Thomas Doxiadis, Making Landscapes for Cohabitation

 

117. Thomas Doxiadis

SPEAKERS

Will Bachman, Thomas Doxiadis

 

Will Bachman  00:02

Will Hello and welcome to the 92 report conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m your host. Will Bachman, and I’m here today with Thomas Doxiadis, Thomas, welcome to the show.

 

Thomas Doxiadis  00:16

Thank you will really thank you for having me, and thank you for reconnecting us with so many of our classmates. Well, thank

 

Will Bachman  00:25

you. So let’s start by Tell me about your journey since graduating from Harvard.

 

Thomas Doxiadis  00:33

Well, I came back to Greece for a year and worked in the construction field. I’m an ark. I eventually became an architect, but I already knew that’s where I was headed. And then I went back to the states, back to Harvard, actually, and did a Masters of architecture, and then a Masters of landscape architecture. And that’s kind of changed my life, because because of the special architecture of Gund Hall, which houses the design programs. I found out about landscape, which is something I kind of ignored, and it set me on a path that has defined my life, I’d say, professionally, but also in other ways. Then I worked in New York for a year. I came back to Greece, did my military service, serving in the Greek navy. Lots of stories to tell from from that episode, and then I started working for the 2004 Athens Olympics. So I started working on the organizing committee, getting ready for that. At the same time, started teaching in the university, and then eventually kept the university for another three years, started my office, my professional practice, which has been going for the last 25 years. So that typically is the professional trajectory, and then the personal trajectory has been i Um, I’d say not what I’m I was proud of, in the sense that I’ve always been very focused on sort of the academic and professional side, side of things, very, you know, in awe of learning and discovering and practicing and and I found out relatively late, I’d say that I’d left the personal things on the side that were not so important for me. So I had a first marriage that lasted for about five years, just as I was coming back to Greece. Then, on a personal note, I’d say I spent the next 10 years sort of trying to work things out, understand what, what what is going on in my mind, in my heart, and what is going on with people in general, I found out that people are much more interested, interesting, you know, much more fascinating, than I than I thought. So so that, you know, people became a thing. They weren’t a thing before in my life, and I’ve been in a fantastic marriage in the last 10 years with, you know, two great kids, a nine year old boy and a four year old boy. And I’d say right now, kind of the kids my wife and work are, are it? And there’s more balance. I uh,

 

Will Bachman  03:43

tell me a bit more about what you learned during that 10 year period of reflection and searching. Oh,

 

Thomas Doxiadis  03:54

I I’d say the first thing I realized was that I didn’t really know what was going on in in my head and in my heart, in the sense that I I grew up in a family that was very, let’s say, professionally minded, a family kind of a doctor, scientist, engineers, so that that focus was always very clear in my head, the focus that has to do with with relationships with other people, with being okay as a person wasn’t there really. So first was learning that that was a gap, and learning that I had to kind of do something about it. Then doing a few years of, you know, therapy and having someone sort of guide me through figuring things out in my head. And what’s been extremely interesting in the last year is joining a coaching group, which is it’s run out of the US, but it has branches all over the world, which is about a. Um, I’d say, you know, treating oneself better in sense of health, sleep, nutrition, exercise, treating other people better in terms of relationships and also examining emotions and beliefs. So, you know, opening up various doors to realize that the world is not exactly as we think it is, and that there’s not one way of looking at things, but we have created a life and a story through which we perceive the world and through which we actually live our own lives, and that this is, you know, it’s not a given, it’s a story, and it’s open to interpretation and change. That’s been extremely interesting for me in the last few years.

 

Will Bachman  05:52

What’s the structure of this coaching group? Is it like, how many people? How do you meet? Is this

 

Thomas Doxiadis  05:58

online? It’s called, got your six. I’m plugging for the group now. It’s run by a really fantastic guy called Jim bro, who used to, who used to be a coach in other sort of systems. I was attracted because the one of the, sort of the, you know, there’s the head coach who’s Jim, and then there are, there are groups of coaches, and each one has a group of six, which is why it’s called, got your six and and the idea is that these six people, we kind of have each other’s back, so we are sharing, for example, someone, someone in Our group, was going through a financial situation, and I’d been through a similar situation, and this was causing stress with his family, with his wife and kids. So you know, part of it is is being coached and receiving, let’s say knowledge about health, eating or dealing with a certain situation, and part of it is about coaching each other and helping each other through things that we have seen from a different perspective. And it’s really fantastic. I have to say, I’ve I think it’s a bit like college. It’ll take me another, you know, it’s a year long process, and I think it’ll take me another two to three years to fully digest and process what I’ve learned during this one year,

 

Will Bachman  07:22

what changes have you made in your life related to health, sleep, nutrition, exercise,

 

Thomas Doxiadis  07:29

okay, I think the the most important change has been realizing that I need to take care of myself. I know it seems a bit it sounds a bit silly or egocentric, but in fact, you know, building up a business from scratch and trying to be really at the top of my field was, was the extent of my took, sort of all of my focus and energy. And not that I, I, you know, smoked or did, you know, terrible things to myself, but I didn’t really take care of myself either. So realizing that I have to eat right, sleep right, learning, you know, basic breathing techniques, basic meditation techniques, changing priorities, I think one of the most important aspects is changing mentality and changing priorities. So realizing that, you know, the time I give to my wife, the time I give to the kids, the time I give to myself, is extremely important and should not always be sort of in the back burner when competing with work, time spent with my parents while they’re still around, you know, realizing that they’re not going to be around forever. Working on friendships or re, re, you know, reworking or rekindling friendships that have petered out because, you know, distance or whatever, and it’s taken a lot of energy, but it’s also good in the sense that it focuses energy in the right directions. Because we’ll have, we have all have energy that we could spread in many directions. I think mine is being focused more wisely at this point. And again, I think I’m kind of 20% through the process. I still have a lot to learn and many ways to improve.

 

Will Bachman  09:33

What if you change with your sleep habits? Are you going to bed at time, waking up different time? Yeah,

 

Thomas Doxiadis  09:39

that’s a that’s a that’s a good one and a very important one. It became clear through trial and error that sleep is maybe the number one hack, in a way that you know waking up stressed and tired sets you up for a very different day than waking up. Up refreshed and with a clear mind. And it’s for for for my wife, for example, the bedtime routine that helps her is a certain bedtime routine, which is not what helps me. What I figured out helps me is, you know, having a good time with kids reading, you know, helping them on classes, having dinner when they have dinner, which is early, and then spending a bit of time not again. It’s very trite, but not spending it on YouTube, on Tiktok, on Instagram, et cetera. Spending it with quiet things like a good book, or maybe a podcast, you know, listening to what’s happened to old friends, or, you know, a podcast about breathing or a podcast about relationships. And one of the things that I think has helped me a lot is audio books, especially maybe being an architect and spending a great part of my day on on a screen and on paper with the, you know, the visual, you know, with a visual overload, then not having to read the book, but actually lying in bed or on the couch and listening to a book, which is, you know, it could can be sci fi can be a beautiful book about, I’m listening reading to the covenant of water right now, beautiful book about life in Southern India, or, you know, things about science, whatever it works for me and and it also puts me in a much better place to have a good night’s sleep. That being said, I still very often don’t have a good night’s sleep. Like last night, for example, was kind of very stressed. I don’t know why, but, but, but it was, and I have to say that many of the people I talk to in our cohort. I don’t know if it’s true of our classmates, but you know, cohort, especially on this side of the of the Atlantic, sleep, seems to be the number one issue. You know, they all wish. You know, the first thing everyone is wishing for at this age is better sleep.

 

Will Bachman  12:22

I want to get some of your stories from that you we kind of quickly passed by. I got to ask you were in the Navy. Tell us yes to about your time in the Greek navy. So

 

Thomas Doxiadis  12:36

so in the Navy, it was not very posh. I was in the naval armaments division, which meant that mainly I had to guard. I had guard duty, guarding armaments. And some of this was high tech stuff, you know, very expensive missiles. Some of it was just, you know, kind of normal ordinance. And it was, it was the opposite. It was after 10 years in the state. So it was after 10 years of sort of very intellectual, very hard work. And I found myself exactly in the opposite condition, which is spending my time with 18 year olds doing absolutely nothing other than, you know, sitting at the guard post for four hours, then, you know, going and cleaning the barracks, and then, you know, having lunch, and then getting a bit of sleep, and then having another four hours of guard duty. And I have to say, it was like a first immersion into a kind of ridiculous situation, on the one hand, because for a 30 year old, you know, just out of, let’s say, Harvard, and working in New York to spend his time with 18 year olds is a strange situation, but I have to say, I started having fun, like, like a high school kid, I laughed more than I’d laughed in the last 10 years. You know, just in those months, a lot of daydreaming, because a lot of these guard duty was at night, so you didn’t get much sleep. And one time where I always, you know, I remember a time because sometimes the officers would, they try to catch your guard? So they try to sneak up on you and see that you were, you know, ready to defend. And one night, and you usually kind of figured out they were coming, it was some telltale, you know, you could kind of see the car in the distance before they started walking, or something like that. But one night, it was kind of a deep, dark night, and this was guard duty at the top of a small mountain. Let’s say there was a rustling outside. It was not the kind of wind rustling, it was the rustling of someone moving out there. So I went out with my gun, and I was like, you know, I. I said the words you have to say when you’re trying to stop someone, but they wouldn’t stop, and I couldn’t see them anywhere. So, and you know, we are in the part of part of the world, unfortunately, where war is not a you know, it does happen, and it’s happened often, so I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. In the end, it was two dogs, but until I and they were, you know, too low for me to see they were in the bushes. But I kind of, I wouldn’t say I beat my pants, but it was kind of really high, high focus situation, until I realized what was going on. That’s, I think that was the most exciting moment. Another exciting moment was trying to having to use a very specific chemical to clean a very, very high end and extreme, I don’t know, expensive guided missile, one of these things that costs millions of dollars. So it was sort of the other extreme.

 

Will Bachman  16:07

Talk to me about the Athens Olympics, what was your role? What were you working on?

 

Thomas Doxiadis  16:11

That was an experience. I came back kind of very bright eyed with all the you know ideas from growing up in part architectural family and partly doctors family, and from having spent 10 years in the States, eight of which at Harvard, so it came back with a lot of great ideas about what should happen. Some of it was the chance to bring the ideas to fruition. And some of it was the, you know, the great frustration of seeing that things can’t happen the way you think they should happen. So it was kind of landing back on a kind of reality. But on the whole, it was a very positive experience, because it was kind of a can do experience. It was the experience of a place that was not ready for the Olympics becoming ready for them in the period of, let’s say, about three years, which is, which is pretty short, actually, and it included collaborating for the design and construction of mega projects such as, you know, parts of the Athenian sea, sea front, the coastal areas, Olympic villages, you know, big sports infrastructure, and part of it towards the end, was finding smart ways to to make the city bright and shiny and happy where projects had not been implemented. So the last thing I did on my way out was, was setting up kind of the flags, banners and and animation program for the city. And in between those two I spent two years dealing with sort of the environmental and green aspects of the Olympics

 

Will Bachman  18:09

say more about that, like, what, what, what?

 

Thomas Doxiadis  18:12

That was actually much less interesting to tell you the truth and what’s come after. Because the highlight for me was organizing the first mass olive transplanting. So the the old Athens, let’s say horse race track, moved to a new area and also became the Olympic Equestrian Center. And that area was a was full of rather ancient olive groves and vineyards. And we know that this area has been an area of olive groves and unions for at least 3000 years. Some of the trees were a massive they were, you know, many human breads wide. So we know they’re very, very old. Trees, definitely more than 1000 years old, maybe two, maybe three. We never got an accurate dating. But what was interesting was the idea that we could, rather than cutting the trees down, transplant them. And with some trees, you can do that more readily. With others you can’t. With olive trees, you can. So we transplanted about 600 trees that became part of other Olympic venues, and many of them were transported to the and transplanted to the former Athens International Airport. And now, just three years ago, we reuse them because we are part of the team for the redevelopment of the Athens airport. So we re transplanted those trees to create a park. So, so, you know, 20 years ago, we took them from their original home to a new home, and then three years ago, we took them from that home to an even newer home, where hopefully they will be for, you know, hundreds of years to come. So.

 

Will Bachman  20:00

So tell me a bit more about this ancient olive grove. It’s, it’s, it’s been there for 3000 years. It sounds like, I mean, it’s like a little sad that they you turn this ancient olive grove into a Equestrian Center, I guess. But tell us, like, Was it an active producing kind of Olive Grove that people were making olive

 

Thomas Doxiadis  20:24

oil. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Olive Trees can be productive throughout their very long lifespan. And actually you put your finger on a very interesting thing. So if I may talk about that, which is kind of the pain of destroying before you create. Because our architects and landscape architects, if we work in a city, if you’re refurbishing a building, there’s less of that. But if you work in a virgin area, if you work in an area that hasn’t been touched in a long while, which is what mainly happens in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, before something new gets built, you have to destroy what’s already there. And in, in my case, because we work on, let’s say, you know, a lot of high end projects, a lot of projects that have to do with tourism, resorts, etc. Many of these places we have to touch are extremely beautiful, sensitive and old places. I mean, really landscapes that have been around for hundreds or 1000s of years. And I remember when I was growing up in Greece, in the 80s, I grew up so I was born in January of 1970 so most of us, I think, in our class, were born 69 or 70. And at that time, Greece was still a very virgin territory. Let’s say the most of the country felt like you were walking in places that hadn’t been touched for 1000s of years. I had that feeling very strongly as I was growing up. Then Greece entered the European Union in 1981 and then the economy started changing very rapidly. And by 1985 there was a lot of new construction, and I could see places that I had loved growing up being slowly built up and destroyed. So part of the reason, I wouldn’t say, part of the reason I came to the reason I came to the States, because that was, I think I had a strong feeling about that from from a very young age. But part of the reason I studied architecture and then landscape architecture, was wondering how we can build on these very sensitive, culturally important and ecologically important places with the minimum of destruction. You know, can there be a win win rather than a lose win? So we’ve built our entire work and office portfolio for the past 25 years trying to resolve that problem. And it ties in very interestingly, with with my years at Harvard, because and coming to the question that I know you’re going to ask, which is, you know, what courses and professors do I remember fondly. There were two, two courses that were extremely important. One was Ed Wilson’s evolutionary biology, or class, which put me in in touch with the sort of animal and plant side of of the universe, which I didn’t really have an appreciation for. And it set me on a path of, you know, having a deep admiration of nature. And the other one was, of course, moral reasoning. 22 which was the justice course, which set me thinking about, you know, what is right and what is wrong, and how do we, how do we deal with that? But, but then sort of going to the GSD, the Harvard design school, where landscape ecology was, at the time, the most important driving force with very important professors like like Richard Forman and and and learning the techniques, finding out how you can design with nature and for nature, rather than against, it really set me on a path. And then I found, you know, other colleagues in Greece and abroad, and kind of, you know, became a group, either either within the office or, you know, unofficially, it’s really set me on on the life path, professionally and intellectually. And by this, at this point, I don’t even remember what your original question was, but, but, but this is what I’ve become about, and I’m very, very, very passionate about it. Yeah.

 

Will Bachman  24:51

So talk to me about some of the projects that your firm has worked on after your time at the Olympics, and you’re running your own firm. I think it’s called Doxiadis plus, right? That’s it. Tell us about some of some of your projects that you’re proud of.

 

Thomas Doxiadis  25:11

I’d say the first project I became proud of was working on an Aegean Island, which at that time was very pristine, and working with a developer was actually a high school friend to build relatively large high end villas. And I remember the first time he took me to the site, which was a, you know, imagine, sort of a beautiful sea with islands rising like mountains out of the sea, and, you know, old agricultural landscapes and pastoral landscapes. And he said, you know, Thomas, we got to build 20 villas here. And I said, Oh, my God, we’re going to completely destroy this place. And out of this reaction of pain and sort of worry about what could go wrong. We started a very deep inquiry that, fortunately he, as a developer, was very much sort of into and part of, how could we really do it so that we don’t mess the place up? So we worked through the year. We developed many techniques. Eventually we call it the landscapes of cohabitation, is the idea of symbiosis, or cohabitation, between what was already there and the new sort of economic activity, or between humans and, you know, the other living the other living creatures. And it’s worked, I mean, on it looks the buildings and the landscape looks like, like they’ve always been there. Ecologically, it’s become part of the local ecosystem. But most importantly, it’s changed people’s minds. So when I started, when people would ask for landscape work, it would be sort of in the style of Miami or Dubai. It would be, you know, give me grass, give me palm trees, give me something that looks like, perhaps like an English Garden, nothing that has to do with the local beauty and local ecology. Through this project, it actually became very successful, also on an economic, you know, on the financial side. And actually robulos, who you had on the on the podcast, was one of the first buyers. It was a smart move, because he they got in when the project was still sort of in its infancy. It really changed the paradigm locally. So that by now, you know, more and more people started doing things this way, and by now, no one is thinking of doing things a different way. So it really, really changed the paradigm. So that was in the in the in the beginning, let’s say, of our professional practice, the project that I’m happiest about now and most excited about is an MIT graduate from Northern Italy who built up a rather successful Energy Corporation and patents, etc, in the States. He sold it, went back to Italy, and he’s now investing in in the place where he used to spend his summers, which is a tiny little village in Tuscany. So what we’re doing with him is making the 200 year sustainability plan for the village and implementing and what that has involved is from climate modeling, so we know what will happen to the place in the next 20, 5100, years. And the reason we’ve been able to do that is because in the in the past, let’s say eight years, I’ve developed and I’ve been running the national landscape Adaptation to Climate Change Program in Greece. So we developed a lot of know how, and now we’re implementing that that know how on commercial projects. So back to Italy, everything from you know how climate will impact the area to how the forests are faring and how we can make them healthier, to how we can recreate agriculture, because the soils have been degraded and agriculture is industrial but very low quality. How can we re give life back to the soils and create very productive agriculture? How can we retain water and fight erosion. And most important of all, how can we give life back to the people in the sense that, you know, imagine a place that is slowly getting so old that every young person is leaving, you know, there’s, there’s no vitality there. So we want to bring back the vitality. A through these measures, you know, through finding ways of integrating photovoltaics into the, you know, very protected Tuscan landscape, through having, you know, visiting artists, programs, etc, a bunch of things to try to create, again, a paradigm, and this person is very much thinking of it not just a little private project, but as a paradigm that can then be reproduced in Italy to revive the countryside and lead it towards a better and more sustainable future, especially if you think that you know climate is making a better and sustainable future more and more difficult.

 

Will Bachman  30:47

Tell us a bit more about your work on the national you know, adaptation of climate change. So is that you’re needing to think about different plants. The plants water, but

 

Thomas Doxiadis  31:01

so that’s it started from worrying about climate change. So, you know, worrying if it doesn’t, you know, keep you up at night is a good thing. And then finding out that there was an the way the European Union works is that it tries to guide countries in certain directions with a lighter hand. And they they will finance, you know, in every five or 10 year period, they will throw money in a certain direction. And predictably, in the last 10 years, they’ve been throwing money towards climate change. So they, they, they brought out an open call for for countries or partners or universities or whoever, to apply for relatively large chunks of minus so in the 10, 10 million euro, 10 million range, let’s say, to prepare for climate change, to to prepare for climate change adaptation. We were fortunate to find out relatively soon and with a small team, we started preparing a rather, I’d say, optimistic program that has worked out in the sense that it, tries to see what the main climate impacts will be. So public health, for example, infrastructure, the economy, tourism, and because at that time, and I’m still part of an NGO on the side, on my, let’s say non professional side, which is a cultural and environmental protection NGO. We brought in two special let’s say tracks or sub program, sub programs within this program, which is what will happen to landscapes and what will happen to culture and what will happen to landscape sounds. Maybe it’s kind of, you know, esthetics are not important. But in fact, landscapes are not what we see. What we see in landscapes is because landscapes are kind of the physical manifestation of whatever is happening in the environment. So if people are, you know, driving to go home. Then you see roads if people are planting olive groves, because that’s what grows. You see olive groves. If nature is creating wetland ecosystems. You see wetland ecosystems. If the nearby town is polluting a wetland and turning it into a salt marsh. Let’s say then you see a salt marsh. So everything you see in a in a in a in a landscape is not, in fact, you know what’s important is not the image, it’s what’s happening behind it. So landscapes is a way to to create a spatial understanding of what will happen through climate change. Because most understanding, for example, you know, when they talk about the economy, it’s not, it’s not spatial, it’s kind of, it has to do with sectors. Long story short, we applied for the for the grant. Eventually we got it, and for the past six years, we’ve been running case studies, nine case studies all over Greece, with, you know, if the scale, let’s say of a region that is the size of Cape Cod, let’s see that’s approximately the scale of each of our of our case studies, and we spread them out around the country. So by the time we’re done, we’ll have a very representative sample of what’s going to happen all over the country, and also quite representative for other areas, in in the in the Mediterranean, and then we, we, we’ve developed a methodology by which we can down sample climate models so the the the. The Greek, let’s say Weather Service was responsible for the weather for the climate change models, is able to down sample them to a smaller area. And then we’ve developed a special know how, with the agriculture university, to turn climate models into bio climate models and phyto climate models, meaning if we know more or less what is going to happen to the climate, we know more or less what’s going to happen to the vegetation, to the animals, to the agricultural activity, and through that, perhaps also to the people. So we ran those models, we run the models, and then we also run models that have to do with fire, and how fire will, you know, will play out in changing situations, with erosion, with various things that are important. And we’re, let’s say, at this point, we’re getting a better and better picture of what we think will happen, and we’re also developing, or starting to develop, a set of measures. What can we do about it? The bottom line, the eastern Mediterranean will be one of the most impacted areas in the planet, on the planet, not by sea level rise, because it’s very hilly. We don’t have the problem of flooding. But in terms of, you know, heat waves, fire and things basically changing, let’s say from from temperate to dry Mediterranean, or from dry Mediterranean to even desert conditions, we’re seeing a lot of that coming our way. So it’s quite clear that we have to, you know, we’re part of a big social movement trying to understand and prepare for that future.

 

Will Bachman  36:57

And what about trying to mitigate it? What are sort of some of the actions that you’re recommending or implementing.

 

Thomas Doxiadis  37:03

So the interesting thing was that, you know, 10 years ago, the European Union stopped, stopped spending so much money on medication mitigation, and started spending money on adaptation. And that give it gave us the first hint that, you know they thought that things were, you know, it’s coming. So guys, yeah, let’s try to slow it down. But now let’s, let’s try to adapt. So for example, finding creative ways to do fire breaks, changing mentalities, which, which is the same. And, you know, we’re learning from every place in the world right now, because we, you know, California, Oregon, etc, have have similar fire problems. And we’re all learning from each other, but, but for example, changing the idea that nature is on one side of the equation and humans are on the other. And we have to leave nature alone and going back to the idea of of nature as something that needs to be managed. So we as humans have to go back into forests and reduce, for example, you know, the mass of things that can get burnt. So rather than letting trees die and letting biomass just accumulate, going in and doing selective, very careful logging, for example, or planting in in ways that are not mono culture. You don’t go and plant the same species everywhere, especially species that in Mediterranean conditions are very fast growing, but, but very also, you know, fire prone, but, but interspersing that with other species that are are less prone to fire, which also create a better habitat. And other things, my mind has, I think I’ve been talking non stop for 40 minutes, and my mind just suddenly went, you know, it’s rebooting right now. It’s getting a systems update

 

Will Bachman  39:19

help me understand just a bit about what is a landscape architect. More, it’s more than just figuring out, you know, oh, what plants the plant in your yard, right? I mean, this is,

 

Thomas Doxiadis  39:41

I’d say it’s a proof, and it’s interesting. The profession officially started at Harvard, the first Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the pearl, the Emerald Necklace, sorry, the emerald necklace in Boston and I. Uh, you know, Central Park. He taught at Harvard. He set up the Landscape Architecture program. And I’d say it’s a profession that is is transitioning very quickly from being mainly about esthetics in the 60s, 70s, maybe even 80s, maybe even 90s, to being very much about problem solving around things that have to do with nature. From the 90s on, I was lucky, because I was already at Harvard when the mentalities had changed from esthetics to work with nature to solve problems for the future. That’s the only way I can put it. I mean, we landscape architects are the people for whom the design medium is not concrete, it’s not steel, it’s not asphalt, but it is earth, water, plants, animals, it’s living systems. So there are ecologists and biologists who do extremely important work when it comes to living systems, I think landscape architects have the skill set to deal with that in physical space. Am I making sense, or am I being too kind of academic and jargony? No, that’s

 

Will Bachman  41:18

great. One question from our earlier discussion, I wanted to ask you, you went through this period of reflection and you’ve had this remarkable career. What? What advice would you have given your younger self, and, and, or do you think advice would have actually been heated or useful, or did you have to kind of live those experiences to learn the lessons that you did?

 

Thomas Doxiadis  41:50

Wow, that’s a great question. I think, I think the advice would have been, you know, keep on to my passion for academics, for research and for the profession, but also give much more time to be to people and be also, I’d say more courageous about it. You know, interacting with people is not something to be afraid of. I think I was very much an academic kind of, I don’t know if nerd is the right way, but, you know, much more comfortable with books than with people. Let’s put it that way. So one piece of advice would have been, you know, just go out there much more and spend much more time dealing with people. And the other would have been, keep your passion, but don’t let yourself be too blinded by it, because, you know, passion, you know, I always see the bright goal of a better future through design. You know, I’m very passionate about that, but you have to kind of be focused on this bright light in the future, but you also have to look very carefully at what’s happening around you. So I think, and maybe, maybe architects have a have a tendency to think too much about how the world could be, and it’s maybe more important to spend some time thinking being more pragmatic. I now those would have been the two bits of advice. Would I have heeded them? I don’t know, but I do know. I do know this, that you know, book learning and life learning are two very different things. And I think most of us, or all of us who started, you know, who entered Harvard Yard together in fall of 1988 I think we’ve discovered this along the way, right? So maybe what I would have done is I would have given myself these two bits of advice, but then insisted that I live it rather than reading about it. I

 

Will Bachman  44:03

I want to ask you about some other stuff that on your website, which I’ll which will include the link in the show notes at Doxiadis, plusdotcom you have the different categories on your website of work you’ve done, or residential, hospitality, commercial and the there’s also an art category, and tell us about some of the artistic projects. In particular, one that caught me, I was this the castriani mine restoration, this idea of leaving a mine in its condition for people. So tell us a bit about some of your more art type projects. Okay, so

 

Thomas Doxiadis  44:45

this, this comes from a reflection, you know, what is ultimately, what is our use? What are we useful for? You know, what am I useful for? And what are architects useful for? And I think what, what we do is We? We. Solve problems through giving form to things. You know, you build a room, people sleep in it. You build a bathroom, people use it as a bathroom. You build a park, people go to it, etc. But, but anyone could do that in a way. I think, What? What? Another important aspect is the way things look. Why? Because it’s communication and storytelling. It’s a kind of narrative, and people, humans are beings who understand the world through narratives, okay, which means that we have the opportunity and responsibility to configure a part of the world that is a kind of narrative that is telling people something to add to their own narrative the way they see the world. So that’s where the art projects come in. In general, the example of castriani is, is that we found ourselves in this very beautiful mine of a substance that is used to make horsemen. It’s a very, very fine powder, which is extremely white. So you’re in the bright Aegean sun, and you come out of, let’s say, a big area of shrub that looks a bit like the Chaparral in California, and suddenly you’re in this bright white hole. And the idea was, don’t turn it into they were they were thinking maybe to turn it into into something else. Just what we did is we went in there and we found the cool stuff that already existed, and we said, okay, just let’s highlight that. So we found amazing cones of this material that was laid out in a way to be transported to the, you know, to the to the ships to be shipped out. We said, Okay, let’s, let’s just turn these cones into beautiful, perfect cones. So it really, you know, you really get a sense of this stark white cone. We found the handmade galleries that people had had made back when the mine was still kind of pre industrial. And we said, okay, let’s just keep those there and and raise the level of the, you know, the ground of the mind. So as you’re walking one of the galleries just above the height at which you can reach it. So it’s like the slight joint frustration of the unreachable. And then one gallery looks like it’s going down into the, you know, into the into the underworld, and many other of those little games that are fun on the one hand, but well the other hand, they do resonate somewhere. You know, we as humans, we see some things, and sometimes they kind of just resonate. They they hit you more than words or or, you know, concepts.

 

Will Bachman  47:39

So cool earlier, you already mentioned a couple courses that resonated with you at Harvard, dimension, law, reasoning. You mentioned another course, any other activities that you were involved in at Harvard that have continued to play a role in your life or just shaped your thinking, shaped your path.

 

Thomas Doxiadis  48:00

One was wh, R, B, Harvard radio, which was just sort of part of a story of being in love with listening to music. And I think it was a nice part of that story. I learned a lot. I enjoyed playing music for other people on the radio, and I think it just kind of cemented my relationship with music. Another was, was was going to the Tuesday evening talks at the Kennedy School, where they invited was kind of the top people, or the most relevant people internationally. So it was just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they had the foreign minister of East Germany, for example. You know, they were, I’d say this kind of being very directly, you know, feeling like you had the pulse of the globe politically in a very strong sense. And I think, you know, becoming much more international in Outlook. So not considering myself a citizen of the US or of Greece, but really considering myself a citizen of the world and feeling a sense of responsibility, because I do think there were many things at Harvard, including a big set of international students that kind of set, set me on that path. Partly.

 

Will Bachman  49:37

Thomas, for listeners who want to find you online and see the amazing work of your firm. Will include the link to your website, your firm’s website, any other, any other links that you’d like to share with people, for them to to find you or follow up.

 

Thomas Doxiadis  49:54

I think I’ll send you the links for our. NGO, which I promised to plug on a previous talk we had. But then I realized it’s a Greek only NGO, so I don’t know how many people might be interested. And then probably a link for this, for got your six. I think it’s something that people might want to look into. And anything I anything else I can think of I will.

 

Will Bachman  50:22

I will send all right, well, we will include those links in the show notes. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing some stories of your incredible journey since Harvard.

 

Thomas Doxiadis  50:35

Thank you so much will. It’s been a great pleasure talking to you and and, and really, really, thank you for for doing this for all of us and.