CAF Video Initiative - Richard Fleischman, FAIA

Born in Cleveland in 1928, Fleischman was encouraged to study architecture by an uncle who noticed his avid interest in drawing and building models. During his senior year at East Tech High School, Fleischman won a scholastic scholarship to Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie-Mellon University. After finishing a five-year program, he spent two years at Columbia University followed by a one-year traveling fellowship that allowed him to visit historic sites in Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany and Scandinavia. Fleischman worked with Cleveland architect William Conrad for a few years before founding his own firm in 1961.

Richard Fleischman Associates + Partners has completed more than 500 projects and won over 100 awards. Fleischman was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1974, and he received the AIA’s individual Gold Medal in 2001. His firm was awarded the Gold Medal in 1988. Fleischman’s signature style is characterized by clean geometric lines, vast expanses of glass and light-filled open spaces. The timelessness of his designs has been affirmed by four 25-year awards from AIA Ohio.

Fleischman’s exemplary reputation was built on designing non-traditional educational and sacred spaces. Standout church projects include St. Paschal Baylon in Highland Heights, Ohio, a mirror-glass structure soaring over a fan-shaped sanctuary that brings all worshippers close to the central altar and St. Michaels Church in North Canton, OH. In the 1970s, Fleischman pioneered the idea of open-plan school architecture. His design for Villa Angela Academy, a Catholic girls’ school on the banks of Lake Erie, set out to “stimulate teaching and learning in an unorthodox space.” The sparkling concrete-and-glass building was later successfully recycled into a multipurpose branch of the Cleveland Public Library.

Fleischman’s sleek forms are ideally suited for expressing the cutting-edge function of high-tech science buildings. The distinctive profile of the glass-and-steel Polymer Science Building at the University of Akron makes a strong statement on the skyline of a city that Newsweek named as one of America’s “high-tech havens.” The Ohio Aerospace Institute, a gleaming glass-skinned research facility near Cleveland Hopkins Airport, symbolizes the spirit of flight, and has accommodated numerous programn changes since ints completion in 1993. Winner of a 1994 MDO Award as one of the top 50 buildings in the world, the unique structure was praised by New York architect Peter Pran FAIA as “a masterpiece . . . full of movement and life, superb detailing and poetic and exuberant spaces throughout.”

While Fleischman is known for his modern architecture, his renovation projects reflect a deft hand and eye. While renovating a 1905 lakefront mansion in Bratenahl named Breezy Bluff for himself and his wife, Fleischman designed and erected a series of award-winning glass single family contemporary homes around the property.

His most significant 21st-century achievements include the Cleveland Job Corps Center, a campus of nine pristine glass-and-tile buildings on a 25-acre site that once housed a sprawling manufacturing complex, the building addition housing the Euclid Beach Grand Carousel at the Western Reserve Historical Center and the $60M renovation of two 1960’s 14-story dormitories at the University of Cincinnati.

Video Interview: https://youtu.be/QlaQLBWOLro