Stavros Papagiannis founded STAGEDESIGNOFFICE in Athens in 1997 with George Kyriazis, and runs it as creative director. The studio works across interiors, retail, hospitality, exhibitions, graphic design and photography — perhaps the first Greek design office to take on so broad a range.

“The craftsman makes what he wants with whatever he finds close at hand. That's how I work too — like a craftsman.”

His best-known Athens interior is AthensWas, the 21-room hotel on Dionysiou Areopagitou that opened in 2015, rooftop restaurant included. The brief was unusual for the moment: not a heritage restoration, not white-cube modernism, but a love letter to the Athens of the 1960s. Greek marble underfoot, walnut on the walls, furniture by Le Corbusier, Ettore Sottsass and Michael Graves handled like quotations rather than props. The result reads as an apartment from the era when Athens had its own architectural confidence.