Karen Buchanan, the first executive director of the Dallas Architecture Forum and a beloved longtime member of North Texas’ design community, died last month after a battle with Alzheimer’s. She was 70.
Buchanan, an accountant by trade, took the reins as the forum’s executive director in 2001. The nonprofit — now an established North Texas institution that attracts a range of famous architects and examines local civic issues — was founded several years earlier by a group of local design luminaries that included Buchanan’s husband, Russell Buchanan, who ranks among Texas’ most prominent residential architects.
In its early days, the forum quickly emerged as a success, attracting major speakers and donations. But without a full-time director it also lacked organization, leading its board to conclude the group needed a new administrator. They didn’t have to search far.
“‘Hey, the forum wants me to be the director,’” Russell Buchanan recalled his wife telling him after another board member had reached out to her. “‘What do you think?’”
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That conversation was a surprise, Russell Buchanan said — the other board member knew Karen from her previous business career and hadn’t mentioned the interview to Russell — but Karen seemed an obvious fit. Architecture may not have actually been her field, but, apart from her marriage to Russell, she had nevertheless developed a passion for design in part because of its potential to influence people’s lives.
Along with her numerical and managerial skills, she also possessed an obvious intelligence and natural social grace, and quickly set about applying herself toward growing the burgeoning nonprofit. As the group’s first paid director, she helped professionalize the group. She also facilitated its rise in stature in part through her unique talent for marshaling disparate moving parts.
“There were a lot of creative ideas, a lot of creative people, a lot of busy people,” said Nate Eudaly, who succeeded Buchanan as the forum’s director and continues to lead the group. “It wasn’t organized chaos, but she really kind of channeled a lot of creativity into actually moving stuff forward.”
Along with speaking engagements, she also organized high-profile social events; in 2004, the nonprofit’s calendar included a well-heeled art and furniture benefit auction held at a renovated 1920s pump station in Highland Park and attended by hundreds of architects, designers, artists and patrons. Buchanan had helped obtain the works from around the world, and the event was a smash.
“At the end of the evening, I told her there were only two people who could do that,” the Fort Worth architect W. Mark Gunderson wrote in a recent tribute published by the forum. “And she was both of them.”
Buchanan also loved meeting the big-name architects the group brought to Dallas — who in turn seemed to naturally gravitate to the down-to-earth Dallasite with the warm demeanor and beautiful smile.
The first such name to come through for a lecture was Thom Mayne, the innovative LA-based starchitect whose works range from schools and office buildings in California and France to Dallas’ Perot Museum of Nature & Science. Buchanan, unaware of the extent of Mayne’s star power, picked up the roughly 6-foot-4 Pritzker Prize-winner from the airport, cramming him into her Nissan Sentra. The two instantly hit it off.
“They just got along so well, and he loved Karen,” Russell Buchanan recalled. “She told that story all the time — that her first lecture was Thom Mayne.”
Buchanan was born Jan. 23, 1956, in Fort Smith, Ark., near the Oklahoma border, to Curley and Imelda Bordelon. Before serving as director of the Dallas Architecture Forum, a post she held through 2005, her business career included real estate-focused roles with Bank of America and The Weitzman Group, the Dallas-based commercial real estate firm.
Buchanan married Russell Buchanan in 1992, and, after concluding her tenure leading the Dallas Architecture Forum went on to work as the business manager for her husband’s firm.
Buchanan was also a voracious reader — she often consumed three or four books in a week — and a passionate music fan. “She was beautiful. She had a big smile, big eyes. She was very welcoming and genuine,” Russell Buchanan said. “She had a lot of friends and they all adored her … She was the smartest person in the room.”
Buchanan is survived by her husband; her two sons, Yale Johnson (Rachel) and Evan Johnson (Victoria Villareal); her three brothers, Curley Bordelon Jr. (Bobbie), Robert Bordelon (Shelia) and David Bordelon (Stacey) and numerous nieces and nephews.
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