‘I believe we got it right the first time’

For many years, French-Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi was an almost unwanted person in Greece, at least for those who knew his name and associated him with the first and most emblematic public building constructed in Athens in the 21st century. The Acropolis Museum, one of his most important international projects along with the Parc de la Villette in Paris, had received relentless criticism, especially here in Athens. The sturdy metal and glass structure built between the excavations and the Weiler Building had been criticized by much of the public and a section of the architectural community as "arrogant," "disrespectful" to the landscape, and "in competition with" the "Sacred Rock" of the Acropolis and the Parthenon.

Fifteen years after the inauguration of the Acropolis Museum on June 20, 2009, when post-Olympic Greece was struggling to preserve some of its illusory glow...