Robert A.M. Stern Architects to Design Residential Colleges

Robert A.M. Stern Architects has been selected to design the two new residential colleges of Yale College, President Richard C. Levin has announced.

The new colleges will expand the average undergraduate population of 5,250 by 15 percent, to approximately 6,000, allowing Yale to make an even greater contribution to society by preparing a larger number of talented and promising students of all backgrounds for leadership and service.

The colleges will be built in a triangle north of the Grove Street Cemetery bounded by Prospect, Canal, and Sachem streets, creating a new sense of the geography of the campus by enlarging the footprint of Yale College. The colleges are expected to open in 2013.

“We are pleased that Robert A.M. Stern Architects, founded and led by Bob Stern, our distinguished dean of the School of Architecture, will be designing Yale’s 13th and 14th residential colleges,” Levin said. “Bob has designed many outstanding academic facilities around the country, and his knowledge of Yale and its architectural tradition is deep and profound.  For the past decade, he, along with former Architecture Deans Cesar Pelli and Tom Beeby, has advised me on every major building project we have undertaken. His understanding of Yale coupled with his appreciation of how good design can foster community will lead to a superior result.”

Stern Architects is a leading design firm of architects, landscape architects and interior designers with wide experience in residential, commercial, and institutional work. Its geographical scope includes current projects in Europe, Asia, South America, and throughout the United States. The firm’s honors include National Honor Awards of the American Institute of Architects.

“Yale’s residential college system has helped place Yale College at the pinnacle of undergraduate education,” said Stern. “It is an honor to work on such an important expansion of a tradition that contributes so much to the life of the students during their time at Yale.”

Yale’s residential colleges create intimate communities and an exemplary environment for undergraduate learning within a major research university. The new colleges will emulate Yale’s proven model with a master, dean, fellows and students forming a close-knit family, supported by the highest caliber public and private spaces for living and study.
As with all new facilities at Yale, the new colleges will reflect a balance of progress and tradition; they will advance the mission of the University while complementing their campus and neighborhood surroundings.
Completed projects of Stern Architects include Comcast Center, a 57-story office building in Center City Philadelphia; Fifteen Central Park West, a luxury residential building on a full city block in New York City; the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Ohrstrom Library, St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire; the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; the Brooklyn Law School Tower, Brooklyn, New York; the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; the Spangler Campus Center and Baker Library/Bloomberg Center at the Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts; the Jones Graduate School of Business Management at Rice University, Houston, Texas; U.S. Courthouses in Beckley, West Virginia, Youngstown, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia; the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, Houston, Texas; the Museum Center at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut; main library buildings in Nashville, Tennessee; Columbus, Georgia; and Miami Beach, Jacksonville and Clearwater, Florida; and the Calabasas Civic Center in Calabasas, California.
 During the last decade Robert A.M. Stern Architects has designed residence halls at institutions including Columbia University, Brooklyn Law School, Georgetown University, the University of Virginia, the University of South Carolina, Florida Southern College, Acadia University, the University of Michigan, the Taft School, and the Hotchkiss School.

Currently, the firm has projects underway in 26 states as well as in Canada, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Germany, Brazil, France, Turkey, Kazakhstan, India, South Korea and China. Among these are the Museum for African Art on New York City’s Museum Mile; the Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center / Orthopaedic Hospital Replacement Project; the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary; the Northwest Corner Building at the Harvard Law School; the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; and multifamily residential buildings in various cities. The firm has been selected to design the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.

Stern, who has served as dean of the Yale School of Architecture since 1998, is a practicing architect, teacher, and writer. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and received the AIA New York Chapter’s Medal of Honor in 1984 and the Chapter’s President’s Award in 2001. He received the Athena Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Board of Directors’ Honor from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America in 2007. The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., recently announced that Stern has been named the winner of the tenth Vincent Scully Award.

He has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on both historical and contemporary topics in architecture. He is the author of several books, including New Directions in American Architecture (Braziller, 1969; revised edition, 1977). He is the co-author of an award-winning series on the architecture and urbanism of New York City from 1890 to 2000. He was also host of the acclaimed PBS television series, “Pride of Place: Building the American Dream.”  Thirteen books on Stern’s work have been published. Stern’s work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and universities and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, the Denver Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.