Archinect - News

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...

RAMSA’s new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art opens at Notre Dame this December

2023-11-17T18:34:00-05:00

The University of Notre Dame’s new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art from Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) has announced an opening date of December 1st, completing the first phase of a multi-year plan that will advance research and foundational arts education offerings for students in South Bend, Indiana.

The design consists of a 70,000-square-foot neoclassical style building to house the university’s 31,000 object collection. A rectangular layout of 23 separate gallery spaces centers around a circular multi-story atrium and sculpture court, with the exhibitions of different world cultures stitched together into one “dialogue” connecting to an art historical timeline that totals approximately 4,000 years.

Image rendering courtesy of RAMSA

Notre Dame is, similar to Brown University, pursuing the project in the interests of re-affirming the role of arts education in its undergraduate curricula. The school says the new museum brings it on par with Yale, Stanford, and other comparable ins...

Robert A.M. Stern Architects adds to Notre Dame's arts educational offerings with modernizing Raclin Murphy Museum of Art redesign

2023-07-31T08:00:00-04:00

Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) has shared design details of the new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame ahead of the project’s first phase opening in South Bend later this fall.

The 70,000-square-foot facility is built to hold a growing collection of over 31,000 art objects, one of the largest for an American university or college, in addition to featuring a slate of exhibition strategies designed to “encourage ongoing dialogues with works of art” for Notre Dame’s student body. As the firm’s brief stated, 91% of the class of 2022 graduates reported having used the former Snite Museum for academic research at some point during their undergraduate careers.

Inside the museum’s neoclassical building, the new facility delivers a multi-level atrium space that welcomes visitors at the ground floor level and directs into the first series of thematic galleries, which house the university’s collection of American, European, and African art. A suite devoted to In...

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...

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.

Robert A.M. Stern wins 2017 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion

2016-12-08T17:39:00-05:00

The AIA and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) deemed Robert A.M. Stern the 2017 laureate of the Topaz Medallion, the highest accolade bestowed to an architecture educator. The yearly award distinguishes an individual for their significant involvement in architecture education for at least a decade, and also for their widespread influential teaching.

Credit: Yale School of Architecture

Robert A.M. Stern was acknowledged for his dedication to architecture education throughout his 50-year career — from his buildings, his teaching at Columbia University and deanship at Yale School of Architecture, to his numerous books such as “New Directions in American Architecture”, his New York City architectural heritage series, and the recent “Pedagogy and Place: 100 Years of Architecture Education at Yale”. The Partners at Robert A.M. Stern Architects also promote emerging talent in awarding the $10,000 RAMSA Travel Fellowship every year.

Previous Topaz laureates include ...

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.