The Delos Network is an AHRC-funded collaborative project that brings together an international network of scholars, architects and planners to re-interrogate the history and legacy of the Delos symposia (1963-75), which were organized by the Greek architect-planner Constantinos Doxiadis in collaboration with the British planner Jaqueline Tyrwhitt.

Urban design solutions were sought in the classical past, for example ancient Greek cities as prototypes for future cities, as well as in new construction, communication and machine technologies. They attracted the foremost intellectuals, scientists and practitioners of the day, laying the foundations for the United Nations ‘Habitat’ agenda.

The Delos Network project will be an opportunity to not only better understand the significance of the symposia but also to address how the Delos debates compare with and feed into contemporary concerns about demographic pressures and environmental sustainability, and their relation to historical precedents by architects, planners and others.

It will also connect researchers and practitioners in history, architecture and planning with key stakeholders from professional architecture, architectural education, built environment policy and grassroots organizations currently exploring the intersections of design, environmental concerns and historical continuity.

Three workshops were concluded in Birmingham (March 2018), Athens (September 2018), and Loughborough (March 2019), and an edited collection of essays is currently under preparation. For details of the project or to get involved, please contact the organizers of the network, Mantha Zarmakoupi and Simon Richards.

The research conducted in the context of the Delos Network will be published in an edited volume entitled The Delos Symposia and Doxiadis (Lars Müller 2024 [in press]).

Image copyright: Constantinos A. Doxiadis Archives, Photographs, File 34172, no. 766. © Constantinos and Emma Doxiadis Foundation