Pub. 2 2021-2022 Issue 1

22 REFLEXION | 2021-22 | AIA Utah F rank Ferguson is the second “F” of the prominent architectural firm Fowler Ferguson Kingston and Ruben (FFKR). Fran Pruyn and Darby Doyle of City Home Collective spoke with the very vital Mr. Ferguson in his home in Holladay in late May 2021. He chronicled his decision to enter architecture, his education in Utah and Minnesota, his experience in Europe, the Midwest, and San Francisco, and how FFKR became an important and established firm in Salt Lake City. When did you decide to be an architect? I had been at the University (of Utah) in the School of Engineering, but I wasn’t measuring up; I wasn’t good at it. Then I went on a mission for the LDS Church to Canada. When I came back, I thought about it and decided I would like to be an architect. Why? Because I was right next to the art school, and the architecture program at the U had started only a few years before. Roger Baily was traveling through Salt Lake, This is the second in a series of architectural legends; interviews with retired architects who practiced in Utah during the second half of the twentieth century. These memories archive the personal careers of these architects and speak to the evolution of the architectural industry in the United States. Frank Ferguson, FAIA Interviews with Local Legends he met with the President of the U, and they got a school going. I had been taking watercolor classes, and I would go over there, and there would be these drawings [by] architects. I would walk away and my heart would be beating, and I’d think, “Boy, that looks great.” So, I registered in the architecture school and graduated in 1963. Roger encouraged me to go to graduate school, so I went to the University of Minnesota and graduated from the University of Minnesota in architecture after getting a degree here in architecture. It was a great time in my life. I met some great people on the faculty and the student body. What next? I had always been interested in Gothic Cathedrals. I wondered how in the hell did they get built. So, my wife and I decided that we would take our two kids and go to Europe. I got a job in a small town in the French Alps. It was a good firm, and one of the chief architects made it possible for me to work on a design of a Catholic Chapel in the Alps for the Olympics. So, I kind of fell into it. That is the first real design I did as a professional. The firm was just right for me, and I was just right for the firm. Frank returned to the United States and back to Salt Lake City in the seventies. He, Ray Kingston, Jack Smith and John Perkins formed a firm called Enteleki. John Perkins left, and Jack Smith, who was working on Snowbird, moved to Sun Valley. That left Ray and me. I was friends with Bob Fowler. We were both INTERVIEWED BY FRAN PRUYN.