the sociology of space.
He has published four monographs and edited four volumes. He has published articles in the journals Revue Suisse de Sociologie, International Sociology, Journal of Business Ethics, South European Society and Politics, Istorika, Epistimi kai Koinonia, and the Hellenic Sociological Review, as well as in foreign-language and Greek-language edited volumes. He serves as a reviewer for the journals: American Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, Journal of Information Technology, Sociological Theory, etc.
