Russell Forester, AIA
(1920-2002)

Russell Forester spent three decades juggling his passion and vision for fine arts and architecture only to give up the latter for the former in 1976. With the aid of his second wife and architectural firm partner, Christine, Russell began his full-time career as a painter and sculptor when many of his contemporaries were retiring or at least retiring their modernist principles for safer ground.

Known for not compromising his designs for clients, Russell was among the first wave of practicing architects to push Mies Van Der Rohe’s brand of steel & glass modernism on commercial and residential clients across San Diego. From his La Jolla practice Mr. Forester is credited with many high profile commissions for local art patrons Lynn and Danah Fayman as well as restaurateurs like Bob Peterson. For Peterson (Foodmaker CEO), Russell put Mieisian modernism into pop culture by designing the first Jack in the Box restaurant in 1951. As Jack in the Box “Machines for dispensing food” (Forester, 2001) grew to well over 200 drive-thrus inside 20 years, Peterson would also have Russell design the Family Tree, a more elegant setting for dining in San Diego, as well as his personal residence.

As a painter, Russell Forester’s work grew from abstract expressionism in the late 1940s to highly developed series of works of highly charged narratives often based on Russell’s politics. An architect’s eye and valuation of linearity, repetition, and rectilinear precision was often expressed in his paintings and almost always visible in his three-dimensional work.

Arriving from Salmon, Idaho at age 5 (in 1925), Russell went on to graduate from La Jolla High School in 1938. Russell served in the Army Corps of Engineers (1943-46)where he worked as a draftsman with noted San Diego architect Lloyd Ruocco and sketched in his free time away from the drafting table. In 1948 Russell opened his first office as a freelance architectural designer. Formal study began at the urging of Lloyd Ruocco in 1950 at the Institute of Design (later IIT) in Chicago where Mies Van Der Rohe was spreading the International Style gospel.

“Had it been up to him, he would have gone directly into the arts (rather than architecture). He liked the Bauhaus ideology of diverse disciplines,” remarked widow Christine Forester. “Had he been an artist since his 20s he may have not been as productive. Russell was often discouraged from pursuing his art. By the time he devoted himself full-time to art in his 50s, there was a sense of urgency. By this time his hand was very secure and there was little waste and few mistakes,” said Mrs. Forester.

By the time he obtained his architectural license in 1960, Russell had already completed a wealth of modernist structures including his own home on Hillside Drive in La Jolla (1952, still standing).

In 1962, San Diego & Point described his artwork as arresting, constructivist, severe, functionalist, and mainstream all in the same article. Of the second home he designed for the Russell family, the magazine stated “the house….has a quiet elegance and air of privacy. The feeling, both inside and out, is one of discipline without rigidity, elegance without opulence.”

Russell Forester defined architecture as problem solving.

From his Philosophy of Practice:
We believe that good architecture grows out of a thoughtful, direct and imaginative approach to each owner’s individual problem. Our unique systems approach to the total project from the feasibility studies through design and finished construction gives us an economic and functional solution. Our understanding of the complexity of each client’s problems and the professional and artful solution to his needs is our concern. In our practice all functions (architecture, feasibility studies, planning, interiors, color or graphics) are based on a systems approach to the total concept. We know the broad scope of thinking and the individual talent that is brought to bear on each commission. It is unsurpassed.

We are entering a new age of building. An age in which a new set of ideas is taking hold. These ideas are not solely technological in nature: they are also philosophical. Relating first to larger questions of environmental planning and then concern for the isolated technical details.

Russell Forester’s career melding art and architecture was honored by his unusual FAIA recognition. Rather than his career of progressive building designs being honored, Mr. Forester was recognized by his AIA colleagues for his contribution to art and architecture aesthetics. Russell believed the central tenet to integrity of design was his residential client’s lifestyle. Some of his clients would later become patrons of his artwork –filling their Forester-designed homes with Forester-designed artwork. Clients like Lloyd Russell, Danah Fayman and Bob Peterson commissioned Russell time and again. Clients may have understood him better than his colleagues in architecture.

Recurring themes in his aesthetic flow through his career both as artist and architect. One only has to look at the ceiling of Park Prospect Apartments to understand Russell’s fascination with repetition. Many of Mr. Forester’s commissions include rows of little round light bulbs -- these “dots, lines and light” (Forester, 2001) are recurring themes in both his art and architecture. Whether using rows of light diodes, or punctuating his painting and sculpture (sometimes in steel) with a sewing machine, the linear repetition reflected this dots-in-line theme. From his La Jolla home, Russell grew fascinated by coastal mist seen through the expansive glass walls. His art often reflects coastal mornings by painting, washing, and repainting and the use of gauze to reflect this misty feeling.

Russell’s architectural designs varied in material and style over the decades (1948-1976) while always retaining central design principles – the problems the client needed solving; and how the whole project was vastly more than the sum of its parts. Clients of Russell Forester / Associates Inc. grew to expect a variety of things, central to which was his unquestionable integrity of his designs, passion and vision. During much of Mr. Forester’s architectural career, San Diego’s mid-century design aesthetic was comprised of a “lack of homogeneity in materials and approach to reflecting the region. People continued to come (to San Diego) from other elsewhere and clients wanted styles (reminding them of) from where they were from,”Mrs. Forester summarized. She continued, “He was a brilliant man, extremely talented, cut to the chase, detail oriented, never lost track of detail within content/ context of project “whole was definitely the sum of the details.”

We miss Russell. And with his legacy continuing to be demolished or remodeled, there are ever fewer living examples of his signature on the canvas of San Diego.

Partial List of San Diego Projects

800 Prospect (1964)
Eads & Prospect, La Jolla

Dr. James D. Brown Residence (1967)
633 Ranchito Drive, Escondido

Country Day Fountain (1967)
Award of Merit in 1968 from San Diego AIA

Cromwell Residence (1957)
Inyaha, La Jolla

Driver, Robert (1955)
2938 Coast Blvd, Del Mar, CA

Family Tree Restaraunt (1965)
San Diego AIA Award of Honor (1966)

Fayman, Lyn & Dana Residence (1962)
2545 Ardith Road

Forester Residence #1 (1962)
7595 Hillside Drive, La Jolla

Forester Residence #2 (1971)
2025 Soledad Avenue, La Jolla

Frautschy Residence (1954)
2625 Ellentown, La Jolla

Gewalt Residence (1956)

Herman Residence (1961)
1262 Fleetridge, Point Loma

Jack in the Box #1 (1951)
6270 El Cajon Blv

Jack in the Box
5141 Jackson Drive

Jefferson Gallery (1965)
7917 Ivanhoe, La Jolla
San Diego AIA Award of Honor (1966)

Robert O. Peterson Residence (1964)
567 Gage Lane, Point Loma
*San Diego Home and Garden published in May 2006

Private Residence
on Rushville, behind school, La Jolla

Private Residence (1963)
5911 Folsom Drive, La Jolla.

Private Residence
2705 Bordeaux, La Jolla

Russell, Lloyd Residence #1 (1948)
348 Vista del Playa, La Jolla

Russell, Lloyd Residence #2 (1962)
7651 Hillside Drive, La Jolla

Russell, L.E. Residence (1962)
7661 Hillside Drive, La Jolla

Schor, George Residence (1954)
2655 Ellentown, La Jolla

Scripps Estates Associates House (1951)
9400 Block of La Jolla Shores Drive

Sunset Engraving (1963)
India & Date Street

Tompkins Residence (1962)
off Pearl Street, La Jolla

Urey Residence (1954)
7890 Torrey Lane, La Jolla