Remembering Robert Renfro, AIA 

After a long, prolific, and creative life, Robert Terry Renfro, AIA, an architect and senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture,  passed away peacefully September 4, 2025, at the age of 94. “Bobfro,” as his friend Sinclair Black, FAIA, called him, lived an authentic life that was, at times, a bit like Forrest Gump’s and a bit like Frederick Law Olmsted’s. Where Gump and Olmsted both often found themselves at the center of significant events, Gump innocently experienced those moments, while Olmsted shaped them. Studying, working for, and teaching alongside several significant figures of 20th-century design—O’Neil Ford, Victor Lundy, Charles Moore, and Robert Venturi—Bob Renfro both fully experienced his time and helped shape it. 

Academically, he began in the Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas (UT). In 1951, Bob took a hiatus from school and enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War. After serving honorably for three and a half years, he returned to UT to complete a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1956.

Bob then enrolled at Pratt Institute, majoring in industrial design. After graduating with honors in 1958, he went to Detroit to work for General Motors, then a blue-chip stock and global design leader. Bob and first wife, Nancy—an accomplished creative in her own right—were designers for the 1964 GM World’s Fair Pavilion and other GM exhibits. 

The pavilion experience convinced him that he would be a better architect than industrial designer. Bob returned to academia, this time as a graduate student of architecture at Yale. In 1968, he graduated summa cum laude and received the William Wirt Winchester Traveling Fellowship. This award later inspired him to create and fund a similar endowment at UT Austin. 

After Yale, Bob worked for Charles Moore and later for Robert Venturi in Philadelphia for many years. The well-known and widely published hand renderings of Venturi’s Brant-Johnson Ski House in Vail, Colorado, are Bob’s handiwork. Published in countless books and magazines, the drawing has also been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

In the early 1980s, Bob returned to Austin to care for his elderly parents. There he founded several architectural firms, beginning with RIOGroup. Later he partnered with colleague Robert Steinbomer to form Renfro & Steinbomer before eventually opening a private practice in the early 1990s. Concurrent to his professional work, Bob taught at the UT Austin School of Architecture.

His tenure as a senior lecturer at UT was long and fruitful. A generous and humble teacher, Bob taught hundreds of students who went on to work for, and often lead, some of the most significant architectural firms in Texas and beyond. But more than that he was a mentor, friend, and father-figure to many. 

In 1993, Bob married his long-time friend and beloved wife Kathie, whom he called the “love of my life.” With Kathie, his life became fully rounded in faith, family, and creativity. The couple loved to travel, draw, and paint. In their twilight years, they spent months each year in Mexico, Texas, and Colorado, visiting friends and family and documenting their time in pen, ink, and oil. After Kathie’s passing in 2020, Bob continued to draw and paint until just weeks before his passing. The walls of his Brookdale Senior Living apartment were nearly covered with oil paintings of friends, family, and famous places and people, as well as portraits of himself and Kathie. His artwork remains a testament to his life-long curiosity, creativity, faith, and friendships.

At the end of Forrest Gump, Gump stands at Jenny’s grave, reflecting on his own experience and trying to discern if life is ruled by destiny or happenstance. If Bob Renfro’s life is any indication, an exceptional life seems to hold a bit of both.