Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the School of Architecture, has been named the J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture.
A 1965 graduate of the school, Stern has served as its dean since September 1998. In that brief time, he has worked to infuse new energy into a school that was already regarded as among the best in the nation.
Stern has recruited a roster of visiting professors whose names read like a "Who's Who" of contemporary architecture. Under his leadership, the school has offered an ambitious schedule of exhibitions, guest lectures and symposia -- including a recent 50th anniversary celebration of "Perspecta," the groundbreaking student journal.
Stern's efforts to secure endowment funding for the school have yielded new student scholarships as well as opportunities for students to participate in academic travel that ranged from China to Sweden. He inaugurated the Louis I. Kahn Professorship whose first incumbent, last fall, was renowned theoretician and designer Daniel Libeskind. An enthusiastic representative of Yale, Stern has visited alumni groups throughout the world.
In addition to his role at Yale as dean and professor of architecture, Stern is a practicing architect. He is founder and senior partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York, a 150-person firm that includes architects, landscape architects and interior designers.
During its 30 years of existence, the firm of Robert A.M. Stern Architects has established an international reputation for residential, commercial and institutional buildings. The firm has won numerous awards and citations for design excellence, including National Honor Awards of the American Institute of Architects. Most recently, Stern was honored by the Art Commission of the City of New York for his design of the Boathouse at Swindler Cove. (See related story.)
Stern's work is known for its emphasis on continuity of tradition and for creating buildings that take into account their aesthetic and cultural surroundings. Recently completed projects include the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; the Disney Feature Animation Building, Burbank, California; the Brooklyn Law School Tower, Brooklyn, New York; the William Gates Computer Science Building, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; the Robert C. Byrd United States Courthouse and Federal Building, Beckley, West Virginia; Tribeca Park (residential high rise), Battery Park City, New York; and the Torre del Angel, Reforma 350, Mexico City. The firm was co-master planner of the town of Celebration, Florida, and continues to work with New York City and State on the revitalization of 42nd Street.
The firm currently has projects underway in 20 states as well as in the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Japan and Mexico. These include academic institutions: a residence hall and library for Columbia University; a campus master plan for Georgetown University; a student center for the Harvard Business School; a biomedical engineering institute for Johns Hopkins; and a recreation center for Salve Regina University. Civic projects include U.S. courthouses in Georgia and Ohio; major public libraries in Miami Beach, Florida, and Nashville, Tennessee; and the Southeast Regional Headquarters for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Georgia. Institutional projects range from the Center for Newport History in Newport, Rhode Island, to the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in Houston, Texas. The firm's commercial work includes the Gap headquarters in San Francisco; a one-million-square-foot retail center in Barcelona, Spain; and the Disney Ambassador Hotel at Tokyo Disneyland.
A noted scholar and author, Stern has written and edited more than 20 books about design, including an acclaimed series on New York City's architecture and urbanism. The latest volume in the series, "New York 1880," co-authored with Thomas Mellins and David Fishman, was published in 1999 by Monacelli. This book was given the New York Society Library's top award, the Book of the Year prize, on March 21.
Nine books on Stern's architectural work have been published, and his designs are exhibited in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others.
Among his many distinctions, Stern is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and received the Medal of Honor from its New York Chapter in 1984. In 1986 he hosted an eight-part documentary television series on the Public Broadcasting System titled "Pride of Place: Building the American Dream." He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company.
Prior to his appointment at Yale, Stern was on the faculty of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and served as director of its Historic Preservation Program. From 1984 to 1988 he was the first director of Columbia's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.
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