FRIEDRICH ST. FLORIAN

www.fstflorian.com

risd connection: Professor Emeritus (1963-2005) and adjunct faculty, Department of Architecture

professional practice: Friedrich St. Florian, Architect, in Providence, best known for the design of the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC

the road to risd: A native of Graz, Austria, St. Florian first came to the US as a Fulbright Fellow studying at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, where he earned a Master of Science in Architecture. After teaching at Columbia for a year, he joined RISD’s faculty in 1963, helping to launch the school’s renowned European Honors Program in Rome, which he directed from 1965-67. In the ensuing years, he has spent as much time in the classroom as at the drafting table, and served as dean of Architectural Studies from 1978-88 and as acting vice president for Academic Affairs from 1981-84.

shifting gears: From the day he decided to enter the competitive race to design the WWII memorial, St. Florian knew from having lived through the war as a boy that “wars must be remembered, not glorified.” And given his lifelong focus on teaching, research and the design of highly conceptual “imaginary architecture,” he did not expect to cap his award-winning career with large-scale public projects like malls and monuments.

making it: St. Florian’s work is included in numerous private collections as well as the permanent collections of MoMA, the Georges Pompidou Center, MIT and The RISD Museum. He served as project architect for Providence Place, the city’s first regional retail and entertainment center and the largest construction project ever undertaken in Rhode Island. Since completing the $100-million WWII memorial in 2004, St. Florian has continued to work on both public and provate commissions.

discoveries: (1) “When I was 10 or 11, I was a sandcastle-builder, a dam-builder. I wanted to build for the pleasure, the delight of it.” (2) “Today, we live in a world that is highly ambiguous, very fractured, with many of the historical, traditional values in a state of collapse. From a moral point of view, [the WW II era] really constitutes a completely different time.” (3) “If World War II was the defining event of the 20th century, modern architecture was the defining language.”

education
Technical University, Master of Architecture, Graz, Austria, 1958
Columbia University, Master of Science in Architecture, 1962

awards
Honorary Doctorate, Brown University, 2006
Rome Prize Fellowship, American Academy in Rome, 1994
Fellow, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, 1970-76
Fulbright Fellow, Columbia University, 1961-62