Kitsikis, Costas

Kostas Kitsikis was born in 1893 in Athens. He was the younger brother of Nikos Kitsikis , Rector of the Technical University of Athens, and later a member of the Greek Parliament , as well as the uncle of the historian and geopolitician Dimitris Kitsikis . He studied at the Technical University of Berlin ^[2] (located in the Charlottenburg district), which he graduated in December 1913 . A month later he was hired by the city council of Berlin , where he worked under the direction of the German architect Ludwig Hoffmann.

In 1915 he returned to Greece and took part in the First World War . However, even the war did not interfere with his work: before its completion, Kitsikis created designs for three buildings in Athens: for G. Milioni (Suztzu street), Merlin (intersection of Gambetta and Kaningos streets) and G. Kukura (Tisiy district), translated three treatises (“ Plan of Athens ”by Ludwig Hoffmann (1916),“ Basic Concepts of Architecture ”by Hoffman and Mawson (1916) and“ Towards the Development of the Athens Metropolis ”(1916). Immediately after the demobilization of 1917, he began working as a temporary architect of the Ministry of Communications.

In November 1917 , just a few months after the big fire in Thessaloniki (August 1917), then-Minister Alexandros Papanastasiou appointed Kitsikis to the post of member of the International Commission for the Development of a New Thessaloniki Development Plan. However, the ministry immediately put forward a demand: to build as many simple buildings as possible in order to quickly provide housing for all victims of the fire. It was Kitsikis who put the development of building codes and rules of the new Thessaloniki General Development Plan. At the same time, the rapid growth of Athens and its suburbs forced the ministry to concern itself with issues related to archaeological sites, reform of the city plan, maintenance of roads, contractors, police regulations on roads and the use of hydraulic systems. In June 1920, Kostas Kitsikis takes part in a conference in London, where he reports on the Thessaloniki restoration project and the new Athens development project.

By 1921, Kostas Kitsikis designed the construction of about 100 buildings in the center of Athens. It belongs to him the authorship of the project of an apartment building adapted to the Greek climate, with numerous balconies , open terraces and loggias . Such buildings in Athens "grew" in three stages: from 1921 - 1932 , 1932 - 1938 and 1938 - 1950 . Also in 1920, K. Kitsikis began a long-term cooperation with the Commercial Bank of Greece, which financed the planning of about 40 houses that appeared at the intersection of Eolu and Sophocles.

In 1939, Kostas Kitsikis accepted the offer to become a professor at the University of Athens . Soon the book "Σπουδαί-Τίτλοι-Δράσις, Επιστημονικαί και επαγγελματικαί μελέται και εργασίαι", devoted to general issues of architecture, architectural styles of the new Greek city, saw the light of day.

In 1948 he took part in the creation of the International Union of Architects. In 1949 he took part in the signing of the Statute of the Council of Europe . In 1950 he became a member of the Committee on Architecture, and in 1951 he was appointed representative of the Committee of Experts on Culture of the Council of Europe. In 1954 he became president of the International Union of Architects and in the same year organized the Mediterranean Conference in Athens, and also reported to the Council of Europe with the proposal to create a Delphic Festival under the auspices of the Council. In 1956, he proposed the creation of a cultural center in Delphi for the revival of amphictyons . In 1962 , he organized the First International Entertainment Conference in Athens.