Robert Traynham Coles, FAIA

I have many reminiscences, not only of my years at Minnesota but also M.I.T., and then going on to the profession I love. They include:

1. Working with Buckminster Fuller on two projects and the complications that developed.


2. Meeting Ralph Rapson, who became Dean at the School of Architecture, while I attended graduate school at M.I.T.


3. Meeting fellow student Randy Vosbeck, who is now the Senior President of the AIA, and who also received the CALA Alumni Achievement award.


4. Meeting fellow student Louis Angelikus and interning with his father's firm to design the Richfield State Bank while Louis and I were still students at Minnesota; and working with James Stageberg on his first house while he attended graduate school at Harvard.


5. Meeting Kay Lockhart, who later worked with me at Techbuilt Homes in Cambridge. Returning to Minneapolis after graduating, I attended parties hosted by Kay and his wife, Lynn, to honor Dean Rapson. I also enjoyed dining at their New French Café.


6. Attending other parties in later years honoring Rapson, including a "Breakfast with Rapson." I cherish a photograph taken of us at one of these parties; Tom (Fisher), you were there.


7. Winning the Rotch Travelling Scholarship in 1954, allowing me to spend a year travelling and studying in Europe. Jim Stageberg followed me, winning the Rotch a year later.


8. Receiving the Whitney Young Jr. Citation from the AIA in 1981.


9. Serving as the AIA's first Deputy Vice President for Minority Affairs from 1982 to 1984.


10. Being elevated to the Chancellor of the AIA's College of Fellows in 1994, and in 1997 receiving the CALA Alumni Achievement Award.

Very truly yours,
Robert Traynham Coles, FAIA, President