How to Find an Architect in Athens
You have a plot on the coast and a budget that will build something serious. The hard part is not choosing between architects — it is assembling a shortlist that is real, from a market where half the famous names cannot be hired at all.
The question arrives in a particular form. Somebody has bought, or is about to buy, a plot in Vouliagmeni or Kavouri or on the Glyfada slope, they have between three and twelve million to build with, and they want to know how to find the right architect. They have usually read three magazine articles and been given two names by an agent.
That is not a shortlist. This is how to build one.
Start by removing the names you cannot hire
The most famous architecture on this coast belongs to practices that will not take your commission. Foster + Partners masterplanned The Ellinikon and designed the Riviera Tower. Kengo Kuma has the waterfront galleria. Bjarke Ingels has 88 residences at Park Rise. All three are here because a developer hired them, none has a published private house in Attica, and none is taking one.
Buying an apartment inside a famous practice’s building is a real thing to do. It is not the same as hiring the practice, and the two get sold as though they were. Clear those names off the list first and the market becomes legible.
Where a real shortlist comes from
Four sources, in descending order of usefulness.
- The coast itself. Drive from Elliniko to Kavouri slowly, twice, and write down the houses you stop for. Most of them are findable afterwards; the language of a practice is legible from the road in a way it is not on a website.
- The credits on buildings you already like. Landscape and interiors are usually credited alongside the architect, and the names recur — the office that planted a resort is often on a private villa the same season. Follow the credit, not the byline.
- A lawyer or notary who has seen builds go wrong on this coast. They will not recommend a practice, and that is not what you are asking for. Ask which projects took four years instead of two, and why.
- Your agent, last and with the discount applied. A recommendation from someone earning a commission on the plot is information, but it is information with a direction.
The useful question to an agent is not "who is good". It is "who have you seen finish".
How to read a Greek practice’s portfolio
Three tests, and almost nobody applies them.
First, type. A dense residential portfolio on the Riviera is often apartment houses and small complexes rather than single-family villas. That is a different discipline, a different client and a different set of problems. The practice with the most published residential work on this coast has a portfolio in which much of it is multi-unit, and the distinction is not hidden — it simply is not stated.
Second, status. Portfolios list concepts, projects under construction and finished buildings in the same visual register. A concept is a drawing. A house on site is a house nobody has lived in. Ask which is which and the shortlist changes.
Third, credit. A resort that carries one practice’s name in the press may have been a joint appointment. Aesthesis at Glyfada was designed by three offices with separate interiors and landscape teams. That is not a criticism of any of them; it is a question about how much of the building you admire was authored by the office you are about to hire.
Then go and stand in one
Ask each practice on the shortlist to arrange a visit to a finished house, ideally one at least three years old. Owners agree to this more often than people expect, and a practice that cannot arrange a single visit has told you something.
Three years is the number because that is when a house on this coast starts telling the truth. Salt, sun, thirty-degree autumns, a garden that was specified in a Northern European register. What you are looking at is not the design; it is how the design has aged and whether the owner is still speaking to the architect.
The rest of the team, and the one legal constraint
This is where a foreign buyer’s assumptions break. In Greece a building permit is filed electronically through e-Adeies, the platform run by the Technical Chamber of Greece, and the engineer is the sole applicant. They must hold Technical Chamber credentials to file at all.
You cannot file. Nor can an architect from London or Milan. A foreign practice on a Greek house is always paired with a local one that carries the filing, the supervision and the liability — which is a normal arrangement, and a cost and a decision that should appear in the first conversation rather than the fourth.
Beyond the architect and the filing engineer you will need structural and mechanical engineering, a landscape architect, an interior designer if the practice does not do it in-house, a project manager if you will not be on site, and a contractor. Some offices carry several of those roles. ISV builds its own designs and A&M runs architecture, engineering and construction management under one contract. That removes handovers and removes an independent check at the same time, which is a trade rather than a free improvement.
Appoint the landscape architect early, not last
It is the line most buyers cut first and regret longest, and on this coast the planting is the architecture. Pine, limestone and salt wind are a constraint rather than a context, and a garden specified for a different climate will be dead or expensive by the third summer.
The test is a date. A landscape architect appointed alongside the building shapes where it sits. One appointed afterwards is planting around a decision already taken. The three offices worth knowing here have all worked on this coastline recently.
What the permit actually is
Greece runs two instruments. A new house needs the full building permit, the Οικοδομική Άδεια. Small-scale works approval covers renovation that does not touch structure or volume, and it is not what you are doing.
Three things trigger the full permit on their own, and a Riviera villa usually has all three: excavation deeper than 0.8 metres, a swimming pool, and a retaining wall. The dossier runs to architectural drawings, structural calculations, energy performance and, where the ground requires it, a geotechnical report.
On timing, the figures circulating in the market are around 45 working days for a complete and compliant application, with a residential permit valid for four years. Treat both as planning assumptions rather than guarantees: they come from practitioner guidance rather than a published service standard, and the variable that actually decides them is whether the dossier is complete on the day it goes in.
The constraints that are specific to this coast
Archaeology, forestry and the coastal setback. On the Vouliagmeni peninsula the binding one is usually archaeological rather than forestry: the whole Laimos peninsula and Megalo Kavouri beach were declared an archaeological site in 2013, including the marine zone. That is a strong instrument and it behaves differently from a forestry designation, which matters if you are underwriting a view.
Establish which regime your plot sits under before you commission drawings, not after. It is a title-and-planning question for a lawyer, and it is cheaper than a redesign.
Fees, and the one thing to settle in writing
Engineers’ and architects’ fees in Greece are freely negotiated and set by written agreement. The Technical Chamber publishes suggested minimum scales and they are advisory rather than binding, so a quote is a commercial position rather than a tariff.
Which makes the basis more important than the number. A percentage of construction cost aligns the architect with a larger budget; a fixed fee aligns them with finishing. Neither is wrong. The terms worth arguing about before you sign — fee basis, what happens on delay, and who owns the drawings if the relationship ends in year two — are the subject of their own piece, and this is the point in the process to read it.
And the problem nobody plans for
You will not be on site. A household relocating from London or Geneva usually spends the build year somewhere else, and every handover between architect, engineer, interior designer and contractor is a place where that absence costs money.
Two structural answers exist: an office that holds several of those roles, or a project manager who is yours rather than the contractor’s. Choosing neither is also a decision, and it is the one that produces the stories.
The shortlist itself — sixteen practices, split by whether you can actually appoint them — is a separate set of files, each named against a specific Greek project rather than an adjective.
Sources
- Technical Chamber of Greece: issue of building permits (e-Adeies), via gov.gr
- National Registry of Administrative Public Services: issue of building permits (e-adeies)
- Elxis, 15 July 2025: full building permit against small-scale works approval, dossier contents and indicative timings
- Technical Chamber of Greece: professional rights of architect engineers
- Central Archaeological Council declaration for Laimos and Megalo Kavouri, May 2013
