Robert A. M. Stern is an architect, a writer, an architectural historian, who will retire as dean of Yale’s School of Architecture next June. When Yale alum Stern was named dean in 1999, the singular voice of Yale architecture, Vincent Scully, said: “Of all the many distinguished graduates [Stern] best understands its history and valuesm, its special traditions.”
But he was, and is, a wildly successful building architect, and his history of rebuilding Yale’s status is metaphorically consistent with the building he occupied as dean in 1999. Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building was a remuddled mess in 1999, and Yale had a falling ranking, student acceptance rate and the general perception of excellence that drives much of any fine arts institution’s credibility.
Stern set about to reassert the institution’s mojo — bringing the very best and brightest architects to Yale, despite suspicions that his reputation as either “postmodernist” or “neo-traditional” would be a buzz-kill for the cutting edge.
Stern has said of himself, “I’m a representative of tradition in architecture; I am not an ideologue.” His genius is not about style, it’s about thoughtfulness: not the contrived invention of some claimed future, or surfing pop culture, or Xeroxing precedents: Stern’s evident attitude is that humans and their buildings simultaneously embody past, present and future, so educational institutions pick winners and losers at their peril.
While Stern is at the apex of academia, he was on TV, wrote books non-architects bought and embraced culturally accessible aesthetics. His peripatetic persona raised many, many millions of dollars for Yale and he championed the complete renovation not only of the school’s reputation and allure, but of its iconic building itself: His tenure saw the A&A Building immaculately restored as the Rudolph Building and expanded into Loria Hall as designed by architect Charles Gwathmey.
This is not to say Yale’s architecture program has many practitioners of historically inspired architecture (as Stern’s new Collegiate Gothic Yale residential colleges on Prospect Street will embody). Yale, like almost all of architectural academia, is a fine arts creature: Where the perception of hip is as real as the limestone gargoyles on Stern’s new colleges. Foreign languages, black clothing, super-stylish eyewear and New York practices are the dominant cultural memes of the Yale faculty, but quirks and breadth are tolerated.
Now, that tolerance for a little aesthetic openness amid the universal High Modern canon of architectural education has been roundly, loudly asserted by the selection of Yale’s new dean. In his mid-70s, Stern sees perhaps his greatest Yale triumph, those residential colleges, literally cement his place in Yale’s history, and he has no doubt influenced the selection of his successor: architect Deborah Berke.
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