NEW YORK. - Having designed 45 high-rises in the city, Greek American Architect Costas Kondylis has helped shape the New York City skyline.

A sophisticated man of the world who speaks English, Greek, and French fluently, Kondylis was born in Africa, in the Belgian Congo. His father, a Greek businessman, owned a coffee plantation and several stores in Africa, and real estate in Greece. At the age of 13, his parents returned to Greece, where he attended the prestigious Anavryta National School, a boarding school in Athens famed for educating the former Greek crown prince of Greece.

Kondylis' love for architecture blossomed when he was a teenager. He said he has always had a predisposition for architecture and industrial design.

He is thankful for having lived all around the world and recommends world travel to architecture students, as it can open whole new concepts to them.

"This is the best training you can ask for, to have such an interesting experience - I think it should be apart of every student's experience to have international travel," he told the Herald last week.

He received a Masters Degree in Architecture from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where he studied architecture for three years before coming to America in 1967.

He earned another Masters Degree in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University in New York City, and in 1969 began working for the architectural firm of Davis, Brody and Associates, where he stayed for 10 years. He then became a partner at Philip Birnbaum and Associates, and worked there for 10 more years before starting his own architectural firm in 1989.

Kondylis received a lifetime achievement award for design excellence from the New York Society of Architects in 1996, among many other awards for his contributions to architecture.

He has lectured at Yale, Harvard, Columbia and New York universities. Last month he spoke to a group of Greek Americans at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Manhattan about designing and developing luxury high-rise buildings in New York City.

He described Fifth Avenue as an example of "contextual architecture," meaning that the buildings fit into their surroundings. When the buildings lining Fifth Avenue were created, the zoning trend at the time was to build up to the property line with no limits on height. Following that, came what's called the "towers in the park" zoning trend. The best example of this design concept is the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, which was built in the late 1950s.

"I don't think I have ever met any developer who doesn't admire that building," said Kondylis.

He said its minimalistic and simple design was the inspiration for the Trump World Tower in the U.N. neighborhood of Manhattan. At 90 stories high, the Trump World Tower is the tallest exclusively residential building in the world.

"The height of the building had nothing to do with me," said Kondylis. "That had to do with a businessman who could get the square footage.

Amazingly, Trump was able to build the structure without any special permits, by purchasing the ail lights of the neighboring Catholic and Japan Societies. Its height is equivalent to four 28-story buildings, said Kondylis, and Trump's neighbor's were not happy about it, but there was little they could do to stop it. Even today, said Kondylis, there are no restrictions on a building's maximum height, provided all the right permits are in place.

Kondylis said the height and slenderness of the building make it quite elegant, but did pose a design challenge.

"The challenge here was the structural design," said Kondylis. He said most skyscrapers are designed much like the wing of an airplane, built to be flexible enough to withstand winds that can reach up to 100 miles per hour.

He explained that the Trump Tower was constructed with a 600 ton computerized mass at the top that is sensitive to wind, thereby giving the building its stability.

"This is not the first time this has been done, studies have been done on this," stressed Kondylis, "but it is the first time it was done on a residential building."

The Trump Tower has 72 floors, many with 16 foot ceilings, owing to the fact that its height is equivalent to that of a regular 90 story building, typically built with 8 foot ceilings.

The 20,000 square foot apartment in the top two floors of the building made recent headlines when it went on the market for $55 million, Kondylis said the apartment is five times the size of a typical, four bedroom, 3,500 square foot house.

"Nothing blocks the view," he said, adding, "but whether it's worth $55 million or not, that's not for me to say."

He said an extremely wealthy foreigner with homes all over the world i put down $8 million dollars to purchase the property at $37 million. The potential buyer changed his mind about buying the property because he was having tax problems, and lost his $8 million deposit.

"This is not a piece of real estate people buy because they need a roof over their head," he said. On the opposite end of the economic spectrum , are rental properties. The well-known architectural idiom "form follows function" is not used when constructing most apartment buildings. "They are money makers," said Kondylis. So, in the case of rental building designs, "form follows finance," he quipped.

He said skyscrapers are more environmentally sound because they eat up less land, as opposed to a sprawling development that can eat up acres and acres of land.

The trend in architecture these days is to build quickly and efficiently Kondylis said; The Trump Tower took a mere 18 months to build. He said some design is often done concurrent with construction, to save time. Gone are the days when a project spent three years on the drawing board and another two to build.

"Unfortunately, this is the design of the future," said Kondylis, adding that the Bridge Tower building on First Avenue was built in 15 months.

An architect's success is dependent on dealing with these challenges, he said. "We were redesigning each floor of the building - inside and out-as the building was going up. Drawings would be faxed to the field office and literally walked across the street to trades waiting to build them."

"The end result? A sales record, and, I am proud to say, not even one down day of construction."

When asked if safety is a concern when buildings are built so quickly, he replied, "there's nothing we do that's not regulated-even the amount of windows is regulated." In addition there are also safety monitors on every project whose exclusive job is to monitor the building's safety.

"It's a highly regulated profession, and every year it becomes regulated even more so," he said. Kondylis said with increased demand for space and growing energy restrictions, buildings that are environmentally friendly, or, as architects call them, "green buildings," are the future of architecture.

One example of a green building is a building designed to recycle "gray" water - water used for plumbing - and separate it from "clean," drinking water.

"Timeless design is what we always have in mind so that a building will increase in value," said Kondylis, but alas, pure design makes up for only 10 percent of an architect's work, the part most of them enjoy the most.

He said developers receive tax credits for restoring old buildings. He said that making a new building fit in with the old styles of those beside it can have its challenges, but is rewarding when the architectural styles blend together nicely. However, he adds, every generation has to put its own imprint on a building's architecture.

The trend today, according to Kondylis, is to build large, family homes, instead of small apartments, as more and more families are choosing to live in the city.

"The trend has continued since the 1990s where people want the major emphasis to be on creating homes," he said. "In the city, people are back to family lifestyles."

Kondylis has never practiced architecture in Greece, but was recently asked to design a hotel in loannina. He said he would be interested in bringing something innovative to Greece, but not to compete with the local architects there.

"There's no room for development in Athens," he said. "They're asphyxiating - the city needs to decongest." He said the airport should be planned as the new town center of Greece, away from the monuments.

"They should rebuild a beautiful beach, with residential buildings, parks - build the Lincoln Center of Athens, an Olympic Square with a flame always running," he said, his ideas flowing.

He said the proposed town center could connect to Athens via aerial trains or a subway.

"That could create a very dynamic situation in Greece," he said.

He used Canary Wharf in London as an example of successful development projects that brought in major businesses to London.

"Banking firms were able to move in, which in large part contributed to London becoming the financial center of Europe," he said.

Kondylis' upcoming projects include a development in Queens West and on the Brooklyn Waterfront, with promenades and parks. He will also design the new church and community center for the Greek Orthodox parish of Koimisis tis Theotokou in Southampton.

How does Kondylis design his own space? He said his apartment is cozy and comfortable. "When I come home, I need to relax, I don't need to go through another architectural exercise." He also owns a cozy country farmhouse in the Hamptons where he is renovating an old barn on the property. He said the country feeling of the barn is a great contrast to the steel and glass that he works with in the city.

The work of an architect, concluded Kondylis, is like that of a conductor bringing together the requirements of all parts of a building team including the developer, the marketing and sales team, designers, engineers, and the trades who build them.

"In short, our role today as architects is to bring structure and harmony to the entire process on behalf of our clients and the greater urban fabric," he said.