Ioannis Lambridis was born in Athens in February 1980.
At school he is an average student, with a tendency to isolate himself from his classmates.
“I make him sit at the last desk and I let him paint without bothering others or being bothered”, his elementary school teacher would typically tell his mother.
At age 13 he participates in a children’s painting exhibition at the cultural centre of his municipality. Most of the works are landscapes and seascapes. In the last corridor on the right and under his name, plans and elevations of sports arenas are exhibited, as well as shoe designs.
“It must have been in 1984 or 1985 when our father took us to see the Athens Olympic Stadium, which was new at the time. I don’t remember the visit, but I do remember that sensation of space, of the air, of the symmetry around the main event. That is most probably the beginning of my practical occupation with design”.
During his school years he attends harmonium classes and participates in the local basketball team. His musical studies are abruptly cut due to his weakness in ‘adjusting’ to the pentagram, as he has a preference for anarchic improvisations (until this day). As for basketball, it abandons him first, when it realizes that he exploits it in order to visit the sports arenas of Athens.
In the summer of 1993 he is in Istanbul with his family, where he visits for the first time the Aghia Sophia temple.
“It wasn’t merely the size of the temple. It was the spirituality, the serenity and the grandeur that pervades you, mainly in the interior of Aghia Sophia. The same feeling of 1985 was revived when I stood under the dome and I lifted my gaze. Something great passed from this place. It is obvious in the imprint…”
Finishing school, he decides to follow Pharmaceutical studies. He opts for Tuscany and chooses to live in the town of Siena.
“A medieval maze of cobbled alleys, leading to a vast clearing, a vast expanse, at the heart of the city. Piazza del Campo inspires in me exactly the same emotion for the third time. That was the very reason I selected it even before I knew about the town’s university…”
From his first student years and concurrently with his Pharmaceutical studies, he begins to practice in design. In 2007 he discovers Sketchup and his designs move on to their digital form. Project The Dome, project Zero, project Cucchiaio were the first. These were followed by several projects of sports facilities, residences, visual arts, furniture and others.
For his graduation, he is called to select the subject of his thesis. Amongst diseases and pharmaceutical formulas, he decides to present the renovation of a pharmacy.
“My designs had become presentable. I had to find a way to exhibit them…”
On the presentation of his thesis, “Renovating with Merchandising as a Guide”, the digital model of the existing pharmacy is renovated and revolves in the amphitheatre, before the stunned gaze of pharmacologists and general practitioners, who don’t know how to evaluate him.
Since 2009, he has been living and working in Athens.
“It hardly concerns me whether my designs are technically feasible. I suppose Modigliani wasn’t concerned whether his painted women were blind either…”
