In the late 1950s, Constantinos Doxiadis, one of the leading figures of modern Greek architecture, was looking for a site to build his new company’s Athens offices. He selected a plot in the pine-clad foothills of Mount Lycabettus, a vantage point that afforded sweeping views of the city as far as the sea. Doxiadis calculated that his top-floor office would be the same height as the Parthenon, so the view would be not only phenomenal – it would be unique.
The complex eventually consisted of four wings built around an atrium. One wing was devoted to the first schools of design in Greece. Another wing housed the Graduate School of Ekistics, or the science of human settlement, a new concept in urban planning developed by Doxiadis.