Christos-Georgios Kritikos holds a PhD from the School of Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (FORTH). He also holds a MA in Architectural History from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (2016), a M.Sc. in Methodology of Research in Architecture from NTUA (2017) and a Diploma in Architecture from the same university (2014). His PhD (2023), conducted within the History & Theory of Architecture Lab, NTUA and funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation and the State Scholarships Foundation, aims at a critical historical examination of the urban conservation policies that emerged in the city of Athens after the end of the seven-year military dictatorship in 1974, as well as their repercussions on the city’s social geography.

His post-doc research has mainly focused on the conflict between private property and urban heritage in modern Athens. As a PhD candidate he worked as a research associate in various research programs and as a teaching assistant in Architectural History & Theory courses at NTUA. After acquiring his PhD, apart from his post-doc research, he has been teaching Architectural History and Theory as an adjunct lecturer in the Departments of Architecture at the University of Thessaly and at the University of Ioannina.

 

His doctoral dissertation, successfully defended in October 2023, focuses on the case of post-dictatorship Athens and the ambivalent position of urban heritage within its fabric — a fabric shaped by the post-war period of urban reconstruction and the multiple benefits brought about by the building boom that made it possible. Within this framework, the dissertation presents the abrupt paradigm shift that occurred during the post-dictatorship era, the scientific and artistic discourses that framed the “turn” toward urban preservation, and the institutional gaps that emerged in the process.

 

His subsequent postdoctoral research examined the conflictual relationship between the institution of property ownership and the material safeguarding and promotion of cultural heritage throughout the history of the Greek state — a relationship that evolved into an incompatibility between two constitutionally guaranteed rights following the 1975 constitutional revision.

 

At present, his research once again turns to post-war urban reconstruction and the class and social imaginaries it fostered through the field of housing, which to a great extent structured the middle class of urban centers such as Athens.

 

His research interests include the ways in which the definition of cultural heritage has influenced the historiography of modern Greek architecture and its modes of interpretation; the instrumentalization of institutional mechanisms for the “protection” of modern monuments as tools for controlling the evolution of the built environment; and the transformations in the perception of elements of the past, tracing the turning points at which the “obsolete” and “outdated” re-emerge as objects of nostalgia and aestheticization.