Curriculum vitae
Dr. Marianna Charitonidou
PhD, MPhil, MSc, MArchEng
Architect Engineer & Urban Planner, Historian & Theorist of Architecture, Urbanism & Art, Philosopher, Expert in Sustainable Environmental Design, Curator & Urban Sociologist
Principal Investigator in Architecture & Urbanism, Faculty of Art Theory and History Athens School of Fine Arts
Postdoctoral Researcher in Architecture and Industrial Design, Department of Interior Architecture, University of West Attica
Postdoctoral Researcher in Architecture & Urbanism, School of Architecture National Technical University of Athens
Lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism, Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich
PhD in Architectural Engineering School of Architecture National Technical University of Athens
MPhil in Architecture and Urbanism, School of Architecture National Technical University of Athens
MSc in Sustainable Environmental Design, Architectural Association, London
Master in Architectural Engineering, Department of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Founder and CEO of Think Through Design Architectural, Landscape and Urban Design Studio
119 Artemidos Paleo Faliro 175 62 Athens Greece
Tel: +30 694 746 0886
Email: m.charitonidou@icloud.com
On 11 February 2022, in the framework of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2022, she was selected by ETH Zurich among the women role models conducting research in Science.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1083-4861
Academia | ResearchGate | Google Scholar | Linkedin
Semantic Scholar ID 2349150 | SciProfiles: 1225990 |
Scopus Profile (Scopus Author Identifier 57204320584) | @mchariton
Submissions to ETH Research Collection
Link to some of my research projects, publications and papers at the website tof ETH Zurich
Think Through Design Youtube Channel
Dr. Marianna Charitonidou is a licensed Architect Engineer, Urban Planner, and Historian & Theorist of Architecture, Urbanism, and the Arts. Her interdisciplinary work integrates architecture with the humanities, creative arts, and philosophy. Additionally, she is an expert in Sustainable Environmental Design, a philosopher, a curator, and an urban sociologist. She has extensive published work, including numerous peer-reviewed papers, books, and presentations at international conferences. Her expertise spans the social aspects of architectural design, urban design and urban planning, creative arts, sustainable environmental design, and the evolving role of the users and architectural drawings. She has been teaching architecture, urban design and creative arts, as well as their history and theory, at the university level since 2011. She is an accomplished academic and researcher with a diverse teaching portfolio spanning several prestigious institutions across Europe and beyond. She is the author of four monographs: Architecture, Photography and the Moving Eyes of Architects: The View from the Car (Routledge, 2025), Reinventing Modern Architecture in Greece: From Sentimental Topography to Ekistics (Routledge, 2025), Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices: Architecture’s Changing Scope in the 20th Century (Routledge, 2023), and Drawing and Experiencing Architecture: The Evolving Significance of City’s Inhabitants in the 20th Century (Transcript Publishing, 2022), and of more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications.
She presents a distinguished and interdisciplinary profile, combining expertise in architecture, urban planning, the humanities, creative arts, and philosophy. Her extensive academic background, marked by a PhD, multiple postdoctoral research projects, and a diverse portfolio of teaching roles across prestigious institutions worldwide, highlights her intellectual breadth and leadership in both research and education. With over 125 peer-reviewed publications, several influential monographs, and ongoing research projects, she is recognized as a prominent figure in the fields of architecture and urbanism. Her work continues to bridge contemporary challenges in design, sustainability, and urbanism with broader cultural, philosophical, and artistic discourses. She has strong global academic presence and a commitment to shaping the future of architecture and urbanism through an interdisciplinary and socially-conscious lens. She currently holds academic positions at the Athens School of Fine Arts and the University of West Attica in Greece. Her previous teaching roles include significant positions at renowned universities such as ETH Zurich, where she was a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), and the National Technical University of Athens, where she served as a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Architecture. In addition to her roles in Greece and Switzerland, Dr. Charitonidou has taught at leading architectural schools in France, including the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais, École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-la-Villette, and École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles. Her teaching experience also extends to international institutions, having lectured at the University of Ioannina in Greece, the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, the University of Stuttgart in Germany, and Chandigarh University in India. She has also been invited to share her expertise through guest lectures at numerous universities and institutions.
Her research bridges architectural analysis with contemporary challenges. Dr. Charitonidou’s research interests encompass the social dimensions of architectural design, urban planning, sustainable environmental design, and the evolving role of users and architectural drawings. In addition to her architectural expertise, Dr. Charitonidou’s research and teaching also extend to the creative arts and humanities. Her interdisciplinary approach merges architectural practice with cultural theory, creative expression, and critical thinking, emphasizing the broader social and cultural contexts of architectural and urban design. Through her work, she engages with contemporary debates in the humanities and creative disciplines, contributing to the development of an integrated approach to design and theory that reflects both artistic creativity and scholarly inquiry. She has presented her work at numerous international conferences and has been invited to lecture at various universities. Currently, she is conducting a research project focusing on social and environmental equity in architecture and urbanism. She applies sustainable principles in architectural, urban and landscape design, focusing on regenerative design, circular economy, ecological sensitivity and environmental performance. Her work challenges conventional practices by integrating research-driven strategies for energy efficiency, material sustainability, and user-centered approaches.
She was also Principal Investigator in Architecture & Urban Planning at Athens School of Fine Arts, where she is leading the project Constantinos A. Doxiadis and Adriano Olivetti’s Post-war Reconstruction Agendas in Greece and in Italy: Centralising and Decentralising Political Apparatus, which was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (Project no: 7833). She is a registered Architect Engineer at the Technical Chamber of Greece since October 2010 (no: 127002) and the Founder and CEO of Think Through Design Architectural, Urban and Landscape Design Studio. Her research, teaching, and design practice focus on the core principles of sustainable adaptive reuse, that is to say, on designing and adapting the buildings in ways that make it possible to inhabit transformation both inside and outside the building envelope and on taking into consideration that adaptive reuse is not limited to heritage conservation, instead it is a renewal of the building’s vibrancy to fulfil social requisites. She has made significant contributions to scholarship on architecture, landscape design, urban studies, aesthetics, history, and social sciences through her research, publications, and lectures internationally. She has been invited to lecture at the Faculty of Architecture of Sapienza University of Rome, the Department of Art History of the University of Lausanne, the IGmA Institute for Principles of Modern Architecture (Design and Theory) of the University of Stuttgart, the University Institute of Architecture of Chandigarh University, and the Department of Social Anthropology of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences among other universities. On 11 February 2022, in the framework of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2022, she was selected by ETH Zurich among the women role models conducting research in Science. Among her highly cited articles is “Urban scale digital twins in data-driven society: Challenging digital universalism in urban planning decision-making” published in the International Journal of Architectural Computing.
Dr. Marianna Charitonidou holds a PhD Degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the School of Architectural Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (2018) (PhD Dissertation: The Relationship between Interpretation and Elaboration of Architectural Form: Investigating the Mutations of Architecture’s Scope), an MPhil Degree in Architecture and Urbanism (Inter-Departmental Postgraduate Program “Design, Space, Culture”) from the School of Architectural Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (2013) (MPhil Dissertation Project: From Semiology to Deconstruction: Metaphysics and Subject), an MSc Degree in Sustainable Environmental Design from the Architectural Association in London (2011) (MSc Dissertation Project: Sustainable Housing Design in Mykonos: Vernacular vs. Contemporary), and a MArchEng Degree in Architectural Engineering from the Department of Architectural Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2010) (Final Design Project: Design Routes: Crossing the Section). She was also awarded an Erasmus Scholarship that gave her the opportunity to attend the MArch programme at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais (2007-2008). Since 2012, she has been teaching at various Schools of Architecture in Europe, Switzerland, and the UK – especially in Zurich, Paris, Athens and London – including the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich, the Department of Interior Architecture of the University of West Attica, the School of Architectural Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais, the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-la-Villette and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, and the Department of Architectural Engineering of the University of Ioannina.
She is member of the Editorial Board of Urban, Planning and Transport Research, InScience, and the Senior Advisory Board of City Space Architecture, which is partner of UN-Habitat. She is an active member of Society of Architectural Historians, Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA), Association d’histoire de l’architecture (AHA), DOCOMOMO International, European Architectural History Network (EAHN), Design History Society (DHS), European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE), Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), Global Architectural History Teaching Collective (GAHTC), American Association of Geographers (AAG), and
At the Faculty of Art Theory and History of Athens School of Fine arts, she is the Principal Investigator of the research project entitled Constantinos A. Doxiadis and Adriano Olivetti’s Post-war Reconstruction Agendas in Greece and in Italy: Centralising and Decentralising Political Apparatus. As Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich, she was the Principal Investigator of the project entitled The Travelling Architect’s Eye: Photography and the Automobile Vision, which she completed in August 2021. At ETH Zurich, she also taught the courses “Fundamentals of the History and Theory of Architecture I”, and “Fundamentals of the History and Theory of Architecture II”, and the seminar “The City Represented: The View from the Car”. Moreover, she curated the exhibition The View from the Car: Autopia as a New Perceptual Regime at the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich.
She has extensive postdoctoral research experience and is/was the Principal Investigator of five postdoctoral research projects: The Greek Travels of the Villa Medici Pensionnaires in the 19th Century: Perceiving Ancient Monuments between Architecture and Archaeology (Princeton University), Constantinos A. Doxiadis and Adriano Olivetti’s Post-war Reconstruction Agendas in Greece and in Italy: Centralising and Decentralising Political Apparatus, which she is currently leading at Athens School of Fine Arts (Hellenic Institute for Research and Innovation), the postdoctoral research project The Travelling Architect’s Eye: Photography and the Automobile Vision, which she conducted at the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich (2019-2021) (ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellowship), The View from the Car: Autopia as a New Perceptual Regime (ETH Zurich Career Seed Award), and the postdoctoral research project entitled The Fictional Addressee of Architecture as a Device for Exploring Post-colonial Culture: The Transformations of the Helleno-centric Approaches (2018-2022) at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens (State Scholarships Foundation). The completed research of this postdoctoral project was presented publicly on 6 July 2022.
In September 2018, she was awarded a Doctoral Degree all’unanimità from the National Technical University of Athens for her PhD dissertation The Relationship between Interpretation and Elaboration of Architectural Form: Investigating the Mutations of Architecture’s Scope (jury: Jean-Louis Cohen, Bernard Tschumi, George Parmenidis, Pippo Ciorra, Constantinos Moraitis, Kostas Tsiambaos, Panayotis Tournikiotis). In her PhD dissertation, she examined the mutations of the modes of representation in contemporary architecture in relation to the transformation of the status of the addressee of architecture. Her PhD dissertation was based on extensive archival research in various archives at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (Aldo Rossi papers, Reyner Banham Papers etc.), the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris, the Library of Congress in Washington DC., and the Museum of Modern Art of New York (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe papers), Avery Library’s Department of Drawings & Archives at Columbia University in New York, and the Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome (Aldo Rossi papers) among other institutes. She was a Visiting Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (invited by Prof. Bernard Tschumi, 2016-2017 & 2017-2018), the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University (invited by Prof. Jean-Louis Cohen, 2014-2015 & 2016-2017), the École française de Rome (2016-2017 & 2017-2018), the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) (Doctoral Students Grant Program 2018), and the Getty Research Institute (GRI). Her research projects have been supported by Princeton University, the Design History Society (DHS), the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), Columbia University, the Getty Research Institute, the Académie Française, the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris, the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), the Université Paris Nanterre, Leventis Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation, and ETH Zürich Foundation.
She has presented her research at many international scientific conferences (more than 122) and has published more than 120 peer reviewed scientific publications focusing on architecture and urbanism. Among her publications are: the monograph Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices: Architecture’s Changing Scope in the 20th Century (London; New York: Routledge, 2023), the monograph Drawing and Experiencing Architecture: The Evolving Significance of City’s Inhabitants in the 20th Century (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2022), “Research by Design at the Crossroads of Architecture and Visual Arts: Exploring the Epistemological Reconfigurations”, in Michela Barosio, Elena Vigliocco, Santiago Gomes, eds., School of Architecture(s) – New Frontiers of Architectural Education: EAAE Annual Conference—Turin 2023 (Cham: Springer, 2024), “Commoning Practices and Mobility Justice in Data-Driven Societies: Urban Scale Digital Twins and Their Challenges for Architecture and Urban Planning” in Towards a New European Bauhaus—Challenges in Design Education. EAAE AC 2022 (Cham: Springer, 2014), “Urban scale digital twins in data-driven society: Challenging digital universalism in urban planning decision-making”, in International Journal of Architectural Computing, 20(2) (2022), “Mies van der Rohe’s Zeitwille: Baukunst between Universality and Individuality”, in Architecture and Culture, 10(2) (2022), “Housing Programs for the Poor in Addis Ababa: Urban Commons as a Bridge between Spatial and Social”, in the Journal of Urban History, 48(6) (2022), “Ugliness in architecture in the Australian, American, British and Italian milieus: Subtopia between the 1950s and the 1970s”, in City, Territory and Architecture, 9(20) (2022), “Denise Scott Brown’s active socioplastics and urban sociology: from Learning from West End to Learning from Levittown”, in Urban, Planning and Transport Research, 10(1) (2022), “The 1968 effects and civic responsibility in architecture and urban planning in the USA and Italy: Challenging ‘nuova dimensione’ and ‘urban renewal’”, in Urban, Planning and Transport Research, 9(1) (2021), “Denise Scott Brown’s Nonjudgmental Perspective: Cross-Fertilization between Urban Sociology and Architecture”, in Frida Grahn, ed., Denise Scott Brown In Other Eyes: Portraits of an Architect (Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser, 2022), “Travel to Greece and Polychromy in the 19th Century: Mutations of Ideals of Beauty and Greek Antiquities”, in Heritage, 5(2) (2022), “Le Corbusier’s ineffable space and synchronism: From architecture as clear syntax to architecture as succession of events”, in Arts, 11(2)(2022), “Frank Gehry’s Non-trivial Drawings as Gestures: Drawdlings and a Kinaesthetic Approach to Architecture”, in Journal of Visual Art Practice, 21(2) (2022), “Italian Neorealist and New Migrant films as dispositifs of alterity: How borgatari and popolane challenge the stereotypes of nationhood and womanhood?“, in Studies in European Cinema (2022), “Vers une écosophie des pratiques architecturales et urbaines”, in Ligeia, Dossiers sur l’Art, 2 (2021), “E-Road Network and Urbanization: A Reinterpretation of the Trans-European Petroleumscape”, in Urban, Planning and Transport Research, 9(1) (2021), “Revisiting Giancarlo De Carlo’s Participatory Design Approach: From the Representation of Designers to the Representation of Users”, in Heritage, 4(2) (2021), “Fantaisies architecturales chez Iakov Tchernikhov : Surpasser la “mimesis” à travers la “phantasia” comme agent du progrès”, in Nouvelle revue d’esthétique, 27 (2021), “Autopia as new perceptual regime: mobilized gaze and architectural design”, in City, Territory and Architecture, 8(5) (2021), “Gender and Migrant Roles in Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Films: Cinema as an Apparatus of Reconfiguration of National Identity and ‘Otherness’”, in Humanities, 10(2) (2021), “Takis Zenetos’s Electronic Urbanism and Tele-Activities: Minimizing Transportation as Social Aspiration”, in Urban Science, 5(1) (2021), “Frank Gehry’s Self-Twisting Uninterrupted Line: Gesture-Drawings as Indexes”, in Arts, 10(1) (2021), “Exhibitions in France as Symbolic Domination: Images of Postmodernism and Cultural Field in the 1980s”, in Arts, 10(1) (2021), “Interactive art as reflective experience: Imagineers and ultra-technologists as interaction designers”, in Visual Resources: An international journal on images and their uses, 36(4) (2020), “László Moholy-Nagy and Alvar Aalto’s Connections: Between Biotechnik and Umwelt”, in Enquiry The ARCC Journal for Architectural Research, 17(1) (2020), “Simultaneously Space and Event: Bernard Tschumi’s Conception of Architecture”, in ARENA Journal of Architectural Research, 5(1) (2020), “Architecture’s Addressees: Drawing as Investigating Device”, in villardjournal, 2 (2020), “Aldo Rossi’s Transatlantic Cross-fertilization: American ‘Urban Facts’ and Reinvention of Design Methods”, in Aldo Rossi, Perspectives from the World. Theory, Teaching, Design & Legacy, edited by Marco Bovati et al (Padova: Il Poligrafo, Biblioteca di Architettura series, 2020), “Alison and Peter Smithson and their Travels to Greece: The Search for an Open-ended Morphology”, in Viaggi e Viste. Mediterraneo e modernità, edited by Stamatina Kousidi (Firenze: Altralinea edizioni/Momenti di architettura moderna, 2020), “Gottfried Semper face au Crystal Palace Le Stoffwechsel ou l’osmose entre arts décoratifs et architecture/Gottfried Semper’s Perplexity Before the Crystal Palace: Stoffwechsel as Osmosis between Decorative Objects and Architecture”, in Faces, 77 (2020), “The Immediacy of Urban Reality in Postwar Italy: Between Neorealism and Tendenza’s Instrumentalization of Ugliness”, in Architecture and Ugliness: Anti-Aesthetics and the Ugly in Postmodern Architecture, edited by Wouter Van Acker and Thomas Mical (London; New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2020), “Music as a Reservoir of Thought’s Materialization: Between Metastaseis and Modulor”, in Aberrant Nuptials: Deleuze and Artistic Research 2, edited by Paulo de Assis and Paolo Giudici (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2019), “Le récit autobiographique d’Aldo Rossi: Introspection ou rétrospection?”, in L’Homme & la Société, 208 (2018), “Between Urban Renewal and Nuova Dimensione: The 68 Effects vis-à-vis the Real”, in Histories of Postwar Architecture, 2 (2018), “Archives of Architecture Museums: The Effects of Digitisation”, in OASE, 99 (2017), “Réinventer la posture historique : les débats théoriques à propos de la comparaison et des transferts”, in Espaces et Sociétés, 167 (2016), and “L’AUA entre le Team 10 et le postmodernisme”, in Une architecture de l’engagement: l’AUA 1960-1985, edited by Jean-Louis Cohen and Vanessa Grossman (Paris: La Découverte/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, 2015).
Below you can have a look at an overview of three core thematic clusters of my research, design and teaching practices:
- The first thematic cluster explores how the concept of the user in architecture is transformed throughout time and how this is related to the mutations of the modes of representation. As modes of representation, I explore, through my teaching and research, three means of representation: architectural drawing and visual argumentation via diagrams and sketches, as I do in my two published monographs and my PhD Dissertation “The Relationship between Interpretation and Elaboration of Architectural Form: Investigating the Mutations of Architecture’s Scope”, completed in 2018, photography, as I did in my postdoctoral project, my courses and seminars and the exhibition I curated on the view from the car in architecture at ETH Zürich, and cinema, as I do in my publications, teaching and research that focus on the role of women, migrants, and diasporic identities in Italian Neorealist films. Within this framework of problematizing the role of visual argumentation in my teaching and research, I place particular emphasis on the combination of ethnographic tools and visual mapping to address how diverse groups inhabit and transform space via their spatial and social practices. This axis of research is related to the studies I have conducted on how counterculture groups, student groups, advocacy planning groups, and activist groups have pushed architecture schools to reshape their curricula and to incorporate diversity issues in the briefs of the design studios. Diversity practices are at the core of my work on active socioplastics in the case of Denise Scott Brown and on my analyses of the critiques of urban renewal and nuova dimensione in the United States of America and Italy and how these critiques reshaped architectural pedagogies. These reflections are related to my endeavour to decolonize and decarbonize architectural pedagogies today, bringing to the teaching of design studio and history and theory courses a transnational perspective of techniques and social practices.
- The second thematic cluster concerns my research on the tension between external modernizing agents in the Global South and the spatial and social practices of local communities. Within this context, I have published articles and presented papers at international conferences that focus on the tension between the realization of pro-poor housing programs in areas such as Addis Ababa as the so-called “Integrated Housing Development Program” (IHDP) and the spatial and social practices of citizens. I explore, in my teaching and research, the potentialities of “negotiated planning” approach, which implies a close analysis of the interconnections between planning, infrastructure, and land, for bringing diversity to architectural education and practice. Among my projects that are related to how external modernizing agents interacted with the local communities within the Global South is my project on Doxiadis Associates’ FESTAC town masterplan in Lagos, Nigeria and its relation to the concept of Ecumenopolis.
- The third thematic cluster concerns my research and teaching, aiming to shed light on the risks of digital universalism in the case of the use of urban scale digital twins within the process of making decisions related to sustainability. Urban scale digital twins are real-time simulations of specific parameters concerning cities and neighbourhoods. They are used extensively to simulate parameters related to sustainability. Although they are very efficient for visualizing quantitative parameters, they often neglect issues related to social equity and other qualitative parameters related to urban planning. In my research and teaching, I explore how visualization techniques and applications can enhance participatory design methods. I argue that urban-scale digital twin applications should be based on the intention to incorporate citizens’ feedback in the decision-making processes, and I examine how this could be possible. Related to this thematic cluster characterising my research and teaching interests is my highly cited article “Urban scale digital twins in data-driven society: Challenging digital universalism in urban planning decision-making” published in the International Journal of Architectural Computing.
EXHIBITION THE VIEW FROM THE CAR
Tel.: +30 694 746 0886
Dr. Marianna Charitonidou
Think Through Design Architectural, Urban & Landscape Design Studio
4th floor
119 Artemidos Street Paleo Faliro
175 62 Athens Greece
thinkthroughdesign@icloud.com
m.charitonidou@icloud.com
charitonidou.marianna.think@gmail.com
charitonidou@aalumni.org
Academia
ResearchGate
ORCID iD 0000-0003-1083-4861
Google scholar
PhilPeople
Submissions to ETH Research Collection
Link to facebook page of ‘Think Through Design’
‘Think Through Design’ is a think tank, design studio and research platform, founded by Marianna Charitonidou in Athens and Mykonos in 2010, engaging with the emergent processes of architectural and urban design and exploring strategies of visual mapping, with an expertise on sustainable design strategies
The two volumes of Marianna Charitonidou’s PhD Dissertation and her three Master thesis projects:
Some of the volumes and issues to which Marianna Charitonidou has contributed with chapters/articles:
Dr. Marianna Charitonidou 