Yale University President Richard C. Levin has announced the reappointment of Robert A.M. Stern for a second term of five years as Dean of the Yale School of Architecture.
During his five-year tenure, Stern has brought major changes to the School: from initiating the interior renovation of the landmark building in which it is housed to attracting many of the most acclaimed architects in the world to its classrooms, lecture halls and studios.
In announcing the reappointment, Levin said that his colleagues at the School of Architecture were of “the unanimous view that Dean Stern has raised the School’s profile, infused it with energy and restored its ability to attract the very best students.”
Levin cited Stern’s “presence, his availability and his commitment to stimulate thinking about architecture,” adding, “Through an ambitious program of lectures, conferences and social occasions, he has built a renewed sense of community.”
Stern, the J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture at Yale, has a distinguished academic record. Before coming to Yale, he was professor and director of the Historical Preservation Department of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, and was the first director of Columbia’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. He has lectured widely about a range of topics related to architecture and urbanism.
Stern is a prolific writer and critic whose opinions about the built environment are widely reported. Among the books he has published are “New Directions in American Architecture,” “George Howe: Toward a Modern American Architecture” and “Modern Classicism.”
He has participated in a number of documentary television programs, most notably serving as the host of the eight-part documentary “Pride of Place: Building the American Dream,” which aired on PBS in 1986.
Stern is perhaps the leading authority on the architecture and architectural history of New York, the city where he was born and still lives. He has co-authored a number of books focusing on particular decades of New York’s history: 1880, 1900, 1930 and 1960, and his testimony is seen throughout the Ric Burns epic documentary on New York.
Stern maintains an active practice in the New York firm of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, which he founded and where he is a senior partner. His projects range from residential to corporate, from institutional to commercial. A small sample of the celebrated buildings he has designed include the Health Center of Celebration, Florida; the Headquarters of Mexx International in Voorschoten, Netherlands; the Casting Building of the Walt Disney Company in Orlando, Florida; and the Spangler Campus Center at Harvard Business School.
Stern is a champion of the traditional and vernacular in architectural design and a strong advocate for considering any structure within its environmental, urban and historical context. He has won a number of commissions for institutions celebrating icons of American culture. These include the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History in Jamestown, New York; the visitors’ center at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, now under construction; and most recently, the Center for the American Revolution at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
