Grecian Yearn

Designer Tino Zervudachi makes a highly personal (and inspiring) statement at his renovated jewel-box apartment in Athens

-  MITCHELL OWENS

Faced with staying a few nights in a city they often visit, most people check into a plush hotel. Tino Zervudachi, on the other hand, wanted a pied-àterre that reflected his own sensibility. “I have lots of work in Greece, enough to bring me here once a month, so Athens feels like home,” says the AD100 interior architect and decorator, who has a place on the Aegean island of Hydra (AD, April 2017) and jets between Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles, where he has offices.

After a year of searching, Zervudachi settled on a top-floor flat on a quiet street in the city’s shopaholic-ready Kolonaki district. (Yes, he can see the Acropolis.) “It ticked all the boxes: It was a ruin, nobody had done anything to it since the 1960s, and the building was considered to be a rather better one for its time.” What he didn’t like, though, were its inadequate ceiling heights and higgledy-piggledy floor plan, devised by the original architect to squeeze in four little bedrooms and just one bath.