Eleni Oikonomaki

Eleni was born in Heraklion and graduated with excellence from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, with a 5-year Architecture Engineering Diploma (Master's equivalent).Through her Erasmus year in Lisbon she had a chance to learn different architectural approaches. Having always an interest in technological innovation, she worked as a web designer intern at IT Center of AUTH for more than a year, developing the "myauth mobile", a personalized application for university´s students. Through this experience, she became a self-taught coder, familiarized herself with a lot of technologies and completed her dissertation on digital applications as a tool for participatory processes and social innovation.

Working for her diploma project, she grew an interest in urban planning through participation, as she believes in people´s creativity and cooperation. This tendency was reinforced in Spring 2014, when she was selected among hundreds of Greek students to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of an educational program aiming to inspire students to improve Greek universities. This trip also led her to become involved in the organization of the program as well as in university teams and many organizations in Thessaloniki. In 2017 her diploma thesis project was selected to represent Greece and to be exhibited in Greek pavilion at UIA Seoul World Architects Congress. Hopeless dreamer and in chase of her creativity, she speaks 5 languages with Spanish to be her working language during her internship at OHLAB studio.Currently, working as an architect at Gras Reynes studio in Mallorca, she has participated in several urban design competitions and she deals with issues ranging from both large scale analytics and urban development to small-scale architectural proposals.