CHRISTIAN K. NARKIEWICZ-LAINE

Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine (né Colorado, USA) is a Finnish/Lithuanian/American architect, painter, sculptor, writer, critic, and poet. He is a citizen of Finland.

Portrait of Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine by Panagiotis Beltzinitis, 2010

 

Profession: He was educated in architecture at the Université de Strasbourg, France (1970-1972) and studied archaeology in Athens, Greece (1972-73). As a student, he returned to the United States in 1973 and graduated from Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois in 1975. In 1978, he became the architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times until 1981; and in 1979, the editor of Inland Architect. In 1981, he relocated to Europe and lived in Italy, studying at The American Academy in Rome. In 1983, he returned to Chicago and established Metropolitan Press Ltd., a small book publishing company dedicated to architecture and design and the publisher of Metropolitan Review, the Midwest's journal of architecture and art. He also worked as a special architecture consultant to the Kennedy family, working for Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. (1983-1988).

He is presently the Museum President of The Chicago Athenaeum since 1988 to the present. 

In 2007, he also became the Director/CEO of The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, based in Dublin, Ireland and Athens, Greece with representative offices in Florence, Italy and Madrid, Spain.

Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine and Hassan Fathy, UIA Gold Medal Presentation, Cairo, Eqypt. Also pictured is Charles Correa, 1984

In 1984, he collaborated with the Spanish architect Rafael de La-Hoz, President of the Union of International Architects in Paris to establish the UIA Gold Medal together with the Kennedy family, personally presenting the first such medal to Hassan Fathy in Cairo, Egypt.  Other UIA Gold Metal recipients include: Reima Pietila (Finland); Fumihiko Maki (Japan), Rafael Moneo (Spain); Ricardo Legorreta Vilchis (Mexico); Renzo Piano (Italy); Tadao Ando (Japan).

He instituted the prestigious International Architecture Awards and The American Architecture Awards and is the chief curator of GOOD DESIGN—a program originally started by Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames in Chicago in 1950.  In 2010, he established the European Prize for Architecture.

Background: He is the descendent of the Lithuanian/Russian noble families, Radziwill, Kacuiciewicz, and Jodko-Narkiewicz. In the history of the Russian Empire, this family produced many prominent politicians, generals, scientists, writers, and artists. His grandmother was Sophia Gräfen Narkiewicz-Kacuiciewicz (Doctor from St. Petersburg) and his mother was Charlotte Gräfen Narkiewicz-Laine, founder of the Radziwill/Jodko-Narkiewicz Foundation, a private family foundation dedicated to aid sick and underprivileged children in Eastern Europe. His mother initiated the “Children of Chernobyl” program shipping millions of dollars in medicines and medical equipment to Chernobyl-area hospitals in Belarus and Ukraine after the Chernobyl Nuclear accident.  Other prominent Lithuanian relatives include his grandmother's sister, Michelina Gräfen Narkiewicz-Kacuiciewicz, Imperial Nurse to Czarevich Alexis Nickolaevich at Alexander Palace in Tsasrakoe Selo, and his grandmother's uncle, Piotr General Graf Narkiewicz of the Czar's Imperial Army. He is also the great nephew of Dominik Prince Radziwill (Mir, now Belarus); Jacob Graf Jodko-Narkiewicz (Russian scientist and professor of Mme. Curie from Uzda, (now Belarus); and Witold Jodko-Narkiewicz (founder of the Polish Socialist Party and the modern State of Poland, Warsaw, Poland). Another Great Uncle, Leon Jodko-Narkiewicz, was the City Architect of Warsaw and Kracow in the mid 19th-Century. 

John F. Kennedy, Jr., Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, and Ioannis Karalias.

 

In the United States, he is a cousin to the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and to the late John Kennedy, Jr.

His father, Sulo Mathias Laine, a doctor, was born in Vaasa, Finland (original last name Ronnberg, which changed to a Finnish name in 1917.)  His great grandfather, Mathias Ronnberg, a Norwegian ship captain from Bergen, Norway, settled in Finland and became an inventor/architect designing the line of train stations from Jyväskalä to Vaasa.

Awards: Architectural Critic's Fellowship from The Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in 1980; "Chicago's 40 under 40 Achievers" by Crain's Chicago Business in 1991. The Goldsmith Award by the Industrial Designers Society of America, 1993.

Curated Special Exhibitions: "New Chicago Architecture" (Milan, Italy, 1988); "New Chicago Skyscapers," Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1989); "New Chicago Architecture" (Washington, D.C., 1990); "New Chicago Skyscrapers" (Warsaw, Poland, 1991); "New Chicago Skyscrapers" (Milan, 1993); "New Chicago Skyscrapers" (Prague, Czech Republic, 1994); New Chicago Skyscapers" (Budapest, Hungary, 1994); "New Chicago Skyscrapers" (Thessaloniki, Greece, 1995) "New Chicago Skyscrapers" (Kiev, Ukraine, 1995); "Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago" (Milan, Italy, 1996); "Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago" (Lisbon, Portugal, 1996); "Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago" (Design Museum, London, Great Britain, 1997); Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago(Gothenburg, Sweden, 1997); "Art to Swatch" (Chicago, 1995); "Art to Swatch" (Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, 1996); "American Architecture Awards" (Thessaloniki, Greece, 1999); GOOD DESIGN Shows (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001; and "Children of Chernobyl" (Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Madison, Wisconsin; Oslo, Norway; Buckeberg, Germany; and Thessaloniki, Greece).

Books and Publications: He has authored essays and criticisms on architecture, urbanism, and industrial design for numerous American, European, and Japanese publications. His books include: Landmark Springfield (Metropolitan Arts Press, 1985); Helmut Jahn (A + U, Tokyo, Japan, 1984); Kiki Kogelnick (1998); The City and the World (2010); GOOD DESIGN Yearbook(2009/2010); Landmark Galena (2010); and Reconstructing The Urban Landscape (2010)

He has lectured at universities throughout the United States and South America. He taught architecture history and aesthetics at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Poet and Artist: In 1997, his first anthology of poetry, Distant Fires was published. Also, in 1999, Inspiration: Nature and the Poet (The Collected Poems of the Chicago architect, Louis H. Sullivan). Baltic Hours (1999) offers poetic reflections and verse from travels throughout Scandinavia and Eastern Europe and has been republished in the Scandinavian countries, Belarus, and Russia. Baltic Hours was republished in 2007 in Lithuanian/English version (Baltiškos Valandos)by Baltos Lankos in Vilnius. His most recent books of poetry are Greenland (2003) and Dreams of a Shipwrecked Sailor (2010).

In 2009, he published American Poets Against the War together with over 100 of America’s most important literary figures as a protest publication against the War in Iraq and the Bush Administration.

His paintings, sculpture, and photography have been exhibited in the United States and throughout Europe.

He resides in Chicago and Galena, Illinois and in Naxos, Greece.