Despotopoulos was born in
Smyrna,
Ottoman Empire (modern
İzmir, Turkey) in 1903. Soon after he was born, his family moved to the island of
Chios where he grew up. He moved to
Athens to study
architecture. He was enrolled student at the
National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) until he quit and left to study at the
Bauhaus in
Weimar. He then moved to
Leibniz University Hannover, graduating from there in 1927.{{cite web|title=Despotopoulos Ioannis(1903-1992)|website=
Benaki Museum In 1930, he returned to
Greece. By 1943 (during the
occupation of Greece by
Nazi Germany), Ioannis Despotopoulos became professor at the School of Architecture at the NTUA In 1946, he was discharged from his position at the university, and he moved to
Sweden for a period between the years 1947 and 1961. During his stay in Sweden, he worked as an architect and also taught at the
Polytechnic Institutes of
Stockholm and
Gothenburg. He returned to Greece in 1961 and was appointed immediately as a professor at the NTUA until 1968 when he retired. He died in 1992. == Major works ==