Atelier 66, the collaborative architectural practice set up by Greek architects Suzana and Dimitris Antonakakis, attracted international attention in the early 1980s, when noted historians and theorists like Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre and Kenneth Frampton hailed it as an exemplary proponent of critical regionalism. In his introduction to a 1985 monograph dedicated to the office, Frampton highlighted Atelier 66’s “cultivated sense of collectivity”, noting that this ethos was an essential characteristic of the practice of critical regionalism, which “consciously cultivates its own roots … to arrive at its expressive form”. But while Frampton was right to emphasize the collective spirit of Atelier 66, his account idealized the way the firm actually operated, some 20 years after its founding. By the time his celebratory monograph was published, Atelier 66 had grown to 12 partners, but within a year its apparently “stable” structure had dissolved. Based on interviews with its members, I will retrace the inner life of this collaborative architectural practice to show how Frampton’s critical regionalist discourse accelerated its inevitable dissolution.