Burns was born in Roxboro NC.  He attended Wake Forest College and NCSU, graduating with a Bachelor of Architectuure in 1957.  That same year he won the Paris Prize in Architecture and studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts for a year.  In 1961 he entered MIT and earned a Master of Architecture degree.  After working for Eduardo Catalano, he returned to Raleigh to teach at the NCSU School of Design where he was much admired.  During the late sixties he had a private practice as with Abie Harris as Harris & Burns at 1906 1/2 Hillsborough Street in Raleigh.

After Eduardo Catalano's Raleigh landmark house was destroyed in 2001, he worked closely with Catalano on two ill-fated attempts to rebuild it.

Burns won the 2003 Gertrude S. Carraway Award of Merit by Preservation North Carolina for his work on the Henry Kamphoefner house.  The AIANC gave him the Dietrick Medal in 2004, the same year he won the first Isosceles Award from AIA Triangle.  In 2005, he was tragically killed in a car accident.

1967 - The Cliff and Lucie Wing Residence, 2722 Spencer Street, Durham.  3420 square feet.  Sold in 2007 to current owners Kristen and Dale Howard.

1968 - The John and Janie Whaley House, 1001 Vance Drive, Tarboro NC.  Sold in 1998 to current owners Frank and Pat Allen. The house is L-shaped with floor to ceiling windows on the back of both sides of the L and overlooks woods and Hendricks Creek. It sits on about 1 acre.

1969 - The Don and Dorothy Huisingh Residence, 1213 Kingston Ridge Road, Cary.  Won a AIANC Merit Award in 1969.  Sold to John Pearson and destroyed to build another house, bottom photo, in 2006.

Sources include:  Burns' Obituary, AIANC, his wife Norma Burns, School of Design: The Kamphoefner Years 1948-1973 by Roger Clark,  Kristen Howard, Pat Allen.