Robert A. M. Stern

b. New York, 1939.

Robert A. M. Stern, a prolific New York Post-Modern classicist. On finishing his studies at Columbia, New York and Yale (1965), Stern became a designer with Richard Meier (1966) and subsequently worked as a planner for New York City. He set up his own practice with John Hagmann in 1969, and since 1972 has been principal of Robert A. M. Stern Architects. He has held professorships at Yale and Columbia and represented the USA at the Venice Biennales of 1976 and 1980. He is perhaps best known for a number of exclusive country houses. Earlier works such as the Westchester Residence made allusion to aspects of classical architecture in a Modernist context, but his later designs have come to look more historical. He was an early and important theoretician of Post- Modernism and in his book Modern Classicism seeks to explain the continuity of the classical tradition and the relationship to his own Post-Modern classicism, which he has defined as “a modern traditional approach that stresses the importance of cultural and physical context”.