Selection Committee

Dean Amale Andraos

Amale Andraos is the Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Andraos is committed to design research and her writings have focused on climate change and its impact on architecture as well as on the question of representation in the age of global practice. Her recent publications include We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge (Monacelli Press, 2017), Architecture and Representation: the Arab City (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2015) co-edited with Nora Akawi, 49 Cities (Inventory Press, 2015), and Above the Pavement, the Farm! (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) in collaboration with Dan Wood.

Andraos is co-founder of WORKac, a New York-based firm that focuses on architectural projects that reinvent the relationship between urban and natural environments. WORKac was named the #1 design firm in the United States by Architect Magazine and has also been recognized as the AIA New York State Firm of the Year. WORKac has achieved international acclaim for projects such as the Miami Museum Garage in Miami’s Design District, The Edible Schoolyards at P.S. 216 in Brooklyn and P.S. 7 in Harlem, a public library for Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, the Stealth Building in New York and a new student center for the Rhode Island School of Design. Current projects include a large-scale residential development in Lebanon, the Beirut Museum of Art in Lebanon, a new public library for North Boulder Colorado and new offices for a headquarter bank in Lima, Peru.

Andraos has taught at numerous institutions including the Princeton University, Harvard University, and the American University in Beirut. She serves on the board of the Architectural League of New York, the AUB Faculty of Engineering and Architecture International Advisory Committee, and the New Museum’s New INC. Advisory Council, in New York.

Andreia Costa, Associate, Jamie Fobert Architects

Diploma de Licenciatura de Arquitectura, ARB, RIBA

Born and raised in Portugal, Andreia studied and qualified as an Architect at the University of Porto, receiving a distinction award for Best Student in her final year. She went on to

work in the award-winning practice of José Gigante and she taught at the University of Porto and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. Andreia moved to London to work at Terry Pawson Architects.

Since joining Jamie Fobert Architects in 2010, her projects have included innovative, high quality retail design for Selfridges, Versace, and BHV as well as exhibition design for Tate — such as ‘Patrick Keiller: The Robinson Institute’ — and houses in Galicia and Dublin. Andreia is a skilled and experienced Architect with the ability to deliver projects to the highest standards. She was made an Associate in 2015.

Andreia is one of the founders and curators of The Smallest Gallery in Soho, established in 2016.

Dimitris Daskalopoulos

Dimitris Daskalopoulos (born 1957 in Athens, Greece) is an entrepreneur, the founder and Chairman of DAMMA Holdings SA, a financial services and investment company. He served as the Chairman of the Board of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) for 8 consecutive years (2006-2014). He is today SEV’s Honorary President. From 2013 to 2015 he served as BUSINESSEUROPE’s Vice President and from 1983 to 2007 he was the principal owner, Chairman and CEO of Delta Holdings/Vivartia SA, Greece’s largest food conglomerate.

He is the founder and Chairman of diaNEOsis (2015), a research think tank in Greece, which commissions studies and makes policy proposals on the major social and economic issues in Greece.

Dimitris Daskalopoulos is a collector of contemporary art, D.Daskalopoulos Collection (1994). He is also a Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Chairman of the Collections Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and an active member of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Tate International Council, the Leadership Council of the New Museum and the International Board of the Palais de Tokyo and a founding partner of the Whitechapel’s Future Fund (2011).  He is the founder of NEON (2013), a non-profit organization, which works to bring contemporary culture in Greece closer to everyone. Thematic exhibitions based on his collection have been presented at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010-2011), the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2011) and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2012-2013). In 2014 ICI honored Dimitris Daskalopoulos with the Leo Award. The award acknowledged Mr. Daskalopoulos’s visionary approach to collecting, through the D.Daskalopoulos Collection, and his work in establishing NEON. In 2018 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation honored Dimitris Daskalopoulos at the Guggenheim International Gala for his innovative philanthropy in the arts.

Marcus Fairs

(1967 – 2022)

Marcus Fairs was founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen. He was the first digital journalist to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The honour, for “the enormous contribution he has made to architecture,” was bestowed in January 2017.

In 2018 he was named one of the 1,000 most influential people in London by the Evening Standard. Other accolades he has won include journalist of the year and business editor of the year.

A 3D design graduate, Marcus began his journalism career writing for architecture title Building Design and later for Building, where he rose to deputy editor. He also freelanced for publications including Blueprint, The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday and Conde Nast Traveller.

He launched icon, the international architecture and design magazine, in 2003, and edited the publication until November 2006. Under Marcus, the magazine rapidly established itself as one of the world’s most influential and respected design journals, winning a string of awards including Launch of the Year and Designer of the Year in 2003 and Monthly Magazine of the Year in 2005 and 2006.

Marcus himself won numerous awards for Icon, including Journalist of the Year (2002) and Architectural Journalist of the Year (2004). He won a BSME award for Best Brand-Building Initiative in 2005.

Marcus regularly appeared on radio and TV, writing and presenting a documentary about French designer Philippe Starck for the BBC in 2003 and appearing in the major BBC series Home in 2006. An accomplished public speaker, Marcus has spoken at conferences in London, Tokyo, New York, Stockholm and Cape Town, among others.

Marcus launched Dezeen at the end of November 2006 and the site has grown rapidly ever since, now attracting over two million unique visitors every month. It is widely regarded as the most influential and popular design website in the world.

In 2007 he was joined by Rupinder Bhogal and together they set up Dezeen Limited, which they now run as co-directors. They launched the recruitment site Dezeen Jobs in 2008, followed by Dezeen Watch Store in 2010.

As founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen, Marcus has won awards including the BSME’s Business Web Editor of the Year in 2013. In the same year he was named one of the 100 most influential figures in the UK creative industries by the Hospital Club. In 2011, French magazine Architectural Digest placed him in the 100 Qui Comptent list of the most important figures in global design.

Books written by Marcus are Twenty-First Century Design (originally published in October 2006 and now in its third edition), Green Design (published March 2009), Dezeen Book of Ideas (published September 2001 and now sold out) and Dezeen Book of Interviews (published May 2013).

Alexandros Kamarinos

Alexandros Kamarinos is the Managing Director of PG Kamarinos Consulting Engineers, a Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Consulting company with a solid track record of over 1,500 projects completed across Greek, European, and Middle Eastern markets since 1968.

Alexandros specializes in designing building projects that utilize sustainable solutions and innovative technologies. During the last 20 years he has been involved with design and supervision services for more than 50 hotels, 150 commercial/offices projects and 350 residential projects.

Graduating Athens College in 1994, Alexandros moved to London where he earned his Meng in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College in 1998 and then returned to Athens to join PG Kamarinos Consulting Engineers.

Following his father mentoring and their successful collaboration for over a decade he took over management of the company in 2008 and further expanded its business in Greece and abroad.  Under Alexandros’s guidance, PG Kamarinos Consulting Engineers regularly provides pro bono services to Greek non-profit, cultural and educational institutions.

In 2014, he accepted the honorary invitation to join the Hellenic-American Educational Foundation (HAEF) and in 2018 he got elected to the Board of Directors. Alexandros is also member of the Athens College Technical Committee since 2012. In this capacity, he has been involved in all renovations and new buildings at Athens College from 2012. He is currently the Committee Chairman.

Elina Kountouri, NEON Director

Elina Kountouri is the Director of NEON | Organization for Culture and Development founded by contemporary art collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos. She is responsible for the strategic development, artistic program and management for all initiatives related to public space, exhibitions, education, grants and outreach. She has worked as a corporate affairs and strategy consultant, with a focus on contemporary culture policy and business development. Her areas of expertise include issues management analysis, strategy and crisis communications, policy and planning development, and management of international large-scale projects for multinational companies and NGOs. She has organized and curated numerous ground-breaking exhibitions in the public space, creating a public-private model of collaboration activating heritage sites in Greece. Exhibitions include Adrián Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance, at the National Observatory of Athens (2017); Antony Gormley, SIGHT on the archaeological island of Delos and museum (2019); and The Palace at 4 a.m. at the Archaeological Museum of Mykonos, (co-curated with Iwona Blazwick, 2019). In 2020 she initiated and oversaw the renovation of the former Public Tobacco Factory in Athens and created a partnership with the Hellenic Parliament to present a major group exhibition Portals (co-curated with Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2021).

She holds an LL.B. from Queen Mary & Westfield College. She was a graduate student at U.C.L. and L.S.E., where she received an LL.M in International Maritime Law and an M.Sc. in Political Theory. She lives and works in Athens.

Dr. Alexander Nehamas

Alexander Nehamas graduated from Athens College in 1964 and studied Philosophy and Economics at Swarthmore College (B.A. 1967) and Philosophy at Princeton University (Ph.D. 1971).  He has taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1971-1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989), and he returned to Princeton in 1989 as the Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Comparative Literature.  He has also taught, as Mills Professor (1983) and Sather Professor (1993) at the University of California/Berkeley.

At Princeton, he has been Chairman of the Council on the Humanities, Director of the Program in Hellenic Studies (awarded a prize by the Academy of Athens in 2000), and Founding Director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts.

He holds honorary doctorates from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the International Hellenic University, and the Athens School of Fine Arts of the National Metsovian Polytechnic University. He was President of the American Philosophical Association, and is currently a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

He has received several prizes, among them, the Behram Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities from Princeton University, the Premio Internazionale Nietzsche and the Mellon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.

He has given the Sather Lectures at the University of California/Berkeley, the Tanner Lectures at Yale University, the Gray Lectures at the University of Cambridge, and the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh.

He was made a Commander of the Order of the Phoenix of the Hellenic Republic.

In 2003 he was honored by the Academy of Athens for his contribution in Hellenic Studies and in 2018 he was elected a regular member of the Academy of Athens.

Prof. Arch. Georgios Panetsos

Georgios A. Panetsos (Athens, 1960) is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Patras, Greece, and has been chair of the Department of Architecture for ten years. He teaches architecture and urban design studios and lectures on architecture theory and research methodology.

He has been director of research on the Classical Marathon Way, the dense neighbourhoods of central Athens and the Greek small towns. He has published ten monographs and more than a hundred scholarly articles and essays on architectural history and theory.

He has been advisor on architecture, urban design and planning to the Mayor of Athens (1991-94), the City of Rotterdam (1993-95) and the Greek Government (2003-4).

He has curated and, also, designed architecture exhibitions, including two on the Parthenon and the Acropolis Restoration Works in Osaka and Berlin, and one on Theophil Hansen.

He received the DiplArch from NTUA, Greece, (1984, summa cum laude) and the MArch from Harvard University (1986). He has also pursued independent study and research as HerderStipendiat at TUWien and the Akademie fuer Angewandte Kunst with Hans Hollein, 1987-88.

His architecture firm, founded in 1986, has received numerous honors, including prizes and awards in architectural competitions. His design work has been included in contemporary architecture guides, exhibited in Venice, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Paris, Lausanne, and Frankfurt, and published internationally.

He is the editor-in-chief of the review Δομές (2005-2020, 2020-), the Domés Greek Architecture Yearbook (2010-) and the international architecture review DOMa (2020-). He is also the founder and curator of the annual Greek Architecture Awards (2010-) and DomésIndex, a digital archive of post-WWII Greek architecture (2014-).

He has been member of councils, committees and boards of several cultural and non-profit institutions including the Central Archeological Council of Greece, the Greek National Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Benaki Museum Neo-Hellenic Architecture Archives.

Costas Synolakis, President, Athens College, Prof. Civil, Environmental and Aerospace Engineering, USC Chairman, Scientific Committee on Climate Change for Greece International Expert, Natural Disasters 

Member, Academy of Athens

Academician Costas Emmanuel Synolakis ’75 graduated from Athens College in 1975. He went on to earn professional degrees from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech): a B.Sc. in Engineering and Applied Science in 1978, an M.Sc. in Civil Engineering in 1979, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 1986. In 2016 he was elected a regular member of the Academy of Athens and is currently Secretary of the Division of Natural Sciences.

In 1985 he was appointed Professor of Civil, Environmental and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California (U.S.C.) Viterbi School of Engineering where, in 1996, he founded the USC Tsunami Center.  Following his appointment as Professor of Natural Hazards and Environmental Hydraulics at the Technical University of Crete and election by the National Research and Technology Council, he served as President of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research. In 2019 he was elected Chairman of the newly established Scientific Committee on Climate Change in Greece, where he serves pro bono.  In July 2020, he assumed the Office of President of Athens College.

His broad research interests are reflected in the variety of topics on which he has written. He has authored a large number of publications, studies, and articles in scientific journals and has conducted dozens of field missions around the world. Among the numerous academic accolades and other distinctions he has received both in Greece and abroad is the Presidential Young Investigator Award bestowed upon him in 1989 by U.S. President George Bush and the prestigious 2019 International Coastal Engineering Award bestowed by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). In 2020 he received the Hamaguchi Award bestowed upon individuals or organizations who have made significant scientific contributions to the enhancement of coastal resilience against tsunami and other coastal disasters, raising people’s awareness of disaster resilience.  He is an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of tsunami research and other natural hazards.