Robert Joseph Frasca was born in Niagara Falls, New York, in 1933. He studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, and finished his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He also earned a master's degree in urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1959, he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he worked at the Wolff and Zimmer architecture firm and served on the Portland Planning Commission before temporarily leaving Portland for an architecture fellowship in Europe. After returning, he co-founded ZGF Architects in 1966. He designed multiple buildings in Portland, including the Doernbecher Children's Hospital at Oregon Health & Science University, the Oregon Convention Center, the Portland International Airport, and buildings for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the Oregon Historical Society. He also designed Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

Frasca married Marilyn Margaret Buys in 1966, and they had two children. After her death in 2000, he later remarried, to Jeanne Giordano. Frasca died in 2018.

Sources: Vital records on Ancestry.com; information provided by Frasca in his interview; “Bob Frasca, architect who helped define Portland's skyline, dies at 84,” Oregonian, January 9, 2018.