George Eugene Kostritsky, one of the founding members of the architecture firm RTKL (now CallisonRTKL), has passed away. According to a remembrance posted to the CallisonRTKL website, Kostritsky passed away from complications resulting from COVID-19; He was 98 years old. 

Kostritsky was born in 1922 in Shanghai, was raised in San Francisco, and ultimately settled in Baltimore, where the firm he helped found got its start. Kostritsky served in World War II and was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, later going on to study briefly at the Princeton University Graduate School of Architecture before eventually transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a master’s degree in planning and urban design.

Described as "a classic modernist" in an obituary published by The Baltimore Sun, Kostritsky arrived at the existing Rogers, Taliaferro, and Lamb firm in 1961, bringing an urban planning sensibility to the practice that would help expand the scope and prowess of the firm. 

“Urban planning is embedded in CallisonRTKL’s DNA,” explains CallisonRTKL President and CEO Kelly Farrell in the firm's remembrance, adding, “Our deep understanding of urban environments began with George Kostritsky.”

Kostritsky worked on many projects at the firm, including Fountain Square project in Baltimore, which won the AIA’s first National Award in Urban Design in 1973. In the late 1970’s, Kostritsky worked as an urban design consultant for the United Nations Planning and Urban Design in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He also made teaching a central part of his work and taught architecture at Harvard University, the University of Oregon, and Howard University. He retired from practice in 1995.