Alexandros Tombazis, 1939–2024

Alexandros Tombazis was born on April 10, 1939, in Karachi, India, to a prominent family of shipowners from the Greek island of Hydra, eventually moving to Greece in 1947. Tombazis gained his architectural education at the National Technical University of Athens, graduating in 1962 and working for famed architect and planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis before establishing his own studio in Athens in 1963. Early projects embraced Japan's Metabolism movement, most overtly in a holiday house in Kineta, built around 1968.

The energy crisis in the 1970s drove Tombazis to explore principles of bioclimatic design, something he maintained throughout his career, and which the firm that bears his name continues to this day. Tombazis found inspiration in nature and vernacular architecture, preferring passive means for addressing climate and eschewing a reliance on mechanical engineering, as he explained to a roomful of architecture students at the Architectural Association in 2005. He was a member the Society of Greek Architects but also part of the Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA) community.

Helios 1, the holiday house Tombazis designed for his family in 1977 in the Peloponnese, is considered the first house in Greece to use active solar technology. On a larger scale, he designed the Lykovrisi Solar Village, featuring “435 low-cost apartments heated and supplied with hot water from a creative combination of active and passive solar technologies,” this according to a 2010 profile on the architect at Wallpaper*.

Tombazis reportedly completed a few hundred buildings across his long career, designing many hundreds more. One of the best known built works is relatively recent and is shown here: the Sanctuary of Fatima, Church of the Most Holy Trinity and assembly hall for 9,000 pilgrims, completed in Fatima, Portugal, in 2007, and done with local architect Paula Santos. The circular building with large forecourt is aligned with the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, an iconic church from 1928. Tombazis and Santos added an outdoor altar in front of the Basilica in 2016.

Another important building designed by Tombazis is the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, built in two phases, completed in 2000 and 2004. The terraced building covered in stone integrates itself into the hilly landscape adjacent to the Temple of Apollo and other historical landmarks in Delphi. No doubt tapping into the experience gained in that commission, David Chipperfield Architects teamed up with Tombazis and Associates Architects on the 2023 competition to expand the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. They won — but will have to carry the project forward without Alexandros.