The 37-year old Nikos Anastasiou graduated from Diplareios School / Greek Industrial Company and then traveled to London, ICBS Business College at the University of Kingston, for studies in business administration. At the same university he completed postgraduate studies in strategic management, conducting diplomatic work on emotional intelligence.

The son of carpenter Vasilis Anastasiou from Mavrotopos, Thesprotia, who came to Athens in 1971 and started ten years later with a small carpenter’s shop in Menidi, Nikos Anastasiou inherited his father’s craft and is now the CEO of the woodworking company named Epexyl.

Among the projects that Epexyl has carried out are the carpentry of the Greek National Opera at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. This work has changed once and for all the course of Nikos Anastasiou and Epexyl.

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. Photo: epexyl.com

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center is housed in a 28,000-square-building, designed by internationally renowned architect Renzo Piano. In 2012, Epexyl participated in the woodworking contest for Renzo Piano’s works. And won the contest.

Renzo Piano had called for the opera panels to be completely specific. It wanted to be wavy, with dimensions 3X3 and without joints for aesthetic reasons. Whatever attempts were made, it was wrong. What he wanted, literally, was impossible to make.

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. Photo: epexyl.com

It took six months of testing and investing in different techniques until Nikos Anastasiou managed to offer the solution that Renzo Piano was looking for, while gaining the Italian architect’s trust.

Epexyl with an innovative proposal managed to overcome three international companies, undertaking the project.

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. Photo: epexyl.com

Since that day and within three years, Epexyl has succeeded to be part of global projects and having offices in New York, London and Paris.

Recently, Epexyl handed over the new Paris court. In the United States, Epexyl is involved in the largest private investment in the history of the country, Hudson Yards, a $ 25 billion project. Also, they participated in the New India Opera House in Mumbai and the New Opera House in Hanoi.

Hudson Yards

At some point, the New York investor Harry B. Macklowe saw the photos of the new Greek National Opera on the walls of the Renzo Piano office and asked “who did the job?”. Then, he invited Nikos Anastasiou to take over all the woodwork in the building at 432 Park Avenue in New York, 425 meters high, the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere!

432 Park Avenue

He has also participated in many works by Renzo Piano, such as Columbia University, the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art, or the impressive offshore expansion of Monaco.

Furthermore, in Accor Hotel Group hotels in Côte d’Ivoire, in large hotel units of the Four Seasons hotel giant in the Dominican Republic, as well as in building complexes in Lebanon, Paris and London.

Agricultural University of Athens. Photo: epexyl.com

“I’m not a politician, I’m a carpenter. I started with a family craft in Menidi, and today I live most of my life in Manhattan”, the Greek businessman said at the Greek Business Success Conference, as part of the forum” Greece: the roads of hope “. organized by Le Nouvel Observateur magazine along with Kathimerini Newspaper and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, in collaboration with the International Chamber of Commerce and the Greek-French Chamber of Commerce.

Athens Concert Hall. Photo: epexyl.com

In 2018, Nikos Anastasiou was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Oxford in Business and Management as a “key contributor to the development of a local economy”.