Robert Siegel is principal of Robert Siegel Architects. Siegel was born in 1963, and, while still a student of Levittown, New York, public schools, he apprenticed with a local architect. He earned academic scholarships to Syracuse University School of Architecture and to the Syracuse University Facolta Di Architettura in Florence, Italy. His undergraduate thesis was entitled “An Alternative to Suburbia,” and focused on using design to generate social cohesion in non-urban environments.

After practicing and teaching in Boston, Siegel won an academic scholarship to attend Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; in 1989 he went to Russia to participate in an exchange program with the Moscow Institute of Architecture. He returned to New York City and established his eponymous private practice in 1991.

Since that time Siegel has focused on cross-cultural design, which he has realized in a variety of building types. In addition to the Calais Land Port of Entry, institutional buildings include the Korean Embassy in Beijing; Siegel also has been involved in feasibility studies, program development, and design for land ports of entry in Beebe Plain, Vermont, Coburn Gore, Maine, Otay Mesa East, California, and Van Buren, Maine. Academic commissions include new residence halls for Bard College and historic renovations to the Dance Conservatory at SUNY Purchase. Capital One’s auditorium in Virginia, Swissair First & Business Class Lounge at JFK Airport, and the Swissair/Switzerland Tourism Offices at Rockefeller Center count among his commercial projects. Moreover, Siegel has created additions and overseen renovations for buildings originally designed by The Architect’s Collaborative, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Gunnar Birkerts, and Edward Durell Stone.

Whenever possible, Siegel has applied sustainable principles to his design work. Further demonstrating a commitment to social responsibility in the building professions, he has chaired the AIA New York Chapter Committee on the Environment and served on the steering committee for The High Performance Building Initiative, a project funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.  

Siegel has taught at City College, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Parsons The New School for Design, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University, and he is a frequent guest critic at New York–area architecture schools. His professional collaborators include Kallman McKinnel and Wood, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, and Polshek Partnership—on Columbia Law School, the Guggenheim Museum, and Carnegie Hall, respectively. He serves as a Peer Reviewer for GSA’s Design Excellence Program.