Costas Kondylis is the principal of Kondylis Architecture, which is based in New York. Over the last three decades, he has designed dozens of residential and commercial buildings throughout the city, including several for the Trump Organization, like the Trump World Tower.

He was born at April 17, 1940. A native of the Greek island of Samos, Kondylis spent his childhood in the Belgian Congo before moving back to Greece with his parents as a teen. Following college in Switzerland, he relocated to New York to study urban design at Columbia University. Kondylis worked as an architect at Philip Birnbaum & Associates in the 1980s, and launched Costas Kondylis Architects in 1989. Since then, Kondylis has acted as a very prolific architect, and designed over 75 buildings, the majority of which are located in New York City.

In particular, Kondylis has designed several iconic skyscrapers, such as 1049 Fifth Avenue, Trump World Tower, and Manhattan Place. The tallest residential building in Manhattan, the 90-story edifice created a stir when it was proposed in the 1990s; area residents decried it as egregiously out of scale for the neighborhood, and newsman Walter Cronkite spearheaded a well-publicized (albeit futile) crusade against the building.

“Costas is an architect with great aesthetic taste who can also draw plans,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s never been given proper credit until recently. He’s starting to get it now.»

Some of examples of his work:

• Capitol at Chelsea, New York, 2001
• Grand Beekman, New York, 2003
• The Aston, New York, 2004
• 240 Riverside Boulevard at Trump place, New York, 2005
• Trump Tower at City Center, White Plains, banlieue de New York, 2005
• Barclay Street Tower, New York, 2007
• Trump parc, Stamford, banlieue de New York, 2009