Landscape architect Franz A. Aust was born in Defiance, Ohio on May 10, 1885. He studied at the State School of Science at Wahpeton, North Dakota (1904-1906) and then at the University of Minnesota, receiving an undergraduate degree (1908) and a master's degree (1910). His area of specialization at that time was physics, and he was for a time an instructor in that department at Minnesota. From 1911 to 1913 he was a student of landscape design at the University of Michigan. After receiving his master's degree, Aust worked briefly on the Capitol grounds at St. Paul and on the Historic Sibley Home at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. From 1913 to 1915 he was an instructor in landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, working with Wilhelm Miller and L. E. Foglesong. In 1915 Aust received an appointment as associate professor of landscape design in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin. He continued in this capacity until his retirement in 1943.
This brief resumé, however, does not indicate the full impact of Aust's career. As the result of his broad understanding of landscape architecture--a personal philosophy that embraced horticulture, aesthetics, urban and rural planning, conservation, and ecology--and the University's commitment to outreach programs, Aust's influence included not only his students at the University and his professional colleagues but also a large segment of the state's population. Throughout his career Aust wrote and spoke widely. Many of his talks were carried to a large audience of Wisconsin residents by state educational radio.
Some of Aust's professional associations included membership in the American Civic Association and the Association of City Planners. In 1919 he was a founder of the American Rural Planning Association. From 1936 through 1942 he was chairman of the Committee on Slope Erosion Control and a member of the Roadside Development Committee of the National Research Council's Highway Research Board. He also served as secretary of the Wisconsin Friends of Our Native Landscape (1920-1943) and managing editor of its Our Native Landscape.
Aust's interests lay not only with the theoretical aspects of his profession, but also with its practical application, and he was active as a private landscape designer and consultant. Some of his most notable design work concerned the University campus (1915-1942), the Arboretum (1932-1942), Greendale Housing Project (1936-1938), Nakoma neighborhood (1920-1929), and the Garden Home Housing Project in Superior (1939-1942).
Aust died on October 21, 1963. He was survived by his wife (the former Mabel Armstrong, whom he had married in 1914) and their three children.
