Wojciech Leśnikowski

Wojciech Leśnikowski
Wojciech Leśnikowski
	Laurel Award (2013)

Wojciech Grzegorz Leśnikowski (May 9, 1938 – April 17, 2014), was a Polish–American architect, writer and educator. He oversaw and participated in the design and construction of numerous large-scale architectural projects around the world.^[1]

Career

Wojciech G. Leśnikowski passed the maturity exam in 1955, in the I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Mikołaja Kopernika in

L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1967. He went to America in 1969, worked as an architect in Chicago and continued to teach at numerous prestigious institutions. He was a chief architect at HNTB, Loebl Schlossman & Hackl, and HOK Corporation. He served as the lead designer of a hospital and a skyscraper – the iconic red CNA Center

.

He became a distinguished professor at

Laurel Award

from Kraków, Poland. He has created numerous architectural projects such as housing estates, public buildings, airports, hospitals and skyscrapers in Poland, France, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and Italy.

Teaching

1967–69:

L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts

1969–72: Yale University
1972–78: Cornell University
1975–79: University of Pennsylvania
1981–88: University of Illinois Chicago
1981―88: University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
1989–2014: University of Kansas – Distinguished Don Hatch Professor

Writing

1982: Romanticism and Rationalism in Architecture
1990: The New French Architecture
1993: Many Faces of German Modernism
1994: Modernism in Czechoslovakian, Hungarian and Polish Architecture 1919–39
1994: Architecture of Germany between Two World Wars
Numerous articles published in the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Poland

Awards

1977: Fulbright International Award
1981, 1983, 1989: Graham Foundation Grant
1989: Fulbright Grant
1990: Chevalier de L'
French Republic
1991–1992: National endowment for Humanities Grant
1992: German Academy of Science Grant
2013: Kraków
Laurel Award

Architectural philosophy

Teaching and research interests^[2]

Architectural design: large-scale buildings, current high-tech, future technologies, experimental architecture
Architectural history theories
Aesthetics of modern architecture
Architecture as industrial art
Corporate practice in contemporary architecture

Areas of expertise^[2]

Advanced architectural design – large-scale buildings, cutting-edge technologies
Architectural history and theories of architecture
Architectural publications
European current architecture and practice
International airport and skyscraper design

Personal life

Family

Wojciech Leśnikowski was the son of Roman and Irena, born in 1938, one year before the

anti-communist sympathies, the authorities came to the Leśnikowski home on Wojciech's 10th birthday. He did not see his father again until 1953, when he was released from a Soviet Gulag following the death of Joseph Stalin.^[3] His parents survived the war, but many of his family members did not. Wojciech married a fellow architect and educator Rebecca James in 1987. On July 22, 1995, he became a single parent to his two young daughters, when his wife died in a horse-riding accident in Poland.^[4]

He later married Julie Lesnikowski, owner of Jordan Ross Designs in Lawrence, Kansas.