George Johannes

George Johannes, AIA, has been teaching professional practice courses in the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design since 1994 and is currently a faculty advisor in the Sustainability Exchange. After earning his Master of Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, Johannes accepted a position as an architectural designer with the highly regarded and award-winning firm Hoffman/Saur Associates. His work there primarily involved educational projects, including a new high school for the Parkview School District in west St. Louis County.

Over the next several years, his work included high-rise luxury condominiums and a number of restaurants. Due to his educational design experience, Johannes was recruited by The Christner Partnership, Inc. in 1976. His early work there included several educational master plans; a number of elementary and secondary school projects; and ultimately the programming, design, production, and project management for a new high school in Craig, Colorado.

In 1980, Ted Christner asked Johannes to take on leadership of the firm as managing partner. During his tenure there from 1980-1990, the firm grew from 19 to 70 empoloyees, including 35 architects. Christner rose from the 26th-largest firm to the 5th-largest in St. Louis, allowing it to design and manage larger projects, including St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond Heights and a $40 million flight simulation and research and development center for McDonnell Douglas Corporation (now Boeing), for which Johannes was the managing director of a team of 20 architects and engineers.

In an effort to re-immerse in the architectural design process, particularly on smaller, less complex projects, Johannes left Christner and founded with partner Tom Cohen the Johannes/Cohen Collaborative, Inc. Johannes served as president from 1992-2006. Project types included single-family residential, new housing for HIV-AIDS patients, historic rehabilitation of abandoned warehouses for historic tax credits, land planning projects for the Bi-State Development Agency and Trailnet, restaurants including the Schlafly Tap Room and Sqwires, the Hope Clinic for Women, the Kingsbury Animal Hospital, and the “Kayak” building for WashU.

Since 2006, practicing as George W. Johannes, AIA Architect, Johannes’ work has focused largely on new and remodeled residential projects. Additionally, he completed a 40,000-square-foot clubhouse project for Independence Center, a day-place facility for social communing for severely mentally ill individuals. His research, analysis, and expert testimony for lawsuits challenging highly restrictive state laws intended to shutdown abortion clinics has been significant in recent years, including the successful U.S. Supreme Court decision in Whole Women Health v. Hellerstedt (State of Texas), which overturned their restrictive building code regulations.

Throughout Johannes’ over 1,000 projects, his attitude toward the object of architectural design has consistently evolved toward a belief that the beauty of architecture should emerge from the elegance, clarity, and correctness of the underlying logic of the design decisions and their implementation. Once the final product emerges, its beauty should emanate from its obvious logical correctness.