My father, Dimitri Petrohilos, who has died aged 81, was an architect and furniture designer.
The son of an architect, George Petrohilos, and his wife, Elli (nee Georgiadis), Dimitri was born in Athens. His family lived in their cellar when the German army occupied their home during the second world war. After the war, they settled in Tanzania, where Dimitri rode camels, rallied cars, hunted in the bush and crash-landed a Tiger Moth, in a tree. He created his first building, a church, with his father.
After taking a sculpture course in Florence, Dimitri applied widely to study architecture and in 1953 went to the University of Cincinnati. He revelled in all that 1950s America had to offer a handsome Greek in a pink zoot suit. He travelled through Mexico to Cuba, where he recalled meeting Fidel Castro; he also ran into Elvis Presley at Radio City in New York, he told us. An outspoken and avid reader of communist material, he came to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee and in 1955 left the US, initially for Canada.
In 1956 he returned to his family in Dar es Salaam and joined his father’s firm. Four years later, he moved to London to study at the Architectural Association and work for Booty Edwards & Partners. Using his expertise honed in the tropics, he was the project architect on the new Standard Chartered Bank headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, an elegant concrete building that towered above the developing city but is now dwarfed by its neighbours.
Returning to Tanzania in the late 60s he worked for the architecture consultancy firm Norman and Dawbarn, where, among many other buildings, he designed Nkrumah Hall for the University of Dar es Salaam. In 2003 it appeared on the newly designed 500 shilling banknote, and in 2015 the Tanzanian government decreed it a national heritage site.
Like many architects, Dimitri became fascinated with designing furniture. In the mid-60s he founded Adeptus, initially with a studio and shop in Primrose Hill, north London, then on Tottenham Court Road and elsewhere in London, and also sold in the US. Eventually there were 19 stores worldwide. He was obsessed with simplicity and economy of material, developing foam furniture to create designs such as the Bedsit and the Duo chair.
In 1979 he founded Estia Designs, continuing a modular flat-pack approach to office and studio furniture. He invented and patented innumerable ingenious clips and hinges, and dreamed of furniture made up of infinitely configurable components, to give the customer complete control over what they bought.
My father told stories to rival those of Homer and in explaining the gentle curvature of the Parthenon steps he inspired me to become an architect too.
Dimitri is survived by his third wife, Julia (nee Thomas), whom he married in 2012; by two daughters, Elli and Daphne and a son, Alexi, from his first marriage, to Poppy (nee Kazamia), which ended in divorce; by a daughter, Zoe, from his second marriage, to Jill (nee Syrett), which ended in divorce; and by me, his son from a previous relationship with Naomi Games.
