Photograph by Dilip Vishwanat
George Nikolajevich grew up in the clear light of Sibenik, Croatia, a town on the Adriatic coast where narrow streets curved between centuries-old white stone buildings. He worked in Switzerland and Yugoslavia, earned the money to come to Washington University for a master’s in architecture and stayed three decades. Now he’s a principal at Cannon Design, and his work is as contemporary as the hardest-edged urban high-rise. But what it’s praised for? Curved lines, skylit translucence, textures as satisfying as time-rubbed stone, colors bright as a yellow sun and the blue of the Adriatic Sea.
This one’s cool. [It’s a rendering, pinned to his office wall, that’s all glass and curves in the middle of what looks like a forest.] This whole thing is done to dodge the trees and capture the trees. It’s in a northern location, so it’s filled with glass, and at night it glows behind the trees. Because it’s lifted, the scientists work literally floating in the trees. And there’s a green roof—all that is now hype, but good architects were doing it long before it became hype.
You’ve won 35 awards from the American Institute of Architects. What are they recognizing in your work? [He shrugs.] Innovation, problem-solving. Generally those awards are given by architects who look at the world as a place where contemporary architecture should be around us. As opposed to imitation.
So you’re not wild about re-creating Federal or Georgian? People are free to choose how they want to live. You have people who like something that resembles the old and is a repetition of the old. Others feel that this world has to move forward.
If it worked, why not repeat it? Here’s an example. In a classical building done in the classical times, you had a narrow span from column to column, because of the structural technology. That narrow space does not allow for insertion of modern laboratories or auditoriums. So to do a building that is inside modern, with those big spans, and put the garb of the old on the outside …
Is dishonest? [He shrugs again.] I have a conviction that we should move forward. Particularly America, the country that led in the 20th century in so many ways. Walt Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gershwin, Gen. Patton—those are the people who impressed people like me looking toward America. Given the right circumstances, America showed a power of imagination and daring that is unsurpassed.
I notice you’re speaking in the past tense. In architecture, America in the last 20 years was surpassed by—and this is a very interesting thing—Europeans and the Japanese. In the ’80s and ’90s, people of influence in America, high-level board members and developers, felt that looking back to the old was just more appealing. And to be truthful, there were modern buildings that were disappointing. So people of influence pretty much determined what American architects would do.
And nobody told the Europeans what to do? Ironically, they, in places where the old buildings are much older, had some support and subsidy to experiment with the new. They emerged as the innovators. And those very influential people who wanted to repeat the old are now turning to the Europeans.
What was the great disappointment of so much Modernist architecture? Well, we all have sins, including myself. Any movement or direction in architecture—which usually starts with the theory of innovative architects—once in the hands of most of us, gets watered down. A pristine, revolutionary building of the kind Mies van der Rohe did becomes a banal insertion in Oklahoma City.
Surely there were sins more grievous than being banal? It lacked warmth often. It lacked detail. It lacked familiarity, which is an important aspect of human nature. There were architects who overcame that, by the way, like Alvar Aalto in Finland and Frank Lloyd Wright here.
So do you ever wish you’d stayed in Europe? Oh no. There is still more room, there was even in those two decades, for architects to flourish here. In Europe, a few are called to rise to the top. America is more egalitarian, and I’m a big beneficiary of that. I would not trade my position here for one moment.
What’s your impression of American design? Visit little towns like Jacksonville, Ill. You will find houses done by people who never saw an architect, but cared about the materials. The same can be said about American Colonial architecture in Jefferson’s time. Things that grew out of American soil were extremely fresh in proportion, economy of means and beauty.
And in the future? I don’t believe America will be threatened in the 21st century, even though other nations are showing momentary muscle in development. I don’t want this to sound like a big pro-America diatribe by a foreigner, but I believe the spirit in this country is more important than minerals or size. Other nations have historic obstacles, including tribalism, which will take them a long time to surpass.
Tell me what you mean by tribalism. I come from a country that was destroyed because of nationalism—and I am mixed, I am half Croatian and half Serbian. Once that civil war started, there were no villains or victims only; they are all both villain and victim. And the tribalism that destroyed my country exists throughout the world today, including religious tribalism. But the beauty of America is that it somehow mixes us all into something new, so that while people are proud of their backgrounds and their histories, there is a different thing here that binds all of us together. Provided you protect it.
How did you feel about the wave of identity politics here, with all its emphasis on what distinguished different groups? Diversity in America is the nature of the beast. But multiculturalism? That’s a dangerous proposition. It reinforces differences that have become artificial.
What drew you to the visual arts? At 6, I drew cartoons, funny characters like Dennis the Menace. And I painted a lot, watercolor scenes from the coast, until I was 17. Now I use watercolors—their transparency, their contrast between light and shadow—to discover solutions for buildings.
You start a design on paper, not on a computer screen? Yeah, I don’t know how you can start designing without doodling. But now my experience brings some reality to this thing quickly. I also quickly engage my colleagues, young and old, regardless of their rank. Architecture is a collective sport. I owe a lot to the colleagues that do nonglamorous things.
What’s an architect’s challenge? Buildings are really complex creatures: costs, materials, the world economy, politics, emotion, technical needs, safety, the client … When Nike decides to do a shoe, it studies the market and starts designing the shoe. During that period the market doesn’t interfere. For an architect, every day something is interfering. We are trained to see all the forces at the same time. It’s like the guy in the circus with the balls.
How much input do your clients have? Let me tell you about Father Biondi’s building [the new Doisy Research Center]. The way it turns the corner? That was Father Biondi’s idea. I’m not sure that would have happened if he hadn’t said it. He has a good instinct about the built environment.
What architects have been important to St. Louis? Gyo Obata. Bill Bowersox—he does small, modest buildings with low budgets, but he has a terrific mind. Gene Mackey. Lou Saur. Harris Armstrong. And of course George Hellmuth—the man whose wisdom, talent and ability to see talent in others created the largest firm in the world [Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum].
You used to work at HOK—why’d you leave? There is a time in the career of an architect that they want to try something on their own. Foolish or not foolish, right or wrong. Gyo did the same.
If you were giving an architectural tour, where would you take people? Unquestionably, the Arch. The Wainwright Building. Gyo’s Priory chapel. Harris Armstrong’s Modernist buildings. The Art Museum in Forest Park. The Jewel Box. Erich Mendelsohn’s B’nai Amoona Synagogue, now COCA. And the Pulitzer—but I absolutely understand that it’s an architect’s architecture.
Meaning … ? Well, there are buildings whose quality is tied to the historic evolution of modern architecture. Tadao Ando certainly studied great European modernists, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, and out of that, in my opinion, he drew inspiration and then transformed it into his own. It could be that the Pulitzer is overly simple, doesn’t have enough detail. Or people are just not sure what to think of it.
Are architects inevitably egoists? Well, this is an interesting subject. Architects are often accused of ego. Is that because of the movies, because of Frank Lloyd Wright and his terrific ego? I would say just one thing: To do anything of consequence in life, anything that is worth looking at or experiencing, there has to be ambition. But that ambition cannot overlook the fact that other people are smart, and they too have a soul. If one understands by ego a belligerent shoving down the throat what you want, that’s wrong. But if there are architects like that, I frankly haven’t met them. We don’t have the luxury.
How can a building convey something as intangible as hope, as your cancer center in Kansas is said to do? People often tell us that as they approach, they feel its warmth; they feel embraced by the building. It’s curved, filled with light, open to the landscape, part of its surroundings. It makes a contribution to passersby on the street rather than being obsessed
with itself.
What’s your dream commission? My career, and I’m grateful for it, is going in the direction of bigger and more complex buildings. I would love to test my abilities with something that is not like that—like a house or a little museum.
If you could live inside any building in the world, where would you be happiest? I would say that I would feel extremely good in a house done by Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto or Eero Saarinen. What I like about Aalto is that he refused to follow blindly the dogma of modern architecture. He and Frank Lloyd Wright made modern architecture more human. Aalto’s forms, his use of material is almost painterly, poetic. He reduces to a minimum that Modernist coldness.
You’ve been called a Midwestern architect—which is ironic, given your Croatian birthplace, and not necessarily a coveted label, in a country dominated by the coasts. Do you resent the term? No, in fact by now I am enjoying it. I have lived here longer than anywhere else. I hope some of my background came with me, but there is a certain common sense and simplicity of vision here—not a banal simplicity, but an openness and an underlying pragmatism. There’s a certain normalcy here that I have benefited from, I think.
