Leading Architects to Discuss Yale Libraries at Symposium

Three of America’s foremost architects, all of whom have served as deans of the Yale School of Architecture, will participate in a symposium on the architecture and design of Yale libraries on November 30.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 1:30 p.m. in Levinson Auditorium of the Law School, 127 Wall St. The speakers are current dean Robert A.M. Stern and former Yale deans Cesar Pelli of the firm Pelli Clarke Pelli and Thomas H. Beeby of Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge.  Laura Cruickshank, Yale University Planner and a member of the American Institute of Architects, will moderate the symposium.

The deans will discuss Yale’s 22 libraries, which represent the spectrum of architectural design, theory and craftsmanship over the past 25 years, from the Collegiate Gothic of James Gamble Rogers’ Sterling Memorial Library to Gordon Bunshaft’s modern Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to the Arts and Crafts-influenced new Bass Library. Beeby was the lead architect of the latter.

Stern, who is also the J. M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture, is the founder and senior partner in the firm of Robert A. M. Stern of New York City. A fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he received the organization’s Medal of Honor in 1984 and its President’s Award in 2001 from the New York Chapter. Prior to becoming the Yale dean in 1998, he was a professor of architecture and director of the Preservation Program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. He served from 1984 to 1988 as the first director of Columbia’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. In 2001, he lectured at Yale as the William Clyde DeVane Professor.

Beeby served as dean of the School of Architecture from 1985 to 1991 and continues to be an adjunct professor of architecture there. He was director of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1978 to 1980. He has lectured widely at national and international conferences and has been a lecturer or jury critic at numerous American universities.

Pelli, who was born in Argentina, became dean of the School of Architecture in 1977 and established his private firm in New Haven that same year. In 1991, the American Institute of Architects selected Pelli as one of the 10 most influential living American architects, and in 1995 it awarded him its Gold Medal. Pelli has received over 100 awards for design excellence, including a Connecticut State Arts Award.