Robert Paschal
Burns Jr.FAIA
(1933–2005)
Burns was born in Roxboro NC. He attended Wake Forest College and NCSU, graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1957. That same year he won the Paris Prize in Architecture and studied in Europe and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts for 18 months with wife Margaret Tucker Burns (later Greer). He served in the Army around 1959 for a few months in Columbia SC. In 1961 he entered MIT and earned a Master of Architecture degree. After working for Eduardo Catalano in Boston, he returned to Raleigh in 1965 to teach at the NCSU School of Design. During the late 1960s he had a private practice with Abie Harris as Harris & Burns at 1906 1/2 Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. After that, he remarried and opened up a design studio, Burnstudio, with Norma Burns. Around 1984, the firm was mentioned in TIME as one of the top in the country. After Eduardo Catalano's iconic Raleigh house was destroyed in 2001, Burns worked closely with Catalano on several unsuccessful attempts to rebuild it.
Burns won the 2003 Gertrude S. Carraway Award from Preservation North Carolina for his work on the Henry Kamphoefner house. AIANC gave him the Dietrick Medal in 2004, the same year he won the first Isosceles Award from AIA Triangle. In 2005, he was tragically killed in a car accident. Memorial service. His son Adam recalled in 2015 that Burns did more than four houses; if you know of any, please contact us.
Sources include: Son Adam Burns; Burns' Obituary; AIA North Carolina; wife Margaret Greer; wife Norma Burns; School of Design: The Kamphoefner Years, 1948-1973 by Roger Clark; Kristen Howard; Pat Allen; NC Architect, February 1969.
