Stern, Robert A.M.

▪ American architect

in full  Robert Arthur Morton Stern 

born May 23, 1939, New York, New York, U.S.

      American postmodern architect whose buildings incorporate a variety of historical styles.

      Stern studied at Columbia University (B.A., 1960) in New York City and Yale University (M.A., 1965) in New Haven, Connecticut. He worked in partnership with John Hagmann from 1969 to 1977 and then established his own firm, Robert A.M. Stern Architects. He quickly became known as a designer of striking private homes and villas—often in resort areas such as East Hampton, New York—that express the postmodern interest in historical context. Examples of work in this style include a large gabled house (1980–81) in Farm Neck, Massachusetts, designed in emulation of turn-of-the-century Shingle-style homes by Stanford White (White, Stanford) and Grosvenor Atterbury; the seaside cottagelike Lawson House (1979–81) in East Quogue, New York; and a Tuscan Classical villa (1988–92) at River Oaks in Houston, Texas.

      In the 1980s and '90s Stern worked closely with the Walt Disney Company, creating many important spaces for the company and serving on its board of directors from 1992 to 2003. Among his many Disney commissions were two complexes (1987–91) in Lake Buena Vista, Florida: the Disney's Yacht Club Resort, in which he re-created a late 19th-century New England beach resort, and the Disney Beach Club Resort, built in the style of a mid-Atlantic seaside resort. He also designed Walt Disney Studios Feature Animation Building (1991–94) in Burbank, California, a structure that playfully incorporates Mickey Mouse's hat from “The Sorcerer's Apprentice” sequence in the Disney film Fantasia. He also served as a planner and designer (1987–97) for Celebration, Disney's developed community in Florida, which utilized traditions of American small-town planning. During this period Stern was the target of some criticism in the architecture world, as many felt that his use of historical and cultural references, while often elegant in his private homes, became kitschy and retrograde in some of these Disney commissions.

      Stern's later work included 222 Berkeley Street (1986–91), a mixed-use office space in Boston that utilizes the city's palate of red brick and granite; a series of Jeffersonian spaces for the Darden School of Business (1992–96) at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville; a simple clapboard structure housing the Norman Rockwell Museum (1987–93) in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; and a series of golf-resort commissions in Japan. His firm also designed the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in Houston (2002) and the Museum for African Art (scheduled to be completed in 2009) in New York City.

      Stern was also a noted architectural historian, writing groundbreaking books such as 40 Under 40: Young Talent in Architecture (1966) and New Directions in American Architecture (1969). In 1986 he hosted Pride of Place: Building the American Dream, a documentary series shown on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). He was coauthor of several volumes on architecture and urbanism in New York City, including New York 1880 (1999), New York 1900 (1983), New York 1930 (1987), New York 1960 (1995), and New York 2000 (2006). He began teaching at Columbia in 1970 and in 1998 became dean of Yale's School of Architecture.

      In 2007 Stern was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2008 he was awarded the Vincent Scully Prize (established in 1999 by the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.) for his lasting contribution to the field of architecture.

Additional Reading

Elizabeth Kraft (ed.), Robert A.M. Stern: Buildings and Projects, 1987–1992 (1992); Peter Morris Dixon (ed.), Robert A.M. Stern: Buildings and Projects, 1993–1998 (1998), Robert A.M. Stern: Buildings and Projects, 1999/2003 (2003), Robert A.M. Stern: Houses and Gardens (2005), and Robert A.M. Stern: Buildings and Towns (2007).

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