Archinect - News

Robert A.M. Stern Architects to author renovation of Austin’s historic UT Tower

2024-10-10T11:28:00-04:00

Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) has signed on to a new higher education project for the University of Texas at Austin. The project to renovate the historic UT Tower (aka the 'Main Building') back to its original 1937 appearance will be completed by the end of summer 2027. Restoration of its exterior will begin next month. The listed budget for the project is $70 million.

Image: The University of Texas at Austin

RAMSA designs the Virginia General Assembly building for the new century of democratic governance

2024-07-05T15:42:00-04:00

The first purpose-built space for the Virginia General Assembly, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in collaboration with Glavé & Holmes Architecture, has debuted in Richmond’s Capitol Square.

The 14-story, 414,000-square-foot facility serves the modern needs of what is the oldest continually meeting legislative body in the United States while enabling better public participation in the legislative process.

Image credit: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

Addressing Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau’s Virginia State Capitol from 1785 at the northwest corner of the square, the project anchors its full-block site and consolidates a spate of smaller buildings ranging from 1912 to 1965.

Image credit: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

A central ten-story masonry-clad tower rising from a four-story podium dominates the composition, which features the preserved historic facades from the 112-year-old Life Insurance Company of Virginia building.

Image credit: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

The publicly acc...

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is vying for a record $225 million with the sale of his enormous oceanfront Malibu estate

2022-04-28T19:55:00-04:00

Michael Eisner is chasing a record on the bluffs of Malibu, listing his prized oceanfront compound for $225 million. If he gets his price, it’ll be the most expensive home sale in California history.

Much of the nine-building compound was designed by one of Eisner’s personal favorites Robert A.M. Stern in the 1990s and would considerably usurp Jeff Bezos’ $165 million Bel Air home acquisition, the $150 million Chartwell Mansion deal from 2019, and a nearby property owned by hedge fund magnate Marc Andreessen, which sold in October for a then-record total of $177 million.

The $225 million listing price is slightly less than the half-a-billion dollar figure originally commanded by Bel Air’s sprawling The One complex, which eventually fell to $295 million before selling for $146 million at a bankruptcy auction in early March.

Celebrity real estate is a constant in the design-savvy enclave, with recent sales of Richard Meier and Tadao Ando creations joining Eisner’s property on a list of high-profile architecture to hit the market recently.

RAMSA is tapped for the New-York Historical Society's American LGBTQ+ Museum expansion

2021-07-02T20:13:00-04:00

Images of a regal new expansion effort at the New-York Historical Society have been released, showcasing the addition of the new American LGBTQ+ Museum to the 216-year-old institution’s Central Park campus.

The Historical Society has chosen RAMSA to lead the $140 million expansion effort, adding space for the new entity, which was granted a museum charter just two short years ago after being established by activists in 2017.

With nearly 70,000 square feet of new space, the museum comes along with new galleries for the Historical Society and added classroom space for the institution’s ongoing academic partnerships with CUNY and the public school system. A new storage area will also allow the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library to house its collection completely onsite for the first time.

An adjacent 10,000-square-foot vacant lot owned by the Historical Society since 1937 will host the expansion. The new museum will be hosted on the fourth floor of the expanded space featuring two galle...

RAMSA tops out another stone-clad NYC high-rise

2020-08-27T16:30:00-04:00

Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) has topped out a forthcoming residential tower in New York City billed as the firm's "smallest Manhattan Building" currently under development.

The project, designed for developers CBSK Ironstate, features 14 full-floor residences and a duplex penthouse, according to a project announcement. The tower rises a total of 250-feet, 8-inches.

Image © Field Condition.

Construction photographs shared by the architects highlight the tower's concrete structural walls completed, with lower level areas already clad in masonry and stone finishes. The project, designed to evoke a bygone era of luxury development, respect's the existing streetwall along the sidewalk, is decked out in classically-inspired trim and ornamentation, and features punched window openings instead of glass curtainwalls, like many of the firm's signature housing projects.

Image courtesy of Grain London.

A statement from a press release describing the project reads: "The rising facade show...

RAMSA's 950-foot-tall Central Park tower heads toward the finish line

2020-04-30T17:19:00-04:00

A buff stone-clad supertall tower designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) in New York City is nearing the final stages of construction.

The 950-foot-tall building, 220 Central Park South, rises from a site directly opposite Central Park's southern edge as a relatively modest 18-story "villa" apartment complex overlooked from behind by a massive, skinny tower.

Construction on the site has been ongoing since 2013 and is finally heading toward completion. The tower is marked by a traditional arrangement of punched widows and protruding balconies that interrupt otherwise monolithic stone facades. As the tower rises, it steps back slightly as it rises toward a more dramatically stepped top.

A massive 23,000-square-foot penthouse suite located within the tower sold last year for $230 million, making the unit the most expensive home in the United States at the time.

New York YIMBY reports that SLCE Architects is the executive architect and that Thierry W. Despont is providing i...

RAMSA breaks ground on tallest residential tower in Minneapolis

2019-10-23T14:38:00-04:00

Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) and developers Arcadia and Ryan Companies have broken ground on Eleven, a 41-story condominium tower slated to become Minneapolis's tallest residential building.

View of the tower against the city skyline. Image courtesy of RAMSA.

The 550-foot, stone-and-glass tower features punched windows, glass balconies, and a stepped crown filled with penthouses and luxury amenities. Each floor of the tower will contain four individual units along the lower levels of the building. Higher up, the building will contain either one or two units per story.

The tower is wrapped in balconies and terraces. Images courtesy of RAMSA.

For the project, Ryan Companies is serving as a co-developer, builder, and design architect partner; Additional design services are being provided by Peterssen/Keller Architects and Martha Dayton Design.

Check out this time-lapse of RAMSA's 70-story Chicago tower

2019-09-06T19:15:00-04:00

A Robert A. M. Stern Architects-designed high-rise has recently reached completion. And with a timeline of almost three years, the project's realization has made it Chicago's tallest "strictly residential" skyscraper, with the program lacking hotel, office, and retail program types.

The structure tops out right at 836 feet. EarthCam has recently uploaded a video of the tower's erection:

Hudson Yards and Stern-designed towers dominate NYC's ultraluxury real estate sales

2019-06-11T14:03:00-04:00

Manhattan’s latest crop of new luxury developments continues to attract a steady stream of buyers. At the ultra-pricey 220 Central Park South in Midtown, the grand limestone skyscraper designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, four more units officially sold, including New York City’s most expensive closing in May: a three-bedroom aerie for nearly $26.5 million.

The NYT's Vivian Marino provides an update on the biggest recent luxury real estate transactions in New York City with notably pricey purchases at Robert A.M. Stern's 220 Central Park South and 250 West 81st Street towers and also at the newly opened Hudson Yards mammoth development.

"Philip I. Kent, the former chief executive of Turner Broadcasting System, was one of the many buyers at 15 Hudson Yards, the megaproject’s first residential tower. (Oh, and the architect who helped design that building also bought an apartment — in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.)," writes Marino.

Megapenthouse at Stern-designed 220 Central Park South sells for $238M, now the most expensive home sold in the U.S.

2019-01-25T15:45:00-05:00

Hedge funder Ken Griffin has closed on a massive penthouse at 220 Central Park South, paying a record-shattering $238 million, according to sources familiar with the deal. The Citadel founder has long been rumored as the buyer of the condominium’s most lavish spread — a 23,000-square-foot quadplex encompassing the 50th through 53rd floors of the limestone tower, developed by Vornado Realty Trust and designed by Robert A.M. Stern. The asking price was $250 million.

After Ken Griffin dropped a sweet quarter billion on his new NYC digs, he didn't appear entirely penniless and recently secured a few other neat places to crash when traveling to London, Chicago, or Miami. "Earlier this week, he reportedly scooped up a house in London for around $122 million," reports The Real Deal. "In 2017, he shelled out $58.75 million for several floors of No. 9 Walton, a condominium in Chicago, and in 2015, set a record in Miami be shelling out $60 million for a penthouse at Faena House."

Robert A.M. Stern's first Chicago tower nears completion

2018-11-09T13:46:00-05:00

Now, his first Chicago skyscraper, Streeterville’s One Bennett Park, is nearing completion. [...] “It has a very special site,” he said. “It will be a building that is memorable, I hope. I think it has already made an impression on the skyline. I would describe it as a building that has roots in the skyscrapers of New York in the 1920s and ‘30s, which people generally call Art Deco, but maybe that’s a kind of sloppy term.”

"There are a lot of architects who seem intent on entertaining other architects," Stern says in his WTTW interview. "I would like the respect of my peers, but I would like the public to embrace my buildings."

Image: Robert A.M. Stern Architects

Tradition for Sale

2017-10-31T17:29:00-04:00

Yale has just completed two new residential colleges near the heart of campus: a superblock of neo-Gothic fantasy. This reversion to an archaic visual language exemplifies a troubling trend. With their new architecture, universities all too often abdicate leadership in promoting artistic innovation as they pander to plutocratic donors.

Columnist Belmont Freeman takes a critical look at Yale's RAMSA-designed Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College in his latest piece for Places.

While Freeman marvels at their extraordinary evocation of tradition, he argues that their historicism represents a missed opportunity to reinvent the residential college for the 21st century — as Saarinen did on the same campus in the middle of the 20th.

'Girder Gothic' or 'memorable traditionalism'? Blair Kamin reviews Yale's new residential colleges

2017-08-22T15:03:00-04:00

So Yale's new residential colleges, which New York architect and former Yale architecture school dean Robert A.M. Stern designed according to the Rogers model, have a very high bar to meet and some tough questions to confront: Do they refresh the Gothic tradition, as Rogers did, or are they a pastiche? Does it make sense for Yale, which claims to prize diversity and inclusion, to replicate the physical world of Rogers' day, when the university's student body was largely WASP and male?

When expanding, most university campuses follow the strategy of replicating the already established style of the existing architecture. Working on Yale's new residential colleges, A. M. Stern and his partner on the project, Melissa DelVecchio, are, too, striving to not stand apart physically or architecturally from the context in their design.

Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune reports on the university's recent campus additions,"...Stern's traditionalist architecture, which is draped like a Ralph Lauren suit over an underlying frame of steel and concrete, is uneven in quality, wavering between self-assured reinterpretation and over-the-top eclecticism.

It all feels like Yale: Monumental scale in the sky, human scale at ground level, the former not overwhelming the latter. The Gothic language, with its malleable asymmetry, was better suited to this site than the formal Georgian vocabulary of other Yale colleges. But even colleges as sizable as Murray and Franklin cannot replicate t...

RAMSA awards 2017 Travel Fellowship to Kyle Schumann

2017-05-22T19:39:00-04:00

Robert A.M. Stern Architects announced last week that they granted their 2017 RAMSA Traveling Fellowship to Kyle Schumann, a master's candidate at the Princeton University School of Architecture, for his submission “Alpine Modernism: Sensitive Identities and Regional Placemaking”.

The prize will fund Schumann's travels to Austria, Slovenia, and Italy, where he will study the work of architects Jože Plečnik, Otto Wagner, Edoardo Gellner, and Edvard Ravnikar. He argues in his submission that these specific architects engaged with “complex and often conflicting cultural histories, coupled with the challenging geography and climate of the Alpine region,” and therefore “necessitated an architecture intricately sensitive to material, cultural, and programmatic contexts.”

The jury — RAMSA Partners Melissa DelVecchio, Daniel Lobitz, and Grant F. Marani — was “intrigued” by Schumann's clear intent “to investigate Alpine architecture that mediates modernism and regional tradition,” they wrote. ...

Yale Dean Deborah Berke advocates pluralism in pedagogy

2016-07-28T13:45:00-04:00

Deborah Berke, a practicing architect with a firm of over 60 employees and former adjunct Yale professor, has replaced the inimitable Robert "Bob" A.M. Stern as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Berke has ideas about how to shape the future of the school's pedagogy. In an interview with the CTPost, she lays out her vision, which is centered on advancing the "history of pluralism":

In terms of curriculum, her definition of pluralism will expand to include more emphasis on how architecture can respond to the impact of climate change and globalization, both of which she emphasizes as “rapid.” For the student body, which is already about 50 percent female, and faculty, pluralism translates to broader diversity.

“Let’s put it this way,” she says, “the profession of architecture does not look like the population at large and I am going to work hard toward having the architects we train and the architects who teach be more reflective of the population at large.”

It's official: $250M mega penthouse in Stern-designed 220 Central Park South tower is now NYC's priciest address

2016-05-05T17:32:00-04:00

It has been whispered about for months, but now it’s official: Vornado Realty Trust is offering up a palatial four-floor apartment at 220 Central Park South that is priced at a record-smashing $250 million. The massive condominium will encompass floors 50 through 53 of the Robert A.M. Stern-designed limestone tower, and it will span some 23,000 square feet [...]. The asking price works out to nearly $11,000 per square foot.

Previously on Archinect: This $250M mega penthouse might become New York's priciest home

Yale architecture students interview Dean Robert A.M. Stern

2016-04-25T15:01:00-04:00

[Yale students:] Why do you think architecture is important, and who do you think it serves, other than the golf players? (laughter) [Stern:] Architecture is everything about the man made environment. Some of it achieves the level of high art, some of it is good solid meat and potatoes, which is very important after all. You don’t want to sit down to a dinner of foie gras every day in the week. Sometimes you want to have bangers and mash. [...] Architecture is an art—high and low.

Related on Archinect:

Extending an abandoned vocabulary: The New Yorker profiles Robert A.M. Stern

2015-08-24T15:12:00-04:00

New York has seen twenty-first-century buildings in early-twentieth-century drag before, but 30 Park Place stands out, both for its size [...] and for its location—cheek-by-jowl with some of the most ambitious buildings to emerge from the current high-rise boom [...] “We’re transposing a nineteen-thirties language to lower Manhattan, which has gotten overrun with glass and abstraction,” the architect said in a recent interview. “People want to look at buildings and make connections.”

Robert A.M. Stern Architects in the Archinect news:

This $250M mega penthouse might become New York's priciest home

2015-06-17T15:55:00-04:00

Vornado's super luxury tower at 220 Central Park South isn't even out of the ground yet, but billionaire buyers seemingly can't wait to stash their stacks of cash in the 950-foot-tall tower. The Real Deal hears rumblings that a Qatari investor is eyeing a monstrous spread that would cost around $250 million, making it easily the most expensive home in New York City. It would completely obliterate the current record, the $100 million sale at One57.

Robert A.M. Stern's NYC condo towers have a habit of attracting record bids (previously: NYC’s Most Expensive Condo to Be Listed at $130 Million).

Let's talk about money in architecture

2015-02-25T13:00:00-05:00

Although money is often seen as a taboo topic in art schools, a group of Yale alumni is urging professional architects to place more value on the relationship between money and architecture. The Yale Architectural Journal’s latest edition, titled “Money,” discusses the controversial role of money in the field of architecture. [...] ranging from Frank Gehry to Yale School of Architecture Professor Keller Easterling, the issue urges architects to reconsider the financial side of their work.

More about Perspecta 47: Money here.

Robert A.M. Stern to step down as Dean of Yale School of Architecture

2014-11-10T19:13:00-05:00

After nearly two decades of leadership, School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern ARC ’65 is reportedly planning to step down. Five faculty and administrative staff members at the School of Architecture said that Stern will retire from the school when his term as dean concludes in Spring 2016. Professor Michelle Addington added that he has also been a major influence on her own approach to architecture.

NYC’s Most Expensive Condo to Be Listed at $130 Million

2014-09-23T19:01:00-04:00

A triplex penthouse at Zeckendorf Development Co.’s tower under construction on Manhattan’s Upper East Side will be offered for sale at $130 million, making it New York’s most expensive apartment listing. The 12,394-square-foot (1,151-square-meter) property will span the top three floors at 520 Park Ave., where sales will begin the first quarter of next year, Arthur Zeckendorf said in an interview today.

2014 RAMSA Travel Fellowship awarded to McGill University grad student

2014-04-29T21:09:00-04:00

Robert A.M. Stern Architects recently announced Anna Antropova, a master's degree candidate at the McGill University School of Architecture, as the recipient of the 2014 RAMSA Travel Fellowship. The $10,000 fellowship will fund Antropova's trip to Japan, where she will study ancient wood joinery techniques. Her research focuses on the potential transformation and reintroduction of applying ancient timber techniques to modern construction.

"'This elegant and efficient mode of construction could meaningfully inform our western building industry, an industry addicted to toxic adhesives and an indiscriminate application of metal fasteners. Wood stands to be for our generation what steel and concrete were for the previous two or three, and Japanese joinery offers us a sustainable mode of assembly for a sustainable material with far less embodied energy.' Ms. Antropova aims to reintroduce these techniques, ultimately uniting 'old and new, east and west, tradition and modernity.'”

Antropova was selected from a field of 20 applicants preselected by their educational institutions.

This year's jury consisted of RAMSA partners Melissa DelVecchio, Dan Lobitz, and Grant F. Marani. Margaret Marsh facilitated the discussion and process.

For more details, head over to Bustler.

Changing Skyline: Mormon development combines civic-mindedness, awful architecture

2014-02-21T14:03:00-05:00

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings of the Mormon Church's expanding kingdom at 16th and Vine Streets, unveiled last week by Mayor Nutter. The architectural chameleons at Robert Stern's office have paired a 1920s-style apartment tower with a teensy redbrick meetinghouse that looks as if it was dragged across town from colonial-era Society Hill.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects 2014 Travel Fellowship now accepting submissions

2014-02-05T19:14:00-05:00

Robert A.M. Stern Architects' RAMSA Travel Fellowship is back for its second year. The Fellowship awards $10,000 to an individual to support travel and research for studies that convey the firm's key ideal of perpetuating tradition through invention in architecture. Candidates demonstrate insight and interest in the architectural profession and its future, as well as an ability to carry through in-depth research.

All regions and cultures are appropriate topics of study. The jury will consist of three RAMSA partners and a representative from RAMSA’s Research department.

To be eligible for the prize, you must be a student pursuing an M.Arch degree, are in your penultimate year of study, and are enrolled in one of the 16 U.S. or Canadian schools attended by current RAMSA partners and senior associates. Students should apply to their school deans.

Submissions require application forms, a one-page travel and research statement, and a portfolio.

Important deadlines and dates:
Proposal submissi...

"Unfashionably Fashionable" - Justin Davidson on Robert A.M. Stern’s Buildings

2013-11-04T19:11:00-05:00

Stern has been called the Martha Stewart of architecture, a comparison suggesting that he’s selling a lifestyle rather than making art.

PennDesign Student Wins 2013 RAMSA Travel Fellowship

2013-04-24T18:20:00-04:00

Jonathan Dessi-Olive, a Master's candidate at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, has recently been announced as recipient of the 2013 RAMSA Travel Fellowship. The $10,000 prize is awarded annually by the Partners of Robert A.M. Stern Architects for the purpose of travel and research.

Previously: Robert A. M. Stern Architects announces the RAMSA Travel Fellowship

The LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne reviews the "fittingly blunt" Bush presidential library

2013-04-23T20:41:00-04:00

Stern's architecture is always steeped in strategic references to past landmarks; there is no doubt he knows how to send, and shape, an architectural message. And the message the front entrance to the Bush Library delivers is clear: This is a building meant to honor a particularly blunt and plain-spoken kind of political power.

Robert Stern refuses to sign petition for Pritzker to grant joint prize to Denise Scott Brown

2013-04-18T14:25:00-04:00

Robert A. M. Stern, the dean of Yale’s Architecture School, said he declined to sign the petition because he objected to its use of the word “demand,” but that he backed it in principle. “It would be wonderful for the Pritzker committee to review the situation and to offer her the prize,” Mr. Stern said. “The nature of the collaboration was so intense on every level.”

The Stern-designed Kohler Environmental Center forces students to work with their zero-energy building

2013-03-20T17:53:00-04:00

The students were tapped in determining whether to invest in one or two clothes dryers. Would they use drying racks to eliminate the second dryer? Would they give up hair dryers? Would they wear sweaters in winter to permit an energy-saving thermostat setting of 67 degrees? “We don’t tell students that certain behaviors are unacceptable,” said Joseph Scanio, one of the center’s two live-in teachers. “We discuss things. We make it easy to be intentional about the choices you make.”