US architect designed some of the tallest buildings in New York
US architect Robert AM Stern has died at the age of 86.
The death of the influential architect was announced yesterday by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the practice which Stern founded in 1977.
Known for his contemporary take on classicism, Stern designed a string of high profile projects in the US across his six-decade career including some of the tallest skyscrapers in New York.
Robert AM Stern Architects said yesterday: “Bob Stern’s impact as an architect, educator, and historian spanned seven decades of influence and accomplishment.
“Throughout his long and distinguished career, Bob shaped the built environment, contributed to the education of multiple generations of architects, and raised public awareness of the importance of preservation and the role design plays in communities and in our society at large.”
The practice added it remained “committed to carrying forth his ideals”.
His notable classical works include the George W Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts.
His high-rise schemes include the 58-storey Comcast Center in Philadelphia, the headquarters of media giant Comcast and a string of Manhattan skyscrapers completed in the latter part of his career including 15 Central Park West, 520 Park Avenue and 30 Park Place.
Stern’s projects in the UK include 1 Mayfair, a 24-home residential block in Mayfair which has been billed as one of the most luxurious residential developments in the world.
Stern was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2017 received the Topaz Medallion for outstanding service to architectural education.
He was the 2011 Driehaus Prize Laureate and received the Congress for the New Urbanism’s Athena Award and the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize.
The Institute of Classical Architecture and Art recognized him with the Board of Directors Honor as well as Arthur Ross Awards for Architecture and Education.
Robert AM Stern’s approach to architecture, quoted from his memoir Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture.
“In my belief that architecture is a never-ending obsession, I regret that the buildings could not have been a little better, that the books could not have been a little clearer. But I pride myself in sticking to principles - I have no regrets over staying true to my conviction that architecture cannot flourish so long as architects believe they stand before a tabula rasa, so long as they believe that architecture is just the product of an individual program, individual talent, and individual personality. It is much more - architecture is part of a continuum. […] The dialogue between old and new, between what was and what is and what will be, is the conversation across time that I have continuously sought to advance. Continually mindful of Jay Gatsby’s quest, ‘we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’”
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