Costas Kondylis

Costas Kondylis (1940 – August 18, 2018) was an American architect. He designed over 85 buildings in New York City, many of them for real-estate developer and later U.S. president Donald Trump, through his eponymous architectural firm.

Kondylis was born in Burundi, where his parents were European colonists who came from Greece, Vassiliki and Andreas Kondylis, who opened a chain of general stores in East Africa. Kondylis attended a boarding school there and attained master's degrees in Europe and the United States, respectively at the University of Geneva and at Columbia University. After receiving his master's degrees in 1967, Kondylis worked at Davis, Brody & Associates, and then at Philip Birnbaum & Associates. In 1989, Kondylis created Costas Kondylis Architects; the firm's work was featured in several magazines and was the subject of a television documentary. The company was renamed Costas Kondylis and Partners LLP in 2000, when several of the firm's architects became partners in the organization including Alan Goldstein, L. Stephen Hill, Marta Rudzka, and David West. The company, which was headquartered in New York City, dissolved in 2009. Afterward, he created another firm called Kondylis Design. Kondylis died on August 18, 2018, of undisclosed causes.

Kondylis was known for his conventional designs of skyscrapers in Manhattan, at a time when developers were either building low-rises or unconventional high-rises. He created 86 residential towers in Manhattan over the course of his career. From 2000 to 2007, it was estimated that he designed one residential building in Manhattan every six weeks on average. A 2007 New York Times profile noted that Kondylis had designed 75 projects in New York City and was designing 15 more at the time.