NEW YORK – Costas Kondylis certainly doesn’t look like a troublemaker.
In jacket and tie, with slicked-back silver hair, he comes across as a successful architect enjoying the fruits of his 40-year experience in New York, which he is. But he also happens to be the designer of some of New York City’s most polarizing projects, including Donald Trump’s various towers, the Plaza Hotel’s renovation and four residential towers in the far West 40s, streets that some architecture aficionados dismiss as dull blots on the skyline.
Kondylis is clearly not uncomfortable in the middle of controversy. He has established a 185-member office, completed 75 buildings in New York and has 15 more in the works. If the architecture profession hasn’t exalted him as much as it has some others, the city’s developers keep hiring him. Again and again and again.
“I did not design museums and philharmonic halls – that’s Frank Gehry territory,” Kondylis said in a recent interview at his office. “But I always push design, and our buildings were always ahead of the game, and I think now we are in the design mainstream.”
Not everyone considers the mainstream a good place to be.
“Things are changing in New York in a positive way,” said architect Richard Meier, who suggested Kondylis’ aesthetic “is sort of where it was, not where it’s going. Costas is a traditional architect for developers who want traditional buildings in New York.”
Meier said he was replaced by Kondylis on a project near Gracie Mansion because “the developer wanted something traditional and didn’t want a good contemporary building.” Kondylis’ clients include several of the city’s major developers, like the Related Cos., Vornado Realty Trust and Forest City Ratner Cos. But his name is perhaps most closely associated with Trump.
Kondylis designed the Trump International Hotel and Tower at Columbus Circle, several buildings at Trump Place in the West 60s along the Hudson River, and near the United Nations, Trump World Tower, whose 90 stories claim the title of the world’s tallest residential building.
“Costas is an architect with great aesthetic taste who can also draw plans,” Trump said. “He’s never been given proper credit until recently. He’s starting to get it now.” While many New Yorkers consider Trump’s buildings too shiny, too tall or just tasteless, Kondylis makes no apologies for his association with the developer. “He’s an entrepreneur like all the American entrepreneurs – the Paleys and the Carnegies,” Kondylis said. “They had guts.”
Yet he acknowledged that he doesn’t like everything Trump demands. “He wanted a gold building – gold this and gold that,” Kondylis said of Trump World Tower, which ended up bronze (Kondylis’ preference). “The only compromise was the way the canopy had to incorporate bronze and the Trump name,” he added.
Larry A. Silverstein, the developer of the World Trade Center site, enlisted Kondylis for two buildings on the far West Side.
“He designs an attractive, buildable, functional building,” Silverstein said. “If I’m going to do a residential building in New York, the most natural thing in the world is to pick up the phone and call Costas.”
Despite Kondylis’ financial success, his architecture often is ignored by the critics. An exception was Herbert Muschamp’s review of Trump World Tower in The New York Times: “It punches through the morbid notion that the Midtown skyline should be forever dominated by two Art Deco skyscrapers, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, as if these cherished icons couldn’t stand the competition.”
The Greek-born Kondylis came to New York 40 years ago, after working in Switzerland. He grew up a fan of industrial design and showed an early affinity for architecture: As a child, when his parents were building a home in Athens, he would visit the site and give them his opinion. He was enthralled by residential building.
“It’s a decision you make early in your life,” he said. “With housing, you have a sense of accomplishing something on a social level. You build neighborhoods.”
While some New Yorkers have complained his projects cast shadows, bring congestion or clash with the prevailing aesthetic, he said he stands by his designs as vertical neighborhoods.
“I believe in skyscrapers,” he said. “It’s the most environmental form of urban development.”