Today the University of Colorado Boulder dedicated the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building. The 337,000-square-foot Caruthers Biotechnology Building is pavilionated to organize labs and faculty offices into neighborhoods that encourage collegial interaction; the neighborhoods, in turn, are connected by a central "main street" to shared support spaces and double-height meeting rooms. The new building's palette of local sandstone, brick, and red barrel tile echoes the university's original buildings by Charles Z. Klauder, whose 1920 master plan called for an idiosyncratic "Tuscan Vernacular Revival" expression to take advantage of the campus's extraordinary site in the foothills of the Rockies, and establishes the architectural character of RAMSA's master plan for the University's new East Campus (2008), holding down one side of what will become a gateway quadrangle.

"The building brings together under one roof the brightest minds in the many disciplines of the biosciences to advance health and patient care in unprecedented ways," said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip DiStefano. The Colorado Initiative for Molecular Biotechnology, the Department of Biochemistry, and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering will share the facility.

The building is named for former CU molecular biology researcher, Jennie Smoly Caruthers, the late wife of Marvin Caruthers, a biotech pioneer who co-founded Amgen Inc. and is a nationally acclaimed CU-Boulder researcher.  Mr. Caruthers donated $20 million toward the building’s construction in 2007, and a total of $48 million has been donated for the building to date, including $15 million from federal stimulus funds.

RAMSA partners Paul Whalen and Sargent Gardiner worked with Mr. Stern on the project. HDR Architecture, Inc was the Associate Architect. The Caruthers Biotechnology Building is on track for LEED Platinum Certification.

The Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA) presented Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, with a 2012 Design Excellence Award for the East Hampton Town Hall in East Hampton, New York. 

Our design for the East Hampton Town Hall took a collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century timber-framed vernacular structures, preserved by a couple as a residence and then donated to the Town, and organized them as a new campus for local government.  The project has also been honored with a Citation for Design from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York State Chapter.

As an advocate for historic environments on Long Island, the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities works to promote the appreciation and protection of the region’s cultural heritage.  To encourage standards of excellence and raise public awareness, the Preservation Awards recognize individuals, organizations, and projects that demonstrate extraordinary achievement in the field of historic preservation on Long Island.

Photo courtesy of SPLIA.

Today Harvard Law School dedicated the new Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, and Clinical Wing.  The LEED Gold, 266,000-gross-square-foot building houses classrooms, legal clinics, an 875-seat conference center, lounges, and dining, all above a 700-car underground parking garage.  The building's three wings form a "C" wrapping around a landscaped courtyard raised to the second level to conceal a ground-level loading dock.  An east-facing glass wall that opens to the courtyard brings light into a double-height main gallery. The building's south wing connects to Harkness Commons (Walter Gropius, 1951) and will open to a new quadrangle to be completed in 2013.

“Welcome to the Law School’s living room, welcome to the new shape of legal education,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, who saw the project to its completion

“My sense,” said Elena Kagan, former HLS Dean and now Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, “is that it has succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams.”

"For the Law School we worked to imbue this new building with the character of what went before, so we hope you will find that the Wasserstein-Caspersen-Clinical building seems to belong here yet to be its own thing," said Robert A.M. Stern.  "I hope that this new building will be embraced as the physical embodiment of the Law School's march forward far into the 21^st century."

RAMSA partners Melissa DelVecchio and Graham Wyatt worked with Mr. Stern on the project. 

The East Hampton Library broke ground today for a new children's wing, which will accommodate additional shelving for children's books and make the library's existing lecture hall accessible.

According to the Library's executive director Dennis Fabiszak, the new wing is expected to open in May 31, 2013. The library has raised at least $3.2 million for the estimated $4 to $4.5 million project. The official fundraising campaign has not yet begun, but the library has secured donations from donors, such as Alec Baldwin, who gave $250,000 to the project.

The design for the new children's wing has been in the works for over a decade. Robert A.M. Stern Architects began its work at the library in 1992, completing a major addition and renovation project in 1997. The firm's work has carried forward the character of the original building, which was designed by Aymar Embury and first opened in 1910.

RAMSA Partner Randy Correll continues to lead the firm's work at the library.

Rendering by Michael Berardesco Studios.

The Wake Forest Schools of Business held a topping-out ceremony for Farrell Hall, which will become the schools’ new home in 2013.  The building is designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, led by Robert A.M. Stern and his partners Graham S. Wyatt and Kevin Smith.

"Farrell Hall will be a world-class home worthy of the exciting future of the Wake Forest Schools of Business," said Steve Reinemund, dean of the Schools of Business.  "A building does not make a program, but this state-of-the-art facility will provide the platform for inspiring scholarly work and social dynamism."

The 130,000-square-foot Farrell Hall will unite undergraduate and graduate programs now scattered in three separate buildings.  Restrained Georgian fronts facing the campus to the north and a new quadrangle to the south will bookend a dramatic triple-height Founders' Living Room, which will connect all the building's levels, with balconies stepping back to allow views from the first floor to the third. Terraces off the Founders' Living Room will cascade out to a lawn with a series of informal outdoor gathering spaces and a grove of mature pin oaks.  The project will seek LEED Gold certification.

Michael A.J. and Mary Flynn Farrell donated $10 million toward the building's $53 million cost.  Mike Farrell is chairman and chief executive of Annaly Capital Management and the parent of a 2010 Wake Forest graduate.  In naming the building, the Farrells are paying tribute to Mr. Farrell's late father, Michael John Farrell.

RAMSA partners Graham Wyatt and Kevin Smith are working with Mr. Stern on the project. 

Rendering by Jeff Stikeman.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects' LEGO® model of 15 Central Park West joined the National Building Museum’s exhibition LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition, joining models of fifteen of the world’s most iconic buildings created by LEGO® certified professional Adam Reed Tucker, one of only 11 LEGO® certified professionals in the world. The 15 Central Park West model was designed and built by RAMSA Graphic Design Director Jonathan Grzywacz.

“We are thrilled to showcase the creative spirit of those who have demonstrated their support of our mission by participating in this unique experience,” said National Building Museum executive director Chase W. Rynd. “We invited our corporate supporters to be a part of the cityscape of LEGO® Architecture and were honored when these industry powerhouses invested their time and talent to design and build models that illuminate the innovation and creativity of the building arts and science and wow the Museum’s visitors.”

The Museum’s LEGO® Architecture exhibition is among the most popular in Museum history and has had more than 214,000 visitors since it opened in July 2010.  LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition is on view through Labor Day, September 3, 2012. The National Building Museum is open seven days a week, from 10 am to 5 pm Monday through Saturday and 11 am to 5 pm on Sunday. Admission fees apply.

Today Webster University dedicated the new East Academic Building.  Located at the southeast corner of their St. Louis campus, the building defines a new campus green space.  Our firm prepared campus master plan guidelines for the precinct and designed the 95,000-square-foot, three-story building, the first of a new generation of academic buildings to surround the quadrangle.  The East Academic Building will accommodate the George Herbert Walker School of Business and Technology and other of the University’s programs. 

“The East Academic Building is an important milestone in Webster University’s history,” said Webster President Elizabeth (Beth) J. Stroble. “This building serves as a bridge that links the historic Webster University with the future of the institution as we move toward completion of our new campus master plan, which will help direct future development of our St. Louis campus for the next 15 years and beyond.”

RAMSA partners Graham Wyatt and Kevin Smith worked with Mr. Stern on the project. 

The Robert A.M. Stern Collection introduced New York Home, its first line of residential furnishings, at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show today.  The line, which brings the firm’s sophisticated design approach to handcrafted pieces built in local workshops, is inspired by historical precedents and updated with clean lines and elegant detailing.  Each piece in the New York Home collection is scaled to bring comfort and style to contemporary residences.

"New York Home offers a line of tailored furnishings with the level of design and craftsmanship we bring to those we design for our custom residential clients," said Alexander P. Lamis, who leads the program as managing partner of Robert A.M. Stern Interiors, LLC, and Robert A.M. Stern Designs, LLC. "New York has been an important center for furniture-making since the days of Duncan Phyfe, and we're pleased to be working with local artisans to create the heirlooms of tomorrow."

New York Home debuted with nine pieces, including: a tête-à-tête with two chairs—one L-shaped, the other C-shaped—and a coordinated ottoman in a ceruse finish and distinctive cross-braced decoration inspired by 18th-century English armchairs; a tall cabinet inspired by traditional armoires but slimmed down to conceal a bar or entertainment center; a wingback chair with abstracted detailing; single- and double-tiered tripod tables offered in lacquered wood or bronze finish with inset mica surfaces; an occasional table modeled on early 20^th century French precedents, in an oil-rubbed finish with bronze details; and a bedside table in parchment and lacquered wood with a semicircular well.

New York Home was named an ASID Top Pick for Furniture at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show.  For more information, please visit www.ramscollection.com.

Traditional Building magazine has announced that Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, won a 2012 Palladio Award.  The Our Lady of Mercy Chapel at Salve Regina University topped the field in the program's New Design and Construction under 30,000 square feet category. The honors represent the firm's fifth Palladio Award.

Set at a campus crossroads, the chapel’s picturesque massing and Shingle-Style details—sweeping eaves, eyebrow dormers, lattice-work, and local granite—are specific to Newport and the tradition of New England country churches, here with a Roman Catholic inflection. The main sanctuary is bathed in natural light from clerestory windows and a high-set oculus, and its whitepainted walls accented with oak wainscoting, beams, and trusses. In line with evolving liturgical practice, the gently curving pews give worshipers a clear view of their fellow parishioners as well as those who lead the services.

The eleventh annual Palladio Awards recognized nine architectural firms for outstanding work in traditional design for commercial, institutional, public, and residential projects.  The jurors reviewed more than 150 entries to select four winners in the buildings category and five residential winners.  The jurors for commercial, institutional, and public architecture were Donald Kaliszewski, AIA, LEED AP, principal, Urban Design Associates, Pittsburgh, PA; Raymond Pepi, president, Building Conservation Associates, New York, NY; Jack Pyburn, FAIA, principal, Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architect, Atlanta, GA; and Craig Williams, AIA, LEED AP, principal, David M. Schwarz Architects, Washington, DC.

The winning projects will appear in the June 2012 issue of Traditional Building, and the award will be presented in Boston in July at a conference sponsored by the magazine.

Richard W. Quinn FAIA along with Newport Collaborative Architects were the associate architects for the project.  RAMSA Partner Grant Marani worked with Mr. Stern on the project.

Photo by Francis Dzikowski / Esto.

Today American Campus Communities broke ground for Chestnut Square, a new student residential development at Drexel University at Chestnut Street between 32^nd and 33^rd Streets. The new development will reinforce Drexel University's evolving West Philadelphia campus, which features other new buildings including the Papadakis Integrated Science Building, Millennium Hall, and RAMSA's LeBow College of Business, currently under construction and scheduled for completion in 2014, putting it squarely in the new generation of Drexel buildings.

Chestnut Square will consist of two six-story residential blocks above two levels of continuous transparent retail shopfronts and a 19-story cast stone residential tower. The project will provide 865 student beds, with two-bedroom and four-bedroom suites organized as duplexes, with a living room and kitchen at the entry level and bedrooms alternately above and below.  The new project will add 25,000 square feet of retail to the Drexel campus.

"This innovative partnership combining dynamic urban retail with high-quality student housing will serve as a catalyst in continuing the revitalization of our campus and surrounding community," said Drexel's President John Fry.

RAMSA partners Graham Wyatt and Kevin Smith are working with Mr. Stern on the project. Voith & Mactavish Architects LLP is the associate architect.

Rendering by Studio AMD.

Today the Virginia Theological Seminary unveiled the design for its new Chapel for the Ages. 

Along with an improved welcome center and a new motor court, the new chapel will address visitors with a broad, inviting portico, while it will greet those who approach from the campus with a terrace oriented to the campus grove. These two complementary yet distinctive entrances will invite seminarians and members of the congregation to come together in their chapel.  A lantern and large arched windows in the gable-ends of each transept will bathe the main sanctuary with diffuse natural light from above. The chapel will be a flexible worship space, one that will serve as an understated backdrop to a range of liturgical purposes from large-scale celebrations to intimate services, all supporting the Seminary's educational mission.

The Chapel for the Ages will stand in peaceful conversation with the remains of the Immanuel Chapel (1881), destroyed in an unfortunate fire that will continue to provide a quiet and timeless place for contemplation. The new chapel, designed to complement the Seminary's collection of historic buildings, will reflect the restrained Virginia traditions of the campus's earliest buildings. 

"Sacred space plays an important role in formation," preached VTS Dean Ian Markham in his sermon prior to the unveiling, "we are the generation entrusted by God to build a space of formation—to build a space that produces doers of the Word not simply hearers."

"We conceive the chapel we are now designing not as a look back to the 19^th century or as a monument to our own time, but as a timeless place to honor and carry forward all that has gone before on the campus, and to focus on a vision that will serve not only the future of the Seminary, but also the future of the city of Alexandria, and most importantly, of the entire Anglican Communion," said RAMSA Partner Grant Marani.   Mr. Marani was Robert A.M. Stern Architects' Project Partner for the new Chapel for the Ages.

Founded in 1823, Virginia Theological Seminary is the largest of the 11 accredited seminaries of the Episcopal Church. The seminary prepares men and women for service in the Church worldwide, both as ordained and lay ministers, and offers a number of professional degree programs and diplomas.

Rendering by Jeff Stikeman.

The array of solar panels on the roof of Brown University's new Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatic Center will be the largest hybrid solar-powered electrical and heating installation in the United States.  The building, which opens April 13, will generate enough power to keep the lights on and enough thermal energy to heat the center's million-gallon pool.

“This system is a great demonstration project of how renewable energy can be utilized in a city environment and provides a living lab for students,” said Chris Powell, director of sustainable energy and environmental initiatives at Brown.

The new building brings the architectural character of Brown's historic brick buildings to the northeastern edge of the campus while also acknowledging Providence's tradition of robustly classical industrial buildings.  "This cutting-edge installation shows that traditional campus architecture can support the highest level of environmental stewardship," said RAMSA Project Partner Gary Brewer.

Photo Credit: Mike Cohea / Brown University

The American Institute of Architects Florida Chapter named the Jacksonville Public Library to the list of the Top 100 Buildings in its "Florida Architecture: 100 Years, 100 Places" competition.  The public will be invited to vote its favorite buildings on the AIA Florida website March 5 through March 31.    

Completed in 2005, the 297,000 square-foot Jacksonville Public Library, on Hemming Plaza on the corner of North Laura and West Monroe Streets, is a state-of-the-art facility that is also a great public space with intimate and grand rooms, garden courtyards, conference areas, and cafes.   The building continues Jacksonville's rich tradition of civic structures which speak in a version of the classical language adapted to the particulars of local climate and culture.

Two Robert A.M. Stern Architects projects have been recognized in the AIA New York State’s 2011 Design Awards program.

The East Hampton Town Hall, which takes a collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century timber-framed vernacular buildings—important evocations of local culture—and organizes them as a campus for municipal government, won a Citation for Design in the Adaptive Reuse category. The jury praised the design as “a clear and concise solution that seamlessly integrates old and the new resulting in perhaps one of the finest town halls in America.”

Comcast Center, a 58-story office tower in Center City Philadelphia, won an Award of Merit for Commercial/Industrial – Large Projects. The jury described the tower as “an example of a high rise that succeeds architecturally and urbanistically at the skyline and street.  The lobby, transit concourse level, and outdoor plaza/café activate a long neglected section of Philadelphia’s downtown.”

Instituted in 1968, the AIA New York State Design Awards celebrate, honor, and promote excellence in design by New York State architects for their creativity and imagination in solving design problems for their clients and to generate greater public interest in architecture.  The jurors reviewed more than 300 entries and selected 28 projects to receive a Design Award. The jurors were Chair, David Mark Riz, AIA, of KieranTimberlake; Robert M. Noblett, AIA, of Behnisch Arkitekten; Michael Ryan, AIA, of Michael Ryan Architects; Robert Shibley, FAIA, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, University of Buffalo; and Elizabeth Egbert, President and CEO, Staten Island Museum.

Robert A.M. Stern is featured in a filmed interview in the exhibition “The Presence of the Past Revisited,” curated by Aaron Betsky, at the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture. The exhibition revisits an earlier exhibition, La Strada Novissima, curated by Paolo Portoghesi for the 1980 Venice Biennale exhibition, in which RAMSA was a notable participant.

The 2011 Biennale “Architecture Creates Cities. Cities Create Architecture,” curated by Terence Riley, focuses on urbanism and considers the city as an active agent in contemporary culture. It will feature more than 30 exhibitions, symposiums, panel discussions, and performances. It will run from December 8, 2011 – February 18, 2012. More information can be found at the Biennale’s website.

In its January 2012 issue, Architectural Digest names Robert A.M. Stern Architects one of its “New AD100,” the magazine’s biennial list of the top talents in architecture and design. The firm has been included in the AD100 since 2002.

“We once again salute the creative talents and firms who represent AD’s distinctive point of view,” said Margaret Russell, editor in chief of Architectural Digest. “Design is a serious business, and though there may be an element of fantasy to many of the projects showcased on our pages, Architectural Digest’s focus is on buildings and interiors that will stand the test of time. The designers and architects of the 2012 AD100 exemplify that mind-set, with an understanding that it is not enough for their work to be eye-catching; it must be exacting too, embodying the finest skills, the most advanced techniques, and an uncommon attention to detail.”

The AD100 was announced at a November 29, 2011, reception at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Photo courtesy of Larry Busacca/Getty Images.

Today the City Plan Commission of New Haven approved the site plan for Yale’s 13^th and 14^th residential colleges.  The two new colleges will house more than 800 additional undergraduates, and each will include a common room, dining hall, library, academic offices, and recreational spaces.  Carrying forward the spirit of Rogers's Gothic, the colleges are designed as fraternal twins, similar in size and palette but each enjoying its own identity and organization. 

“Following this detailed plan approval by the city, the University now will work with its architects to complete the construction plans and specifications for the two new colleges, all of which is the normal course for any project,” Michael Morand, Director ofState Communications, Strategy and Special Projects wrote in an email to the Yale Daily News Thursday evening.

The two new colleges will be located north of the Grove Street Cemetery in the triangle comprised of Prospect, Canal, and Sachem streets. Construction is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2012 and be completed before the fall term of 2015.  The project is seeking Gold LEED™ certification

The partners of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, are pleased to announce that Josh W. Bull, Salvador Peña-Figueroa, and Kim Yap have been promoted from Associate to Senior Associate; and that Jennifer Bailey, Gerard J. Beekman, Brian F. Fell, Sean Foley, Christopher Heim, Trevor W. Laubenstein, Renaud Magnaval, Benjamin Salling, Eric Silinsh, Kaveri Singh, Caroline G. Statile, R. Craig Stevens, and William West are now associates of the firm. John Boyland has been named Director of Design for Robert A.M. Stern Interiors, LLC.

RAMSA extends congratulations to each of them.

The South China Morning Post features a profile of Robert A.M. Stern in the November 2011 issue of its "Style" magazine. Based on a recent interview, Pavan Shamdasani's article discusses Robert A.M. Stern Architects' approach to architecture and in particular how it applies to the firm's growing body of work in Asia.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects' Partner Paul Whalen presented The Clarendon, a 32-story residential tower in Boston, Massachusetts, at the 2011 World Architecture Festival Awards in Barcelona.  The Clarendon was a finalist in the Housing (incl. mixed use) category and competed against 14 other shortlisted projects.

The World Architecture Festival, held in Barcelona, Spain, is the world’s largest global architectural awards program. Festival events included three days of talks and seminars.  The 2011 WAF super jury included Michael Sorkin, Ben van Berkel, Jo Noero, and Odile Decq. 

Photo by Peter Aaron / Esto.

The American Revolution Center today announced the selection of the design team for The Museum of the American Revolution. Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, will design the building and MFM Design will be responsible for the exhibits. The Museum will be built in historic Philadelphia, across the street from the First Bank of the United States and steps from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The Museum will display the Center’s distinguished collection of weapons, artwork, manuscripts, and commemorative artifacts from the period of the American Revolution to tell the stories of the American Revolution and its ongoing legacy.

Though Robert A.M. Stern Architects worked previously with the American Revolution Center on a design for a museum in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the commission for the Philadelphia project resulted from a new and separate selection process.

H.F. (Gerry) Lenfest, Chairman of The American Revolution Center, said, "Robert A.M. Stern Architects and MFM Design were chosen through a rigorous selection process. In their distinct disciplines, each firm has the expertise to lead our efforts to develop a world-class museum that will inspire and engage people from around the world about the extraordinary people, places and events of the American Revolution."

"At last, the long-cherished dream of very many—a fixed place to celebrate and interpret the American Revolution—will be realized on a terrific site a stone's throw from Independence Hall," said Robert A.M. Stern. "Our intention is to portray the institution we are asked to serve, to find an architectural expression that will foster and facilitate an important conversation across time, mirroring the ideals of the Revolution that have inspired us for more than two centuries."

RAMSA Partners Alexander P. Lamis and Kevin Smith will be working with Mr. Stern on the project.

The Hewitt School announced the selection of Robert A.M. Stern Architects to develop a comprehensive campus master plan. 

Hewitt, an independent college preparatory school for girls and young women from kindergarten through grade twelve, is located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Expansion plans include a regulation-size gymnasium, additional science labs, and enhanced classroom space.

Today Franklin & Marshall College dedicated New College House, a four-story, 63,000-gross-square-foot student residence hall. 

New College House accommodates two hundred students in a variety of room types including suites and apartments organized to support a sense of shared domesticity. Common rooms on the ground floor, intended for individual and group studying, impromptu gatherings, and social events, open to a west-facing terrace. The design carries forward the heritage of architect Charles Z. Klauder's much loved Georgian buildings on the College’s Lancaster, Pennsylvania campus. 

"The decision to bring together in one residence hall freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, while providing accommodations appropriate to students in each class, presented us with a wonderfully challenging puzzle,” said Robert A.M. Stern. “Today, there are many academically excellent colleges for students to choose from, but not all of them can offer a physical setting that is special, one that fosters a sense of community, of shared human values.  Charles Klauder understood this, and if our work proves successful, it will be because we have been able to carry his vision forward.  I hope we have honored Klauder's vision for the future of Franklin & Marshall."

New College House earned a 2011 Preservation Honor Award for New Construction from the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County. The building is on target for LEED Silver certification. 

RAMSA partners Graham Wyatt and Preston Gumberich worked with Mr. Stern on the project. 

Marist College and the New York State Department of Transportation today dedicated a new pedestrian underpass at Route 9. The tunnel connects the two halves of the Marist campus separated by the heavily-trafficked four-lane divided highway.

"This project is a prime example of a private-public partnership that created jobs and a good outcome for our community," said Dennis Murray, President of Marist College. "Pedestrians will be safer, traffic will flow more smoothly, and the area's aesthetics have been enhanced." 

The portals and interior treatment take their inspiration from the College's adjacent gatehouse, built in 1865 of picturesque Hudson Valley rubble stone. New campus gates, inspired by those at nearby estates and intended to provide an appropriate public face for the College, are nearing completion.

Kevin Smith was Robert A.M. Stern Architects' Project Partner for these improvements, as well as the College's recently completed Hancock Technology Center.

The 19,000-pound cupola salvaged when Marvel Gymnasium was demolished in 2002 was lifted by crane and set atop Robert A.M. Stern Architects’ new Nelson Fitness Center, part of Brown's evolving Erickson Athletic Complex. 

“The return of the cupola symbolizes the reconnection of Brown’s athletic buildings to Brown’s history, and the University’s commitment to transforming the Erickson Athletic Complex into a campus,” said Gary Brewer, Robert A.M. Stern Architects' Project Partner. 

The building, which includes, in addition to the Nelson Fitness Center, the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center and the David J. Zucconi Varsity Strength and Conditioning Center, is scheduled to open in the spring of 2012. 

Robert A.M. Stern Architects will design a residential building in London, at 56 Curzon Street in Mayfair. The project is being developed by the London-based private equity group Brockton Capital.

"I'm very pleased to be working in London, a city that holds a special place in the story of architecture for architects worldwide but especially in the United States. I look forward to contributing to the ongoing exchange of ideas that has long characterized the relationship between the US and the UK, and between London and New York in particular," said Robert A.M. Stern. "56 Curzon Street is a strategic site full of unrealized potential, a site long awaiting its moment and now ready to be reimagined. But while we look forward to bringing our New York perspective, the character of our design will not be arbitrary but will grow out of the architectural and cultural traditions of its context. I welcome the challenge of creating a modern building that is wholly sympathetic to Mayfair's historic character."

RAMSA Partners Paul Whalen and Dan Lobitz are working with Mr. Stern on the design.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects’ Farmer School of Business Building at Miami University is the setting for key scenes in George Clooney’s Ides of March, the new political thriller starring Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Mr. Clooney. The film opened nationwide on October 7, 2011.

RAMSA Partners Graham Wyatt and Preston Gumberich worked with Mr. Stern on the project.

Photo from Dayton Daily News.

Today President and Mrs. George W. Bush hosted a hard-hat tour and a topping-out ceremony at the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. 

“Our hope is that this will be a center of excellence not only to benefit SMU but Dallas, the United States, and the rest of the world,” said former President George W. Bush. “I am looking forward to breaking bread with the fine members of the construction team and personally thanking each of them.”

The Bush Center includes the George W. Bush Library, which will  house the archives and museum, and the George W. Bush Institute, the policy arm of the Center.  The 226,565-square-foot building, scheduled to open in Spring 2013, is the first Presidential Library designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification.

“The building itself will have LEED Platinum status, partly due to the water retention and collection we will use to irrigate the land surrounding the building,” said former First Lady Laura Bush. “Local materials will be used on the exterior and interior of the building to help us achieve our LEED Platinum certification.”

"Intended as an inviting and approachable building, the Bush Center is designed to express the dignity of the Presidency and President Bush's legacy as a Texan, an American, and a world statesman.  Among the constellation of presidential libraries, this is the first to have a truly urban location, which is integral to its environmental goals," said Robert AM Stern.  "I salute the men and women who are working to realize our vision." 

RAMSA partners Augusta Barone, Alexander Lamis, and Graham Wyatt are working with Mr. Stern on the project.  Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates is the Landscape Architect.  Manhattan Construction is the builder.

Today the UCLA Health System dedicated its new Santa Monica campus, which accommodates the Santa Monica – UCLA Medical Center and a branch of the Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital, and occupies a full-block campus at 16^th Street and Wilshire Boulevard.  The project was initiated in response to the damage caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake; the new buildings will open for patient care in early 2012.

“This wonderful new facility not only accommodates scientific and technical excellence but also creates an environment that is healing,” said Dr. David Feinberg, president of the UCLA Health System and UCLA’s associate vice chancellor for health sciences. “Every patient who comes to us deserves the best, and every one of them, when they leave us, should be an ambassador to tell others about the great care and service they received at UCLA."

Drawing on the historic Italianate of UCLA’s Westwood campus, the buildings employ brick and cast stone to integrate pavilions, a campanile-like tower, and gardens that provide patients and their families as well as neighborhood residents with welcoming green spaces. Key components of the new campus include a new bed wing; an inpatient pediatrics unit, a branch of Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA; and a conference center with meeting rooms and a 90-seat auditorium.

"The new hospital is designed to create a comfortable, even home-like setting for delivering health care that will benefit patients, visitors, and staff," said Robert A.M. Stern. "Additionally, we wanted to create a design that connected the Santa Monica campus with UCLA's Westwood campus to clearly establish its identity as part of the UCLA Health System."

Paul Whalen was Project Partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. CO Architects served as the Executive Architect.

Photo by Tom Chessum.

Today the University of Arkansas broke ground on the renovation and expansion of Ozark Hall, located in the Collegiate Gothic core of its  campus in Fayetteville.  The work will restore the building's facades and interiors and provide a new 24,000-square-foot wing for the university’s Honors College, creating a landscaped courtyard sized to host both formal events and informal gatherings. 

The new wing will provide two floors of classrooms for the Honors College and a 275-seat auditorium below grade.  Facilities for the department of geosciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School and International Education will be distributed throughout the existing building. 

“Ozark Hall is a significant part of the identity and character of our campus,” said Chancellor G. David Gearhart. “By taking care of existing resources, we promote a culture of sustainability on campus, while preserving a cherished part of our history for future generations to use and enjoy.”

Ozark Hall is scheduled for completion in August 2013. The building is seeking LEED Silver certification.  The $27.1 million project has been made possible through the generous support of the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation and a bond supported by the student facility fee.

Gary Brewer is the Project Partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Wittenberg, Delony & Davidson Architects of Fayetteville, Arkansas, is the Architect-of-Record.

Rendering by Thomas Schaller

White Cube, one of the world's leading galleries for contemporary art, based in London, announced that it will open a gallery at 50 Connaught Road Central in Hong Kong early in 2012.  The 2,800-square-foot main gallery, located on the tower's ground floor, will benefit from twenty-foot-high ceilings.  The second floor will offer another 4,000 square feet of exhibition space, making it the most substantial art gallery in the region. 

"Only right now has the right space opened up," White Cube's director of exhibitions Tim Marlow told The Wall Street Journal.  "Finding space in Hong Kong is extremely difficult.  If you don't have good gallery space to put ambitious shows on, it's not worth looking at from our perspective."

"Many of our artists are intrigued by China and Chinese culture and have expressed a keen interest for us to open a gallery in the region," said Jay Jopling, founder of the London-based gallery. "Hong Kong is a pivotal city whose artistic and cultural profile is set to expand rapidly over the coming years and it is my hope that the program of exhibitions we plan to stage at White Cube Hong Kong will significantly contribute to that." The gallery will be led by Graham Steele, Director of White Cube Asia.

The 27-story office tower, Robert A.M. Stern Architects' first in Asia, opened in June 2011.  "Our clients asked us to look to Hong Kong's architectural heritage to create a building that is of this moment, that promises a long life into the future, while at the same time taking its place in the grand tradition of Hong Kong's top-class commercial office structures," said Robert A.M. Stern.  "50 Connaught Road is our answer."

Please visit www.whitecube.com for more information.

The 2012 edition of Princeton Review’s annual Best 376 Colleges guidebook named Florida Southern College the nation’s “Most Beautiful Campus.”  The rankings lists are based on The Princeton Review’s 80-question survey of 122,000 students (approximately 325 per campus) attending the colleges in the book.  Florida Southern, located in Lakeland, Florida, boasts the largest grouping of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world, along with historic buildings from the 1920s and three buildings by Robert A.M. Stern Architects: the Barnett Residential Life Center’s Wesley and Nicholas Halls, and the Christoverson Humanities Building.

“We are honored and delighted that our exceptional and historic campus has been selected for such a prestigious award,” said Florida Southern College President Dr. Anne B. Kerr. “The Princeton Review has recognized what Florida Southern College students, faculty, and staff have long known — that we are privileged to have the most beautiful campus in the nation.”

Robert A.M. Stern told the Lakeland Ledger, "The campus is absolutely beautiful.  Florida is notoriously flat, but at Florida Southern there's a lovely gentle slope down to the lake, and, of course, the buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright are being beautifully restored.  It is a very special place, and I'm glad the students who were polled recognize that.  That's what’s really important."

Graham S. Wyatt, Partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, presented a game changing concept in environmental education at this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado on June 29.  The two-week Festival, in its seventh year, gathered some of the most interesting thinkers and leaders from around the US and abroad to discuss their work and their ideas.   The program track, entitled "Game Changers:  How Do We Design Learning Environments for the Future," included two other speakers:  Greg Farrington, Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences, and Sandy Speicher, who leads IDEO’s Design for Learning Domain.  Linda Tischler, Senior Editor of Fast Company, was the moderator.  Mr. Wyatt was interviewed immediately following the session by Dana Chivvis for NBC's Education Nation.

The "game" that Mr. Wyatt discussed was the Kohler Environmental Center at Choate Rosemary Hall, a 9th through 12th grade boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut.  This 32,000 square-foot living/learning center located within a 265-acre nature preserve, that includes a spectacular and environmentally-diverse mix of meadows, mature second-growth forest, and wetlands, was conceived and generously underwritten by Herbert V. Kohler, Jr., Chairman of Choate Rosemary Hall’s Board of Trustees and Chairman and CEO of Kohler Co.  The school is developing an interdisciplinary course of environmental study that the building will support. 

Students will live and study at the Center for stays that vary between a few weeks and a full trimester. During this time they will study a multi-disciplinary curriculum, currently under development, that will focus broadly on mankind's place in the natural environment.

The Kohler Center has a mission that is both physical and virtual.  As a building it is designed to achieve a LEED Platinum certification (an exceptionally high level of resource efficiency as determined by the U.S. Green Building Council).  It also targets "Energy Net Zero" (consuming no more energy during a calendar year than it produces).  Both of these physical goals support the Center's mission of providing an immersive environmental education.

Achieving the mission is where the game begins.  The building is highly resource-efficient through design—the basis of its LEED Platinum certification.  Achieving energy self-sufficiency, however, cannot be achieved through building design alone but requires the intelligent and cooperative behavior of the Center's users.  How do I cook?  How do I light my space?  How long a shower do I take, and how much hot water do I use?  Energy self-sufficiency is dependent on these and hundreds of other behavior-related decisions.   In his illustrated presentation, Mr. Wyatt described how the building empowers its occupants by providing real-time feedback on its energy consumption and production—all of which contribute to the center's multi-disciplinary curriculum.

Mr. Wyatt pointed out that the result is far from the "classroom of yesterday."  It is a round-the-clock educational game with specific and quantifiable outcomes.  In short: "education through a day filled with teachable moments."

Robert A.M. Stern Designs and CF Stinson have partnered to create patterns that live up to Robert A.M. Stern’s standard of design excellence while remaining true to the Stinson promise of high-performance fabrics.  CF Stinson is introducing the Robert A.M. Stern Tracery Collection today at NeoCon in its new showroom (Suite 10-150 at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago).  The collection is also on exhibit at the Robert A.M. Stern Collection display (Booth 8-7078). 

The Tracery Collection embraces eight upholstery textile patterns inspired by decorative screen motifs from all over the world.  Subtle color and texture with hints of luster add to the dimensional effect of the patterns, each of which references a different example of architectural tracery, from Gothic cathedral windows of Europe to the intricate jaalis screens of the Mughal Empire in India.

Combining Stinson’s reputation for durable, high-performance textiles and Robert A.M. Stern’s dedication to quality design, The Tracery Collection brings a new elegance to contract textiles.  The fabrics are suitable for many high-end applications including corporate offices, lobbies, and waiting areas; academic and institutional buildings; assisted living and medical facilities; and hospitality, including hotels and restaurants.

Specifications—and a video interview featuring Robert A.M. Stern and design collaborator Kristie Strasen—are available on the CF Stinson web site. 

For the first time, the Robert A.M. Stern Collection of contract furnishings is exhibiting in a showroom all its own at NeoCon, North America's largest design exposition and conference for commercial interiors.   Held this year from Monday, June 13 – Wednesday, June 15 at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, this year's NeoCon will feature more than 700 product showrooms and exhibitors, along with 140 seminars, association forums, special events, featured programs, and addresses.   The Robert A.M. Stern Collection is on display at Showroom 8-7078 on the eighth floor. 

"Robert A.M. Stern Architects has long focused on furnishings as an important part of the architectural environment, designing items that reflect the firm's philosophy of modern traditionalism," said Alex Lamis, manager of Robert A.M. Stern Designs, the firm's product-design subsidiary.  "We are committed to breaking through the barriers that separate architecture from related disciplines, and with our manufacturer-partners' support, to making our products available to the broader architecture and design community."

The display presents a room evoking the modern traditionalism of the collection, incorporating outdoor seating by Landscape Forms, garden ornaments by Haddonstone, LED light sconces by Lightolier, Lualdi doors set with S.A. Baxter hardware, decorative glass by Bendheim, furniture by David Edward, carpet by Bentley Prince Street, and tiles by Crossville.  Featured is the Tracery Collection of textiles for CF Stinson, which is being launched at NeoCon at the new CF Stinson showroom (Suite 10-150). 

Apollo Global Real Estate Management and National Properties today opened 50 Connaught Road Central.  The 27-story office tower is Robert A.M. Stern Architects' first in Asia.

In contrast to Hong Kong's predominantly glass-and-steel office building vocabulary, 50 Connaught Road Central is rendered in limestone.  The character of the facades is carried into the monumental lobby and to the generously glazed, column-free floor plates with floor-to-floor heights of 4.5-meters, and 5.0 meters floor-to-floor above the 22^nd story.  Punched windows are inset to mitigate glare, so glass is clearer than on typical curtain-wall buildings.  At the top, set-back floors with bay windows take full advantage of views to the harbor and Kowloon, while the building's bronze and stone crown stands out as a memorable skyline feature from below and from the Peak above.

"Our company is passionate about providing enduring quality and timeless elegance in all our developments," said Loewe Lee, Managing Director of National Properties.  "Designed by the internationally renowned Robert A.M. Stern Architects, 50 Connaught Road Central is a testament to our vision of offering world-class architecture and design to Hong Kong." 

"As we undertook to design 50 Connaught Road Central, our clients asked us to look to Hong Kong's architectural heritage to create a building that is of this moment, that promises a long life into the future, while at the same time taking its place in the grand tradition of Hong Kong's top-class commercial office structures," said Robert A.M. Stern.  "50 Connaught Road is our answer." 

The Very Reverend Ian Markham, Dean and President of the Virginia Theological Seminary, announced today that Robert A.M. Stern Architects has been selected to design the school's "Chapel for the Ages." The new chapel will replace the  historic Immanuel Chapel, which served the Seminary from its consecration in 1881 until it was destroyed in a fire in October 2010. 

"This is a complex project with a multitude of factors that need to be taken into account: a ruin, preservation obligations, our contemporary liturgical needs, as well as the continuing debate about the location," said Dean Markham.  "In appointing Robert A.M. Stern Architects, we have a company with the depth of talent to make sure we get this right."  

Founded in 1823, Virginia Theological Seminary is the largest of the 11 accredited seminaries of the Episcopal Church.  The school prepares men and women for service in the Church worldwide, both as ordained and lay ministers, and offers a number of professional degree programs and diplomas.  Currently, the Seminary represents more than 42 different dioceses and 5 different countries for service in the Church. 

The design team will include Senior Partner Robert A.M. Stern and Grant Marani as Project Partner.

The Hancock Center at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, was dedicated today. The new building will house traditional academic programs and provides space for collaborative research, innovation, and small-business incubation. Named for lead donor and chair of Marist's board of trustees Ellen Hancock, and her husband Jason, the building will help infuse information technology into all of the College's academic programs. 

"Although the Hancock Center houses our School of Computer Science and Mathematics, the concept is that technology is not just for computer science majors but for everyone," said Marist President Dennis J. Murray. "The Center will help students across all disciplines learn how technology impacts their fields of study and the professions they will enter. The Hancock Center will also enhance our efforts to assist the state's economic development through incubation of start-ups. It will nurture entrepreneurs in their business development with the goal of creating companies and jobs and growing the economy in the Hudson River Valley."

The Hancock Center, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, led by Robert A.M. Stern and his partners Graham S. Wyatt and Kevin Smith, is organized by an "L"-shaped plan that improves the definition of two of the campus's green spaces, the Hudson Meadow and the Quadrangle. The main entrance is located at the base of a generous stair tower that serves as a beacon for the college, visible from the campus entry gate and from across the river. A second entrance off the Meadow offers 24-hour access to the building's three computer laboratories. To the west, a three-story wing provides offices for faculty and administrators as well as conference and seminar rooms; a lower level tucked into the slope of the site accommodates offices and computer labs. The north wing houses technology development suites on the ground floor and two levels of classrooms above. The suites, which include a technology showcase, and collaborative work/study spaces, are developed as a naturally-lit gallery punctuated by windows and doors which open out to a quiet patio for seasonal gatherings and functions. 

A groundbreaking ceremony was held this morning at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for Farrell Hall, a new home for the University's Schools of Business.  The building is designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, led by Robert A.M. Stern and his partners Graham S. Wyatt and Kevin Smith. 

"Farrell Hall will be a world-class home worthy of the exciting future of the Wake Forest Schools of Business," said Steve Reinemund, dean of the Schools of Business.  "A building does not make a program, but this state-of-the-art facility will provide the platform for inspiring scholarly work and social dynamism."

The 130,000-square-foot Farrell Hall will unite undergraduate and graduate programs now scattered in three separate buildings.  Set at a strategic entry to the central campus, Farrell Hall will extend the vision of Jens Fredrick Larson's 1956 master plan as the first of a new ring of buildings surrounding the historic core.  Restrained Georgian fronts facing the campus to the north and a new quadrangle to the south bookend a dramatic triple-height atrium, the Founders' Living Room, which will be the heart of the business schools' life.  This light-flooded room will connect all the building's levels, with balconies stepping back to allow views from the first floor to the third, and open stairs to encourage movement to the upper levels.  Student services and career advising suites will line the atrium at the main level.  There will be classrooms and study rooms on every floor, along with faculty offices grouped around flexible collaboration spaces to encourage student and faculty interaction.  At the third level, a double-height colloquium space will accommodate both formal and informal events.  Below the atrium, a 350-seat auditorium will share the lower level with several large classrooms. 

Terraces off the Founders' Living Room will cascade out to a lawn with a series of informal outdoor gathering spaces and a grove of mature pin oaks.  Farrell Hall will be clad in red brick with spare limestone trim, traditional double-hung windows, and a hipped copper roof.  The metal and glass curtain wall enclosing the atrium will be shielded by a brick colonnade.  The project will seek LEED Gold certification.

Michael A.J. and Mary Flynn Farrell donated $10 million toward the building's $53 million cost.  Mike Farrell is chairman and chief executive of Annaly Capital Management and the parent of a 2010 Wake Forest graduate.  In naming the building, the Farrells are paying tribute to Mr. Farrell's late father, Michael John Farrell.

Rendering by Jeff Stikeman.

Choate Rosemary Hall's Board of Trustees held a groundbreaking ceremony for the School's new Kohler Environmental Center.  The new 31,000-square-foot building is being built with funds from a $20 million gift from Herbert V. Kohler, Jr., Chairman and CEO of Kohler Company and chairman of Choate's Board of Trustees.  Situated on 266 undeveloped acres north and east of the main campus, the Kohler Environmental Center will be a leading-edge environmental research and education center, specifically designated as a working laboratory. Robert A.M. Stern Architects designed the building with the goal of creating the first facility on the campus to achieve LEED-platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, according to Graham Wyatt, Partner. Current plans for the Center also target net-zero energy usage. 

The Kohler Environmental Center will be a residential facility, with living quarters for faculty members, up to 20 Choate students, as well as  visiting researchers, graduate students and scholars-in-residence; at the same time, it will be a teaching facility, with students and faculty experiencing first-hand what it means to live sustainably.

Mr. Kohler said, "I found this land remarkably diverse in elevation, topography, amount of water, and the wildlife that inhabited it, and became determined to preserve it, hopefully in perpetuity.  This piece of land will permit Choate to breathe freely as a microcosm of a world community, but it will also act as a laboratory for those who live there."

The aim, said architect Robert A.M. Stern, is to embed sustainability in the basic education of all students.  "Proud though I am of the Kohler Center as a work of architecture, I also take pride in it as an experiment in sustainable living.  The Kohler Center represents architecture's capacity to teach, helping students to understand responsible energy use and how to make it a daily reality by encouraging individual and collective choices that minimize environmental abuse, without requiring spartan sacrifice."

Choate Rosemary Hall Headmaster Edward Shanahan noted, "The Kohler Environmental Center will allow new generations of students to become more ecologically literate. The program represents another opportunity for Choate to enhance the nature and quality of its education, to provide educational leadership at the secondary level, and to distinguish itself among its peers."  Choate Rosemary Hall is a co-ed independent secondary school enrolling boarding and day students from the United States and around the world.

Rendering by Thomas Schaller

The North Quadrangle Residential and Academic Complex at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was dedicated today.  The North Quad provides 360,000 square feet of classrooms, laboratories, studios, offices, and meeting rooms for various academic departments, along with student residential suites, dining, and social spaces, all on a tight urban site where the University meets the surrounding town.  To mitigate the project's density, the buildings are arranged around interconnected courtyards, with welcoming plazas at the northwest and southeast corners of the block that open up the quad to its surroundings.  North Quad reinforces the Ann Arbor campus's unique architectural and planning traditions with massing and forms based on the very special blend of Collegiate Gothic and the Arts & Crafts which uniquely identify the campus. 

"What I particularly love about this building is how it puts into action so many of our priorities as a university.  It is so much more than classrooms and bedrooms," said University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman.  "The remarkable physical space, the range of academic programs, the impressive technology, and most important, the people who choose to live, learn, and work here make North Quad a unique academic village." 

Robert A.M. Stern and RAMSA Partners Graham S. Wyatt and Preston Gumberich led the design team.  Einhorn Yaffee Prescott served as associate architect.

Photo by Francis Dzikowski / Esto

GlaxoSmithKline, a leading worldwide research-based pharmaceutical company, and Liberty Property Trust today announced that GSK has signed a 15.5-year lease for a new building to be developed by Liberty Property Trust and Synterra Partners.  Located at Five Crescent Drive in the Navy Yard Corporate Center, the 205,000 square-foot, four-story facility will be designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification. The project represents a collaborative effort between the landlord, Liberty/Synterra, Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA), and GSK.

"We are delighted to continue our proud Philadelphia history, which dates back to 1830, and to offer our employees an exciting and collaborative new work space," said Deirdre Connelly, President of GlaxoSmithKline North America Pharmaceuticals, herself a Philadelphia resident. "This facility, with its environmentally friendly and efficient design, aligns with our global commitment to work smartly and operate as a green company."

The project's open plan is designed to bring employees together to foster better communication and idea sharing. A variety of work spaces will be available, including shared work stations, team tables, meeting areas, social areas, and quiet rooms. The facility will also offer a wide variety of amenities, such as a fitness center, restaurant, retail services, and free parking for employees and visitors. The Navy Yard Corporate Center provides park space with walking paths, fields for sports leagues, and even a putting green.

"We have spent an extensive amount of time imagining with GSK how their people will work in the future. Starting with a fresh canvas, we have created a dynamic, invigorating workplace for the 21st century," said John Gattuso, Regional Director and Senior Vice President, Liberty Property Trust. "Our long relationship with GSK, our lengthy and productive association with Robert A.M. Stern Architects, and our experience in creating sustainable workplaces that enhance comfort and productivity have inspired the design of this unique environment."

Site work is scheduled to begin as early as the end of this month, with construction of the building commencing in late summer. GSK will move all employees currently based at the One and Three Franklin Plaza buildings in Center City Philadelphia to the new building between fourth quarter 2012 and first quarter 2013, immediately after completion. 

Tonight Robert A.M. Stern Architects hosted a reception to introduce Concord, a new collection of site furniture created in collaboration with Landscape Forms. The Concord collection embraces state-of-the-art technologies yet is rooted in American history and our national view of the landscape as a place of respite and pleasure, expanding Landscape Forms’ vocabulary of design to address diverse settings. The collection includes a bench, a litter/recycling receptacle, a pedestrian light, a pathway light, and a bike rack.

Concord is designed, developed, and manufactured with sustainability in mind. Aluminum and steel parts contain recycled content material and are fully recyclable. All metal parts are finished with Landscape Forms' Panguard II® polyester powdercoat, which is lead-free and hazardous air pollutants-(HAPS) free; does not generate hazardous waste; and contains less than 1% Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) which, once processed are fully inert and cause no emission into the environment.

Since its founding in 1969 Landscape Forms has earned a reputation for excellent design, high quality products, and exceptional service. Landscape Forms collaborates with renowned industrial designers and consultancies, landscape architects, and architects to design and develop integrated collections of products that address emerging needs.

Robert A. M. Stern, whose influential designs have revitalized traditional architecture, has been named the 2011 recipient of the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. Stern will receive $200,000 and a model of the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates during a March 26, 2011, ceremony in Chicago.

As Founder and Senior Partner of Robert A. M. Stern Architects, and as Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Stern has built a reputation as a modern traditionalist architect. In his work as an architect, as a scholar, and as a teacher, he is dedicated to reconnecting the present and future with the past, building upon what went before to extend the trajectory of architecture.

"More than any other practicing architect today, Bob Stern has brought classicism into the public realm and the mainstream of the profession, reinvigorating it for generations to come. We are honored to have him among the Driehaus Prize laureates," said Michael Lykoudis, Driehaus Prize Jury Chairman and Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture.

"It's a great honor, one that I take very, very seriously because so many of the friends and colleagues I admire the most in the profession have been awarded the Prize in the past," said Robert A.M. Stern. "The Driehaus Prize recognizes that one can pursue the great tradition of architecture that goes back thousands of years—both the principles of classical architecture and the humanism that they embody—to go forward in our modern world."

"Beauty, harmony and context are hallmarks of classical architecture, thus fostering communities, enhancing the quality of our shared environment and developing sustainable solutions through traditional materials," said Richard H. Driehaus, the Chicago philanthropist who has established the $200,000 Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture to honor a major contributor to the field. The Driehaus Prize has been presented annually since 2003 to a living architect whose work embodies the principles of traditional and classical architecture and urbanism in contemporary society, and creates a positive cultural, environmental, and artistic impact.

Interior Design has named the Robert A.M. Stern Executive Chair for David Edward the 2010 Best of Year product in the Contract/Conference Seating category. The chair's design updates the classic high-backed tolling office chair with a more sculpted form and proportions tailored to both residential and corporate office environments. The Best of Year Awards recognizes superior interior design projects and products in more than 50 categories with finalists and winners selected by Interior Design readers.

The Flute Collection by Robert A.M. Stern Designs for SA Baxter received a merit award in the Hardware category.

Please visit www.ramscollection.com for more information.

Drexel University announced a $45 million gift for a new building for the LeBow College of Business from alumnus and benefactor Bennett S. LeBow. The new building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, and Voith & Mactavish Architects, LLP, is scheduled to open in 2014. The donor, chairman of the private-equity firm Vector Group and of the bookseller Borders Group, described his gift as "the best investment I ever made."

"This is phenomenal for Drexel," said John A. Fry, Drexel's president. "It's a very confident statement about Drexel's future."

The new home of the LeBow College of Business will mark the campus on the Philadelphia skyline with a bold tower; at street level, it will serve as a gateway to Drexel. Its transparent Market Street facade will showcase the College's activities; and, along with the neighboring Papadakis Integrated Science Building, it will define a quadrangle that will be the welcoming and energetic heart of the Drexel campus. Inside the building, undergraduate and graduate classrooms will be organized around a dramatic central atrium that will be accessible from welcoming entrances at the new building's three corners. An open stair within this atrium will lead down to a 300-seat auditorium and 100-seat lecture hall and up to a conference center. On the building’s upper floors faculty offices will be interspersed with seminar rooms and group study rooms—a deliberate mix of uses fostering the collegial interaction between students and faculty that is essential to the best in business education. The building is on track to receive Green Globes environmental certification.

The building will "allow students to learn in a setting that is less like a classroom and more like the corporate environment," said George P. Tsetsekos, dean of the LeBow College of Business.

"This is a time of transformation for Drexel and for the LeBow College of Business," said Graham S. Wyatt, AIA, Partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. "Drexel and LeBow College, long embedded within the fabric of Philadelphia, are now emerging with an identifiable campus of their own. It is a challenge we take on with the utmost seriousness of purpose, but also with pride and passion."

(Rendering by dbox)

Today former President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura W. Bush broke ground at on the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

"Serving as President was the honor and privilege of a lifetime," said former President George W. Bush. "Laura and I are eager to continue our work through The Bush Institute to spread freedom, promote educational excellence, defend markets and improve global health. This groundbreaking is an important milestone in that ongoing effort."

More than 3,000 friends and supporters, as well as Former Vice President Cheney and Former Cabinet Secretaries Don Evans, Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Spellings, among many other dignitaries, participated in the celebration. The Bush Center includes the George W. Bush Presidential Library and the George W. Bush Institute, which focuses on unleashing human potential around the world through its focus on human freedom, education reform, global health and economic growth.

"More than 150,000 people have joined as founding members of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, representing every state in the nation," said The Honorable Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Foundation. "This groundswell of support for President and Mrs. Bush honors their service to our country and signals an ongoing commitment to the work they will continue to do through The Bush Institute for years to come."

Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, and landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates are designing the Bush Center and its grounds. The building and landscape are designed to achieve LEED platinum certification and include numerous sustainable design strategies including locally sourced building materials, 20% recycled materials, solar hot water panels, native landscaping to reduce irrigation and a storm-water management system that conveys, cleanses and collects surface runoff and roof rainwater.

(Rendering by Michael McCann)

Florida Southern College dedicated the Dr. Marcene H. and Robert E. Christoverson Humanities Building today. The building, which will house the College's English department and the modern languages department, will provide classrooms, seminar rooms, a writing center, language and computer labs, a film studies theater, and faculty offices, all organized around a double-height atrium.

"Dr. Marcene Christoverson is a constant inspiration to me and is one of Florida Southern's most ardent supporters," said Florida Southern's President, Dr. Anne Kerr. "Through her generous funding of a new humanities building on our campus, Dr. Christoverson is making a wonderful investment in the disciplines that are fundamental components of the College's liberal arts core. The Dr. Marcene H. and Robert E. Christoverson Humanities Building will be a lasting tribute to a woman who pursues excellence in every facet of her business and civic leadership endeavors and memorializes the importance of education that she and her husband shared."

The Christoverson Humanities Building is the third building by Robert A.M. Stern Architects on the Florida Southern campus, which boasts the largest grouping of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world. The two residence halls that compose the Barnett Residential Life Center opened in 2008 and 2009. "I am gratified that the College thought well enough of our efforts on the residences to invite us back for a second turn," said Robert A.M. Stern. "The Christoverson Humanities Building reflects the desire to create a new gateway to the campus that will at the same time become a new focus for academic life. Just as the humanities are at the heart of college education, we hope that the Christoverson Building will find a welcome place at the heart of the Florida Southern experience."

Wallis Murphey Boyington Architects of Lakeland, Florida, served as associate architect.

Last night at Material ConneXion in New York City, Lualdi introduced Robert A.M. Stern Designs’ Avenue doors, part of the New York Collection that also includes doors by Dror Benshetrit, and David Rockwell. The Collection marks an important step for the fifth-generation Italian manufacturer as it expands its presence in the U.S. market. Known throughout Europe as a leading Italian manufacturer of high-quality doors, interior furnishings and modular systems, with a commitment to great innovation and design with a strong emphasis on the technical process of construction and production, Lualdi has been collaborating with renowned international architects since the 1960s.

"Like the designers who created them, each of the doors in our first American collection has a very distinct personality," said Alberto Lualdi, President of Lualdi. "While they each explore materials and form in their own unique way, they share the attention to detail, quality, and forward-thinking design that has been the hallmark of Lualdi for close to fifty years."

"We want to combine Lualdi's Italian sophistication with a distinctly American flavor," said Robert A.M. Stern. "Crisp panel-like layers accented with the glint of metal at once complement and enrich the clean lines of contemporary architecture."

The Avenue Collection from Robert A.M. Stern Designs is available now for pre-order. More information will be available at Lualdi's website.

The Historic Districts Council, which advocates for historic districts and for neighborhoods meriting preservation throughout New York City, will present its 22nd Landmarks Lion Award on October 27 to Robert A. M. Stern.

Since 1990 the Landmarks Lion Award has honored those who have shown "unusual devotion and aggressiveness" in protecting the historic buildings and neighborhoods of New York City. “By designing so nimbly and writing so prolifically, Bob Stern has broadened minds and drawn attention to countless underappreciated buildings,” says HDC’s executive director Simeon Bankoff. “HDC has the rare privilege of honoring one of the most erudite, influential and passionate Lions in the two-decade history of this award.”

The Landmarks Lion Award is HDC’s major fundraising event and provides critical support for the broad range of educational and outreach programs that are crucial to HDC’s constituency which includes more than 500 neighborhood organizations. The Council is dedicated to preserving the integrity of New York City’s Landmarks Law and to furthering the preservation ethic.

The Landmarks Lion Award dinner and ceremony will take place on Wednesday, October 27, 2010, at 6:00pm, at the Four Seasons Restaurant at 99 East 52nd Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues, Manhattan. For more information on the event or to purchase tickets, please go www.hdc.org.

The partners of Robert A.M. Stern Architects are pleased to announce that the firm has named seventeen new associates: George de Brigard, Christian Dickson, Bryan Hale, Carlos Hurtado, Lara Kailian, Miyun Kang, Chenhuan Liao, Oliver Pelle, Michele Ross, Sara Rubenstein, Susan Ryder, Megan St. Denis, Jacob Tilove, Marek Turzynski, Chris Voynovich, Bruce Yao, and Winnie Yen. RAMSA extends congratulations to each of them.

Landscape Forms, North America's largest manufacturer of site furniture, today announced a creative collaboration with Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP. The new Concord collection, including benches, litter receptacles, bike racks, and light poles, will be introduced in January 2011. With this collaboration, Landscape Forms joins a select group of manufacturers in the Robert A.M. Stern Collection of furnishings and architectural finishes.

"Robert Stern Architects has an iconic reputation for a kind of design that is different from what we typically do," said Bill Main, president of Landscape Forms. "It challenges us to reach beyond our comfort zone. The firm's work makes reference to historical form and interprets traditional design vocabularies in new ways. That opens opportunities for us within an area of the market where we have not worked before. We believe that clients who value Stern's work have a real appreciation for quality, which is a natural fit with what we do."

"We invest a good deal of time and research in choosing our partners," said Alexander P. Lamis, managing partner for Robert A.M. Stern Designs. "Each is a market leader with a reputation for outstanding design, superb performance, and unparalleled customer service; each shares our commitment to environmental responsibility. Landscape Forms satisfies all these criteria. We have established a sympathetic relationship that I'm confident will provide the market with an outstanding collection of site furniture."

Landscape Forms, founded in 1969, is based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with sales offices and installations throughout North America, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, and Southern Europe. Clients include municipalities, transit centers, corporations, academic institutions, and healthcare providers. Landscape Forms was recently listed among The Wall Street Journal's Top 15 Small Workplaces in the United States. For more information, please go to www.landscapeforms.com.

The University of Virginia's Curry School of Education dedicated Bavaro Hall this morning. The new building, which nearly doubles the size of the Curry School's facilities, provides faculty offices, conference rooms, a lecture hall, and evaluation and treatment clinics newly organized as the Sheila C. Johnson Center for Human Services.

Located on a steeply sloped site on Emmet Street, at the western perimeter of the University of Virginia's historic Central Grounds, Bavaro Hall doubles the size of the Curry School of Education, currently housed in Ruffner Hall, an unremarkable 1970s building, and in clinics scattered in rented quarters. Simple massing and traditional detailing—red brick and limestone facades with painted wood trim, six-over-six double-hung windows, and a metal standing-seam roof—are in keeping with the architectural traditions first established at U.Va.'s "Grounds" by Thomas Jefferson. Though stylistically opposed, Bavaro Hall works together with Ruffner to define a central landscaped courtyard framed between two open-air colonnades linking the two buildings, creating a campus within a campus for the Curry School.

"The opening of Bavaro Hall is a transformative moment in the history of the Curry School," said Dean Robert C. Pianta. "Bavaro Hall creates for us the possibility of new and deeper collaborations within the school itself and stronger connections with our colleagues across Grounds for academics and research."

On Wednesday, July 7, 2010 Alexander Lamis, Partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, will appear with Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects in the Beyond Architecture panel discussion at the Center for Architecture in New York City. Moderated by Donald Albrecht, Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of the City of New York, the panel will explore the historical and contemporary involvement of architects in product design.

Alexander P. Lamis, AIA, joined Robert A.M. Stern Architects in 1983 and has been a Partner in the firm since 1999. In addition to his architectural projects, Mr. Lamis manages Robert A.M. Stern Interiors, LLC, which provides interior design services to the firm’s architecture projects, and Robert A.M. Stern Design, LLC, which licenses the firm’s product designs.

Annabelle Selldorf is the founder and principal of Selldorf Architects, which currently employs 35 architects, designers, and support staff. Selldorf Architects has won numerous awards for its work, which includes cultural and arts, institutional, commercial, and high-end retail and residential projects. Ms. Selldorf is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 2006.

Donald Albrecht is the Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of the City of New York and an independent curator. Recent exhibitions include Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future and The High Style of Dorothy Draper. His latest exhibition, Cars, Culture, and the City, co-curated with Phil Patton, opened in March at the Museum.

The event is presented by the AIA New York Chapter and will be held on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at the Center for Architecture in New York City, located at 536 LaGuardia Place. For more information and to register, please visit aiany.org.

Members of the Brown Corporation broke ground for a new building that will provide much-needed athletic facilities and a new quadrangle at the gateway to Brown University's evolving Erickson Athletic Complex. The new building will bring the architectural character of Brown's historic brick buildings to the northeastern edge of the campus while also acknowledging Providence's tradition of robustly classical industrial buildings.

"This magnificent new facility will give Brown's varsity swimming, diving, and water polo teams one of the league's best venues for competition and training," said Michael Goldberger, Brown's director of Athletics. "The health and fitness center and the new athletics quadrangle will make the athletic complex an important part of campus life for the entire Brown community.

"The architects have designed a modern building that will be energy-efficient and meet LEED standards," said Michael McCormick, assistant vice president for planning, design, and construction, "yet its traditional brick facade will harmonize with both the campus and neighboring residential areas."

The building is composed of three distinctly articulated parts. The head house, facing Hope Street and scaled to relate to the surrounding residential neighborhood, will house the exercise rooms, locker rooms, and the Nelson Fitness Center, a 10,000-square-foot multipurpose fitness loft. The David J. Zucconi '55 Varsity Strength and Conditioning Center will face the playing fields to the east. Bracketed between these two wings is the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, with a 56-meter swimming pool, equipped for three-meter diving, set one level below grade to reduce the mass of the building. The landscaped Ittleson Quadrangle will replace the parking lot on Hope Street. The project is scheduled to open in January 2012.

(Rendering by Michael McCann)

Alan B. Miller Hall, the new home of the Mason School of Business at the College of William and Mary, has been certified LEED Gold by the U.S. Green Building Council, the School announced today.

"We're delighted by this news," said Lawrence B. Pulley, Dean of the Mason School. "Taking a leadership role in the College's efforts in sustainable design was a project goal from the outset. We are now focused on applying the same principles in how we operate and utilize the facility."

Miller Hall provides the Mason School of Business with a 166,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility that carries forward the character of the College of William and Mary's Colonial-era architecture. "The Mason School of Business presented us with a wonderful and daunting challenge: to meet the high expectations of a forward-looking institution while respecting the great architectural heritage of the William and Mary campus," said Graham S. Wyatt, AIA, the partner in charge of the project at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. "We are convinced that sustainable design is compatible with all types of architectural expression—in short, that sustainability is not a style—and with Miller Hall we have demonstrated that today's values can be integrated successfully into the traditions of a great university."

Miller Hall opened in June 2009. The building was designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in association with Moseley Architects.

(Photo by Peter Aaron/Esto)

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The new home of the Farmer School of Business is the first building on the Miami University campus to earn LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The Silver LEED designation was announced by the university today after notification by the USGBC.

"We are absolutely delighted to receive official word of this achievement," said Miami University President David Hodge. "This is a very tangible sign of the university’s commitment to leadership in environmental sustainability."

"We are very grateful to the donors whose combined $50 million in gifts helped make this building possible, and who encouraged us to take the extra steps and expense to meet the LEED criteria," said Farmer School Dean Roger L. Jenkins. "Businesses everywhere realize the need to make their operations focus on sustainability, and we want to model that mindset for our students, faculty and staff."

The building was completed in the summer of 2009 and opened for the fall 2009 semester. The building was designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in association with Moody Nolan.

(Photo by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP)

Alexander Lamis, Partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects LLP, appeared on the panel Beyond Architecture at the Architectural Digest Home Design Show at 11:00am on Thursday, March 18, 2010, at Pier 94 in New York City. He discussed his firm’s product design program and how it fits into the firm’s architectural practice as a whole. In addition to his architectural projects, Mr. Lamis manages Robert A.M. Stern Interiors, LLC, which provides interior design services to the firm’s architecture projects, and Robert A.M. Stern Design, LLC, which licenses product designs.

Joining Mr. Lamis on the panel was Annabelle Selldorf, founder and principal of Selldorf Architects, which currently employs 35 architects, designers, and support staff. Selldorf Architects has won numerous awards for its work, which includes cultural and arts, institutional, commercial, and high-end retail and residential projects. Ms. Selldorf is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and in 2006 was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame.

Donald Albrecht moderated the discussion. Mr. Albrecht is the Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of the City of New York and an independent curator. Recent exhibitions include Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future and The High Style of Dorothy Draper. A new exhibition, Cars, Culture, and the City, co-curated with Phil Patton, opened in March at the Museum.

The panel was presented by The New York Times. For more information, please visit www.archdigesthomeshow.com .

Traditional Building magazine has announced that Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, won two 2010 Palladio Awards, topping the field in both of the program's two New Design and Construction categories. Flinn Hall and Edelman Hall, two residence halls at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, won the award for new buildings under 30,000 square feet. Alan B. Miller Hall, the new home of the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, won the award for new buildings over 30,000 square feet.

These honors represent the firm's third and fourth Palladio Awards: the John L. Vogelstein '52 Dormitory at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, won a Palladio in 2004; and the Irving Environmental Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, won in 2005.

The ninth annual Palladio Awards recognized 11 architectural firms for outstanding work in traditional design for commercial, institutional, public and residential projects. The jurors reviewed more than 150 entries to select five winners in the buildings category and seven residential winners. The jurors for commercial, institutional, and public architecture were Robert D. Loversidge, Jr., of Schooley Caldwell Associates; Eric R. Osth of Urban Design Associates; Daniela Holt Voith of Voith & Mactavish Architects; and Stephen C. Wright of Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas + Company.

The winning projects will appear in the June 2010 issue of Traditional Building, and the award will be presented in Chicago in October at a conference sponsored by the magazine.

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SA Baxter introduced a new collection of door hardware designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects tonight at an event at its showroom at the New York Design Center in Manhattan. Grounded in tradition and sparked by the spirit of innovation, the Robert A.M. Stern Collection for SA Baxter will furnish today's residential and civic buildings with thoroughly contemporary reinterpretations of the neoclassical motifs that have inspired American architectural hardware from the colonial period to the present. The collection will complement with a wide variety of 21st-century interiors.

SA BAXTER designs and manufactures timeless custom and semi-custom architectural hardware for high-end residential homes and buildings. All of the manufacturing for SA Baxter takes place in its environmental-friendly foundry located in New York's Hudson Valley.

For more information, go to www.ramscollection.com or www.sabaxter.com.

Today the Robert A.M. Stern Collection for Bendheim, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in collaboration with Bendheim, the specialty glass resource, and Omni Décor, the world's leading manufacturer of architectural etched glass, was introduced worldwide. Four patterns of architectural glass offer varying levels of obscuration, with decorative etching on both sides lending dynamic interaction with light and surrounding design elements and a strong sense of dimensionality. The collection is intended for a broad range of interior and exterior applications.

"We are extremely proud to partner with leaders such as Robert A.M. Stern Architects and OmniDécor. This collection of crystal-clear, dimensional patterned glasses is unlike anything currently available on the market," said Donald Jayson, Sr. Vice President of Bendheim.

"Glass technology has achieved a new level of sophistication," said Robert A.M. Stern, "making it possible to step beyond high performance with an exploration of patterning, translucency, and reflectivity."

For more information, go to www.ramscollection.com or www.bendheim.com.

Orient-Express Hotels, Ltd, today presented designs by Robert A.M. Stern Architects for five houses at The Estates at Keswick Hall, a country estate community in the rolling hills just outside Charlottesville, Virginia.

The houses were created exclusively for the final 40 lots on the 600-acre grounds of historic Keswick Hall, which also offers a five-star Orient-Express Hotel and an Arnold Palmer signature 18-hole championship golf course and club. These designs will be available to buyers of home sites along with opportunities to personalize the exterior and interior finishes.

"It's a beautiful site, with incredible views across the rolling landscape," said architect Robert A.M. Stern. "Each house we have designed is different, yet grows out of a tradition of country villas that threads back through Thomas Jefferson to Palladio. It's like each family can have its own little Monticello."

Orient-Express first came into being in 1883 as one of the world's most exciting and indulgent train journeys. Today, the company owns and manages 49 businesses, including 39 hotels, each unique in style; two restaurants; two river cruise operations; and six luxury trains.

(Rendering by Michael McCann)

Mrs. Laura W. Bush, Architect Robert A. M. Stern and Landscape Architect Matthew Urbanski of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates today unveiled the design of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, a modern brick and limestone structure that complements the American Georgian character of the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas. Set within a low-maintenance, quintessentially Texas landscape, the light-filled building is both presidential and welcoming, evoking both Texas and Washington. The building will house the three components of the George W. Bush Presidential Center: the Presidential archives, a museum, and a policy institute.

“I applaud the work of Robert Stern and Michael Van Valkenburgh in designing a building and landscape that will capture the dignity of the office of the Presidency, while at the same time being warm and welcoming to visitors,” President George W. Bush said. “Laura and I are thrilled with the plans.”

“The building and landscape evoke elements of the full span of George and Laura Bush’s life and service, from their ranch in Crawford to the White House, and help us share the story of a couple committed to public service based on the core principles of freedom, opportunity, responsibility and compassion,” said Mark Langdale, President of the George W. Bush Foundation.

“The George W. Bush Presidential Center reflects a unique design that is appropriate in representing the first U.S. President of the 21st Century,” said R. Gerald Turner, President of Southern Methodist University. “At the same time, it reflects major components of SMU’s Collegiate Georgian architectural tradition of nearly 100 years. As a modern expression of our heritage, this facility will be a welcome addition to the stately buildings and grounds that make the SMU campus a special place for learning,” Turner said.

The building and landscape are designed to achieve LEED platinum certification and include numerous sustainable design strategies including locally sourced building materials, 20% recycled materials, solar hot water panels, native landscaping to reduce irrigation and a storm-water management system that conveys, cleanses and collects surface runoff and roof rainwater.

Groundbreaking is scheduled for November 2010 and the Center is expected to open in February 2013.

(Rendering by Michael McCann)

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ARC Wheeler hosted a reception this morning to celebrate the opening of 10 Rittenhouse Square, a 33-story building on one of Philadelphia's most cherished public squares. Nearly all of the building’s 135 condominium residences feature bay windows, high ceilings, and balconies or terraces. Amenities include a shared roof garden with adjacent pool, spa, and fitness center. Entrances to the residential tower are located on Walnut Street, through the preserved facade of the Rittenhouse Club (1840), and on 18th Street through a garden court; the rest of the site's frontage on Walnut, 18th, and Sansom Streets opens to retail storefronts. The red brick and limestone facades recall those of an early-twentieth-century generation of residential buildings in Philadelphia's Center City.

"We are thrilled to unveil Philadelphia's newest landmark, a project defined by the elegance, access, and sophistication of its location on Rittenhouse Square," said Robert Ambrosi, president of ARC Properties Inc. and managing principal of the building's developer ARC Wheeler. "10 Rittenhouse Square combines the luxuries of a five-star hotel with an unbeatable location in a one-of-a-kind Robert A.M. Stern building."

"Our task was to make 10 Rittenhouse Square the right building for this site, for this time, and for the long haul into the future," said Robert A.M. Stern. "I hope that 10 Rittenhouse Square will find a place in the hearts of Philadelphians as yet one more gift to the city's great tradition of architecture."

The new home of the Farmer School of Business at Miami University was dedicated this afternoon. The 223,000-square-foot building occupies a prominent site at the heart of the campus, facing historic Cook Field and adjacent to the confluence of the three main roads by which visitors arrive in the town of Oxford, Ohio. Three wings embrace a new quadrangle anchored by a stand of mature trees including a majestic sweet gum dating approximately to the university's founding in 1809.

The building features a double-height commons with adjacent study and dining rooms; a skylighted central atrium; and a variety of instructional spaces—cluster classrooms, breakout rooms, a trading room, and a 515-seat auditorium. The building's simple Colonial-Georgian facades of red brick, painted trim, and slate roofs carry forward the architectural identity of Miami University's historic campus.

"The most inspiring aspect of the new building, for me, is seeing the sense of community that it is generating through the vibrancy of interaction among students and faculty, and increased opportunities for spontaneous collaboration," said Roger L. Jenkins, Dean of the Farmer School.

"The Farmer School of Business presented us with a wonderful and daunting challenge: to meet the high expectations of this forward-looking institution while respecting the remarkably consistent architectural heritage of the Miami University campus," said architect Robert A.M Stern. "We hope that the new Farmer School of Business building not only fits in but also stands out as the next step in the evolution of Miami's campus."

Moody Nolan of Columbus, Ohio, was architect-of-record for the new building.

(Photo by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP)

The Municipal Art Society of New York tonight presented Robert A.M. Stern with the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal, awarded each year to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to New York City. The Municipal Art Society's highest honor, the Onassis Medal was established in 1994 in honor of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's passionate efforts to preserve great architecture. It was orriginally established as the Society's President's Medal in 1950.

The Medal was presented by Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, at a dinner at the New York Public Library; where prominent New York property owner and public citizen Peter L. Malkin was also honored with the Medal.

"As I accept this medal," said Mr. Stern, "I do so on behalf of the very many with whom I have been privileged to work over the years: my partners and colleagues in professional practice; my collaborating authors; my teachers, especially Vincent Scully, who is an honorary chair tonight; my faculty colleagues and students at Columbia and Yale whom I've been privileged to know and occasionally influence."

Founded in 1893, the Municipal Art Society is one of the oldest and most forward-looking civic organizations in New York City. The Society has consistently advocated for intelligent urban planning and design, promoting and fighting for both innovation and preservation to ensure that New York continues to flourish as one of the world's greatest and most livable cities.

Franklin & Marshall College has selected Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, to design a new College House residence hall. The design will carry forward the Georgian Revival style of renowned academic architect Charles Klauder, who designed seven of Franklin & Marshall's historic buildings, as well as the college's first master plan in the 1920s.

"It is an honor for us to have a world-renowned architect extending the Klauder tradition into a new century," said Franklin & Marshall President John Fry. "Robert A.M. Stern has amassed an extraordinary portfolio of work that shows sensitivity to integrating architecture into a campus community."

The residence hall, which will be the first new student housing built at the heart of the campus in 25 years, will create a new residential quad adjacent to the recently opened Barshinger Life Sciences and Philosophy Building. It will house 190 students and set the foundation for a new gateway to the campus on Harrisburg Avenue.

Completion is expected in spring of 2011; students will begin living in the College House in the 2011 – 2012 academic year.

(Rendering by Jeff Stikeman)

The University of Colorado at Boulder today celebrated the groundbreaking of the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building. The Caruthers Biotechnology Building will bring together scientists and students in the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology, the department of chemical and biological engineering, and the biochemistry division faculty of the department of chemistry and biochemistry. To encourage collegial interaction, labs and faculty offices will be organized into neighborhoods; the neighborhoods will in turn be connected to shared support spaces and meeting rooms by a central "main street."

The Caruthers Building will establish the future character of the University's new east campus, holding down one side of what will be a gateway quadrangle. The original campus—one of the finest American university campuses—was endowed with a "Tuscan Vernacular Revival" character all its own by architect Charles Z. Klauder's 1920 campus plan, inspired by hilltop villages to take full advantage of topography and views. The master plan for the east campus adapts the organizing elements and character of Klauder's plan to the larger scale of twenty-first-century academic laboratory buildings.

"This building will solidify the University of Colorado's position as a world leader in biotechnology and biochemistry," said CU President Bruce D. Benson. "It will draw on the talents of scientists and engineers from several disciplines to create an incubator where innovation and discovery will thrive."

HDR Architecture of Denver is architect-of-record.

(Rendering by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP)

Today Florida Southern College dedicated Nicholas Hall, the second of two residence halls at the college's Barnett Residential Life Center on the shore of Lake Hollingsworth. Florida Southern benefits from a master plan conceived by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1936; the campus boasts the largest grouping of Wright's buildings in the world. The Barnett Residential Life Center, funded by FSC alumni Carol and Barney Barnett and Publix Super Markets Charities, replaces unsympathetic later buildings that ran parallel to the lakefront with two four-story Y-shaped buildings set on a diagonal to reestablish Wright's geometries and open views from the center of campus to the water. The building's twin, Wesley Hall, was dedicated in May 2008.

"These marvelous residence halls, designed by America's foremost architect, Robert A.M. Stern, set a new standard in the living-learning experience for Florida Southern students," said Dr. Anne Kerr, the President of Florida Southern College. "It is very fitting that Carol and Barney Barnett have named these buildings for their sons, because these buildings will house our students, whose parents share their parental pride in their own sons and daughters and who believe in the dreams of this generation and future generations of Florida Southern students."

"Wright is a tough act to follow," said architect Robert A.M. Stern. "The Barnett Residential Life Center presented us with a wonderful and daunting challenge, not only because of the great architectural heritage of the Florida Southern campus, but also because of the high expectations of this forward-looking institution."

(Photo by Peter Aaron/Esto)

Robert A.M. Stern Designs' new furniture for the David Edward Collection was featured at First Look 2009 at the New York Design Center this evening. Lounge chairs and settees in three new lines—Astor, Cambridge, and Clarkson—are designed for a broad range of applications, including hospitality, healthcare, higher education, and residential. Information on these new products is available at www.ramscollection.com

David Edward is a family-owned business with over 300 skilled craftspeople working in environmentally-friendly production facilities to offer highly detailed furniture. Robert A.M. Stern Designs has been working with David Edward since 2003 to provide well-designed furnishings, initially to complement the architecture of the firm's own buildings; the Robert A.M. Stern Collection has been enthusiastically embraced by other architects and interior designers for their own projects.

The New York Design Center, located at 200 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, has been committed to transforming and enhancing both living and working environments for over 80 years; NYDC has established a worldwide reputation for providing imaginative solutions to any design challenge. The fifth annual First Look introduced a broad array of new contract products to the New York A&D community.

Villanova Heights, a residential neighborhood of traditional houses designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in the historic Riverdale section of the Bronx in New York City, was introduced to market today at an event showing the first two houses to be completed. Three additional houses are currently under construction. The houses draw on traditional American house styles—Colonial Revival, French Norman, Dutch Colonial, Arts and Crafts, and Shingle—while incorporating modern amenities. The project, which envisions 10 to 15 houses in all, is being developed by Riverdale resident John E. Fitzgerald and is scheduled to be completed in 2013.

"We chose Robert Stern because we were confident he could preserve the integrity of this important community with carefully-designed properties that blend with the personality of the area," said Mr. Fitzgerald.

"It's a pleasure to be able to work in the long tradition of American suburban enclave design, where an inspired developer gives an architect the opportunity to design a neighborhood of houses that relate to each other in scale and character, but exhibit stylistic variety," said Robert A.M. Stern. "We are creating at Villanova Heights the kind of dense, walkable suburb that Americans have valued for over a hundred years, from the time of Olmsted at Riverside, Illinois, to that of Dwight James Baum at nearby Fieldston."

"We're glad to be working once again in Riverdale, following on the conmpletion of the Perkins Visitor Center at Wave Hill in 2004," said Gary Brewer, Partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, who is leading the design effort along with Mr. Stern.

(Photo by Peter Aaron/Esto)

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Guild Hall, the historic arts center in East Hampton, New York, will celebrate the completion of extensive renovations designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects with three days of events over the Memorial Day weekend. The white painted brick building, Georgian in style, originally designed by Aymar Embury and first opened in 1931, faces East Hampton's Main Street and serves as a meeting place for the significant local cultural community and a venue for the enjoyment of the visual and performing arts. Improvements include restoration and technical improvements to Guild Hall's three art galleries; the creation of a new education center and executive offices; restoration of the lobby; and the creation of a more inviting museum shop. The work culminated with the restoration and technical modernization of Guild Hall's beloved John Drew Theater.

"The grand reopening of Guild Hall marks a true success story," said Mickey Straus, Chair of the Guild Hall Board of Trustees. "We give special thanks to Robert A.M. Stern, without whom this renovation would not have been possible." Executive Director Ruth Appelhof, Ph.D., added, "Now the stage is set: the technological enhancements applied to our theater, museum, and education center allow us to continue to attract internationally renowned works and artists in both the performing and visual arts, as well as to nurture and celebrate local artistry."

(Photo by Peter Aaron/Esto)

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Haddonstone, the U.S. and U.K.'s leading manufacturer of fine cast stone landscape features, has partnered with Robert A.M. Stern Designs to create a new collection of ornamental garden urns. The first two lines in the collection, Olympian and Athenian, are now available through distributors and directly through Haddonstone at www.haddonstone.com.

"These classically-inspired, yet wholly contemporary, ornamental planters, operating at the intersection of nature and artifice, are designed to help define outdoor rooms in an architectural way," said Robert A.M. Stern, founder and senior partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. The Olympian Collection includes two series of tall, medium, and low urns, a tall slim amphora, along with bases for all elements of the collection, that interpret in a clean, contemporary way the pure shapes of ancient vessels as seen through the lens of late nineteenth-century Neoclassicism. The Athenian Collection includes tall, medium, and low urns in two designs, and their bases, inspired by the pure forms of Art Deco or Art Moderne ornaments of the early twentieth century. These designs will be appropriate for both formal and romantic gardens, whether residential, institutional, or commercial, or for interior uses.

Haddonstone is the U.S. and U.K.'s leading manufacturer of fine landscape ornaments and architectural cast stonework. Haddonstone offers 500 designs in the standard collection as well as custom products created to individual specifications.

The full line of available products designed by Robert A.M. Stern Designs is available at www.ramscollection.com.

(Photo by Haddonstone)

A groundbreaking ceremony was held this morning at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, for the Hancock Technology Center, a new building that will house traditional academic programs and space for collaborative research, innovation, and small business incubation. "Although the Hancock Center will house our School of Computer Science and Mathematics, the concept is that technology is not just for computer science majors but for everyone," said Marist's President, Dennis J. Murray. "The Hancock Center will also enhance our efforts to assist the state's economic development through incubation of start-ups. It will nurture entrepreneurs in their business development with the goal of creating companies and jobs in the Hudson River Valley."

Ellen Hancock, lead donor and Vice Chair of the Marist Board of Trustees, said of the building: "We want to put people in a position where they can exchange ideas and work across disciplines, with technology at the core. When you do that, you get a lot of 'aha!' moments." Ms. Hancock, who was named to the Marist Board of Trustees in 1988, has been a pioneer in the field of technology, rising to senior executive positions at IBM, National Semiconductor Corporation, and Apple Computers before becoming chief executive officer of Exodus Communications and then president of Jazz Technologies.

The building is designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, of New York City. The firm's founder and senior partner Robert A.M. Stern said, "Today we look to the legacy of historic academic buildings in the Hudson River Valley as we break ground for a new building to be realized in rustic stone and brick, a building that will reflect on the past as it showcases the most advanced information technology available now and into the future." The building is the first step in a plan to reorganize the central campus around a variety of open spaces that complement the extraordinary topography of this site.

(Rendering by Jeff Stikeman)

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Philadelphia's Comcast Center has earned LEED-CS (Core and Shell) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. John Gattuso, Senior Vice President and Regional Director of developer Liberty Property Trust, announced "LEED-CS Gold certification for Comcast Center means that the tallest LEED certified building in the nation is located here in Philadelphia. More importantly, it represents a model for how efficient, invigorating, and environmentally sustainable workplaces can and should be integrated into our city and region." Brian L. Roberts, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of lead tenant Comcast, said, "Our first year in Comcast Center has exceeded our every expectation and we are delighted it has received LEED Gold certification."

Robert A.M. Stern Architects led the design team. Looking back on the design process, Robert A.M. Stern, the firm's founder and senior partner, said, "Our clients encouraged us to go as far as possible in our shared search for an environmentally responsible design. LEED Gold certification affirms that working together, we have risen to the challenge."

Comcast Center rises 58 floors above Philadelphia's Suburban Station, Center City's primary commuter rail gateway. The 975-foot-high faceted obelisk provides 1.25 million square feet of Class A office, restaurant and retail space. The tower is clad in silvery high-performance glass that blocks 60% of heat while allowing in 70% of the sun’s visible light. The building uses 40% less water than a typical office building. Shading on the plaza reduces the heat-island effect caused by pavement by 70%.

Liberty Property Trust is a real estate investment trust that owns and manages 77 million square feet of office and industrial properties in the U.S. and the U.K. Comcast Center is owned by a joint venture of Commerz Leasing und Immobilien and Liberty Property Trust.

(Photo by Peter Aaron/Esto)

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Tonight Paul Whalen, Partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, will present "42nd Street: The Reinvention of the Theater Block" as the inaugural lecture of the New York Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism. He will talk about the role of design in the public / private partnership that has reestablished the theater block of 42nd Street as New York's premier democratic entertainment center and a widely studied model for urban redevelopment worldwide. Discussion with founders of CNU New York will follow his presentation.

The lecture will be held at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America at 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan; it begins at 6:30. More information is available at http://www.cnu-ny.org; reservations can be made at http://cnuny.eventbrite.com.

Robert A. M. Stern will discuss two of his firm's recently completed buildings—Fifteen Central Park West in New York and Comcast Center in Philadelphia—in the lecture "The Janus Face of Modernity" tonight at the Union Club in New York. The event is co-organized by the Yale Center for British Art and the Sir John Soane's Museum Foundation. For further information and tickets call 212 223 2012 or e-mail chas@soanefoundation.com.

The Greenspun College of Urban Affairs dedicated its new home this afternoon. The five-story, 120,000-square-foot Greenspun Hall provides classrooms, labs, departmental suites, faculty offices, and radio and television broadcasting facilities for the College, and bring its programs—Communications Studies, Criminal Justice, Environmental Studies, Public Administration, Journalism and Media Studies, and Social Work—under one roof. The Greenspun Family Foundation contributed $37 million for the building—the largest single donation in UNLV history.

Greenspun Hall holds down a prominent corner of the UNLV campus where it meets Maryland Parkway; as the first building in the University’s "Midtown UNLV" initiative, it re-engages the campus with the city that has grown up around it. A tower creates an urban gateway symbolizing the University's edge. At the southeast and northwest corners of the site, expansive landscaped stairs ascend to a broad courtyard shaded by a louvered canopy that will tame the harsh desert sun, yet allow it to play across the trees, columns, and open space below. This louvered canopy, the most visible of the building's many environmentally sensitive design features, reduce solar gain on the building's facades and roofs and support a large photovoltaic array that will produce a significant portion of the power required to run the building. Greenspun Hall is on track for LEED Gold certification.

HKS is the architect-of-record.

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The Spottswood W. Robinson III and Robert R. Merhige, Jr., U.S. Courthouse in Richmond was dedicated today. The 325,000-square-foot, LEED Silver building will provide nine courtrooms together with offices and support space.

The new courthouse presents a formal public entrance to Broad Street, as do the neighboring Richmond City Hall, the Virginia State Assembly Building, and the Virginia State Library. The building bridges the city's governmental Capitol Square district to the east and its historic commercial core, now being reinvented as a performing arts district, to the west. A 100-foot high north-facing atrium serves as a civic-scale forecourt to the seven-storey courthouse and office facility to the south. Public galleries facing the atrium lead visitors to the public functions and to the courtrooms. The judges' chambers are located along the southern edge of the building, where they enjoy dramatic views to Thomas Jefferson's Virginia State Capitol Building.

Our work was performed for the U.S. General Services Administration's Mid Atlantic Region. HLM Design / Heery International was the associate architect.

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Yale University President Richard C. Levin announced today that Robert A.M. Stern Architects has been selected to design two new residential colleges of Yale College. The new colleges will expand the average undergraduate population of 5,250 by 15 percent to approximately 6,000, allowing Yale to prepare a larger number of talented and promising students of all backgrounds for leadership and service. The colleges will be built in a triangle north of New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery bounded by Prospect, Canal, and Sachem Streets and are expected to open in 2013.

"We are pleased that Robert A.M. Stern Architects, founded and led by Bob Stern, our distinguished dean of the School of Architecture, will be designing Yale's thirteenth and fourteenth residential colleges," Levin said. "Bob has designed many outstanding academic facilities around the country, and his knowledge of Yale and its architectural tradition is deep and profound. For the past decade, he, along with former Architecture Deans Cesar Pelli and Tom Beeby, has advised me on every major building project we have undertaken. His understanding of Yale coupled with his appreciation of how good design can foster community will lead to a superior result."

Stern follows fellow Yale alumni James Gamble Rogers and Eero Saarinen, who designed ten of Yale's twelve existing colleges. "Yale's residential college system has helped place Yale College at the pinnacle of undergraduate education," said Stern. "It is an honor to work on such an important expansion of a tradition that contributes so much to the life of the students during their time at Yale." The new colleges will follow Yale's proven model with a master, dean, fellows, and students forming a close-knit community, supported by the highest caliber public and private spaces for living and study.

For more information, see Yale University's news page

The National Building Museum will present the Tenth Vincent Scully Prize to Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture and founder and senior partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, at a gala celebration on November 12, 2008. David Schwarz, chairman of the Prize jury, said Stern was selected "for his years of teaching at Columbia and Yale Universities, his leadership as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and his seminal publications reflecting on the history of architecture in New York."

The Vincent Scully Prize and endowment were established by the National Building Museum in 1999 in honor of Vincent Scully, Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Miami, and one of the world's most influential architectural historians and critics. The Prize has come to be known as one of the most important awards in the field, recognizing the importance of ideas and scholarship that lead to significant contributions to our built environment. The nine previous recipients were Vincent Scully, Jane Jacobs, Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, His Highness the Aga Khan, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Phyllis Lambert, Witold Rybczynski, and Richard Moe.

The National Building Museum, located in Washington, DC, is dedicated to exploring and celebrating architecture, design, engineering, construction, and planning. Chartered by Congress in 1980 and open to the public since 1985, it is a vital forum for the exchange of ideas and information about the built environment. Mr. Stern has served as a member of the museum's board of trustees since 1999.

Today the City of Calabasas, California, dedicated its new Civic Center, a complex that provides a new City Hall and a municipal library organized around a variety of outdoor spaces, including a civic plaza, an olive grove, and an amphitheater. The City Hall will include a 125-seat council chamber and well as a service counter for day-to-day municipal business. The library will house traditional library functions along with an acoustically refined 200-seat multipurpose meeting room, which will serve as a venue for spoken word events as well as small-scale musical performances. The City of Calabasas is committed in its charter to a high level of stewardship of its attractive natural environment, and the Civic Center is designed to achieve Gold LEED™ certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Harley Ellis Devereaux of Los Angeles was architect-of-record.

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The 1.4 million-square-foot, 975-foot-high Comcast Center, the new headquarters for the Comcast Corporation, rises 57 stories above Suburban Station in Center City Philadelphia. The tower is clad in silvery high-performance Viracon® glass with ultra-clear, low-iron glass at the building's corners and crown. Comcast Center and its south-facing, half-acre plaza straddle the underground tracks and concourse of Suburban Station—Philadelphia's primary commuter rail gateway. A 110-foot-high light-flooded public winter garden connects the concourse with its shops and food hall (still under construction) to the tower and plaza above. The winter garden features a double-skin glass curtain wall with sunscreens and louvers that optimize daylight and views while modulating daily and seasonal thermal performance. Radiant heating, thermal extraction, and displacement ventilation combine to provide exceptional energy performance for this civic-scaled space. Three three-story "sky-atria" in the lower portion of the tower's south facade overlook the plaza and provide tenants with unique and identifiable homes. Comcast Center is expected to receive LEED™-CS certification.

The building was developed by Liberty Property Trust. Bill Hankowsky, chief executive officer of Liberty Property Trust, developer of the building, said, "Comcast Center is not just a building. It breaks new ground on several fronts—it creates a dynamic new experience for commuters entering their city; it provides a stimulating, efficient home that allows the state's largest corporation to continue to grow and contribute to the city's financial vitality; and it serves as a beacon of sustainability in a world striving for responsible environmental stewardship."

"This is a defining moment in Comcast's history," said Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast, who dedicated the evening to his father, Comcast chairman and founder, Ralph Roberts. "Our vision was to create a world class home for Comcast employees in the City of Philadelphia. We have been committed to this great city for over 40 years and this fantastic green building is the result." Comcast leases more than 90% of the building.

"Comcast Center is a monument to our collective faith in the power of architecture to convey not only the dignity of this great city but also its new energy," said architect Robert A.M. Stern, founder of Robert A.M. Stern Architects and Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. "I am grateful to have played a part in this inspiring Philadelphia story."

Kendall / Heaton Associates of Houston, Texas, served as architect-of-record.

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The Lakewood (Ohio) Public Library celebrated its reopening today, marking the completion of a two-phase construction program that began with a 40,000-square-foot addition that opened in June 2007 and then continued with the renovation of 53,000 square feet of the existing building, all integrated into one composition. The new library carries forward Lakewood's rich tradition of civic buildings that speak in the Classical architectural language; a monumental entry porch facing Detroit Avenue provides a civic scale that was previously lacking. A two-story skylit lobby at the building's center serves as an orientation point and opens to the circulation desk, the popular materials room, and the children's department. A grand stair with another skylight leads up to the reading rooms, the general collection stacks, and the technology center.

CBLH of Cleveland, Ohio, served as associate architect.

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Tonight Robert A.M. Stern received the Kaufman Center Creative Arts Award at the Kaufman Center Honors gala dinner in New York. Mr. Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, was the lead designer of the recent improvements at Abraham Goodman House, the center's home on Manhattan's West 67th Street, which included a major reconceptualization and updating of the building exterior and public spaces, as well as technical upgrades of the performance and backstage areas of the much-beloved Merkin Concert Hall, all conceived as an update in harmony with the spirit of the building as originally designed by Ashok Bhavnani of Johansen & Bhavnani and completed in 1978.

"Robert Stern is one of the real superstars in the world of architecture today," said Bethany Millard, chairman of the Kaufman Center's Board of Trustees, in presenting the award. "Bob found a way to refresh our building without losing its original integrity. We're very grateful."

Mr. Stern and his partner Alexander P. Lamis led the design effort and are currently working on the next phase of improvements. Jaffe Holden Acoustics served as acoustical consultant and Auerbach Pollock Friedlander as theater consultant for the work in Merkin Hall.

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Today Florida Southern College dedicated Wesley Hall, the first of two new student residences at the Barnett Residential Life Center on the shore of Lake Hollingsworth. The College's Lakeland, Florida, campus boasts the largest grouping of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world. Wright's work developed complex 30º-60º-90º geometry and responded to the local climate with deep overhanging eaves and shaded esplanades.

The Barnett Residential Life Center, funded by FSC alumni Carol and Barney Barnett and Publix Super Markets Charities, replaces unsympathetic later buildings that ran parallel to the lakefront with two four-story Y-shaped buildings set on a diagonal to reestablish Wright's geometries and open views from the center of campus to the water. Broad staircases descend to generous lawns between the residence halls to provide open space for student leisure.

"Today, Florida Southern College launches a new era in the residential life experiences of its students," said FSC president Dr. Anne B. Kerr. "The Barnett Residential Life Center will become the standard for student living and learning spaces throughout the nation."

"We are proud to be a part of the continuing evolution of the Florida Southern campus with a building that we hope is sympathetic to Wright's master works, but with its own presence and identity," said Alexander P. Lamis, partner at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. "We applaud the vision of the Barnett family, who recognize the importance of creating a more welcoming and distinctive public face for the campus along Lake Hollingsworth."

The Hotchkiss School today dedicated two new student residences, Flinn Hall and Edelman Hall, which each provide rooms for 30 students, four faculty apartments, study rooms, and a lounge.

Hotchkiss was built in almost seamless fashion in the early twentieth century with leading architects—Bruce Price, Cass Gilbert, Delano and Aldrich—working in the American Georgian style to meet the needs of a growing New England school, with distinguished yet modest brick buildings defining informal courtyards and lawns. Our new three-story residence halls keep to the prevailing scale of the campus by creating a central building framed with gambrel-roofed side wings housing the faculty apartments. The building materials reflect those of the school's best historic buildings: fine brick details complement double-hung shuttered windows and inviting classical entry porticos. Together with Bissell Hall, the two new buildings shape a new quadrangle, adjusting the spatial focus of the Hotchkiss campus as it expands to the north and east.

Flinn and Edelman Halls are on track for Gold-level LEED™ certification.

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Musiskwartier, a mixed-use infill urban development in Arnhem, the Netherlands, has won an Urban Design Merit Award in the AIA New York Building Type Awards program, co-sponsored by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and by the Boston Society of Architects. Musiskwartier enlivens a fine-grained, formerly industrial neighborhood with a new market square that respects historical patterns of development and new buildings that combine ground-floor retail with residences above organized around shared courtyards. The new structures are carefully woven into and around existing historic buildings, in an idiom that complements but does not mimic the fabric of the surrounding city. Musiskwartier won a Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism in 2006. The developer is Multi Corporation of Gouda, the Netherlands.

INBO of Woudenberg, Netherlands, served as associate architect.

(Photos by Hans Spuijt)

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The Ithaca College School of Business today dedicated the Dorothy D. and Roy H. Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise. The building, which opened in January 2008, is the embodiment of the College's commitment to sustainable business practice; it is on track for Platinum-level LEED™ certification.

The Park Center is sited and massed to take advantage of daylight and prevailing winds for lighting, heating, cooling, and ventilation. Low-velocity displacement ventilation reduces fan power and cooling energy by using higher air temperatures supplied through raised flooring in classrooms and wall registers set low in offices. The building's locally-quarried rubble-stone base, garden terraces and green roof echo the local topography and native vegetation. Inside, Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood is used for finishes and fixed furniture, and a central four-story atrium and a dramatic open stair provide natural daylight and ventilation to classrooms, team study rooms, and a sophisticated trading room on the first two levels, and on the upper two levels faculty and administrative offices. The Park Center will be the hub of educational "eco-tours."

Robert A.M. Stern Architects was selected to design the Park Center following a three-way design competition in early 2005.

Robert A.M. Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, was presented with Soane Foundation Honors at the "Thoroughly Modern Soane" dinner dance at the Rainbow Room in New York tonight. The Foundation supports the Sir John Soane's Museum in London, in the house that architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837) designed and opened to the public after the death of his wife in 1815 to display his vast collection of arts and antiquities. "Soane's house—the museum that we are supporting tonight—resonates with scholarship and discipline, revealing the unbroken, endlessly self-renewing character of architecture," Mr. Stern said on accepting the award.

The Soane Foundation also honored the Monacelli Press, publisher of monographs on the work of Robert A.M. Stern Architects as well as Mr. Stern's series of books documenting the development of New York City's architecture and urbanism from the end of the Civil War to the millennium.

Robert A.M. Stern was awarded Bronx Community College's Legacy Award tonight at the school's 50th anniversary finale gala. Iris Weinshall, Vice Chancellor for Facilities, Planning, Construction and Management of City University of New York, presented the award.

Robert A.M. Stern, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, is the lead designer of BCC's new North Instructional Building and Library, which will provide classrooms, offices, and a state-of-the-art library for BCC's 9,000 students. The new building will carry forward the vision laid out in Stanford White's 1892 master plan for what was originally New York University's University Heights campus. The building, scheduled for completion in 2011, is expected to achieve LEED certification at the Silver level.

Mr. Stern and his partners Graham Wyatt and Augusta Barone are leading the design effort at Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Ismael Leyva Architects of New York City is architect-of-record.

(Rendering by Thomas Schaller)

Today was the opening of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The glass and brick building will house the world’s largest collection of quilts, including the Ardis and Robert James Collection of antique and contemporary studio art quilts, the Cargo Collection of African American Quilts, and the Jonathan Holstein Collection, composed of the seminal Whitney Collection and an unparalleled group of Pennsylvania Amish quilts; and an international study center dedicated to the research, preservation and display of important quilts from cultures around the world. The $12 million facility was privately funded through contributions to the University of Nebraska Foundation, including a lead gift from the Robert and Ardis James Foundation of Chappaqua, New York.

The compact three-story brick building combines simply massed volumes housing the galleries and their support with a bowed facade composed of glass panels "stitched together" to create a large-scale pattern suggesting the activity within. The carefully orchestrated sequence of public circulation from the entry up a stepped ramp to a large reception hall then to the galleries is a journey from daylight to the controlled light of the exhibits. The museum is on target for LEED ™ Silver Certification.

Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture of Omaha, Nebraska, served as associate architect.

Photo: Peter Aaron / Esto

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Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, today announced nine new partners in the firm: Augusta Barone, Gary Brewer, Melissa DelVecchio, Sargent Gardiner, Preston Gumberich, Michael Jones, Dan Lobitz, Meghan McDermott, and Kevin Smith. RAMSA extends congratulations to each of them. The new partners join founder and senior partner Robert A.M. Stern, managing partner Robert S. Buford, and partners Randy Correll, Alexander Lamis, Grant Marani, Roger Seifter, Paul Whalen, and Graham Wyatt.

Silverstein Properties President and CEO Larry A. Silverstein today unveiled Robert A.M. Stern Architects' design for 99 Church Street, an 80-story hotel and residential tower in Lower Manhattan. Located between Barclay Street and Park Place, the elegant 912-foot tower will be home to a 175-room Four Seasons Hotel with 143 private residences above. The project will also include a public park.

The limestone and cast stone shaft of the tower rises to a dramatic skyline profile of full-floor penthouses and setback terraces. The hotel entrance on Barclay Street leads visitors into four floors of lobbies, lounges, a restaurant (which also has an entrance of its own on Church Street), ballrooms, meeting facilities, spa, fitness center, and pool. A separate entrance and lobby at 30 Park Place serves the residences.

"Our partnership with Four Seasons at 99 Church Street serves as further validation of Downtown's ongoing transformation into a dynamic, sustainable and unparalleled urban community," said Mr. Silverstein. Kathleen Taylor, President and Chief Operating Officer of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, said, "This development, with the combined vision of Silverstein Properties and Robert Stern, promises to be an exciting project as it reinvents the historic downtown district."

"99 Church will counterpoint the glass-and-steel office towers that Larry Silverstein and his organization are building along Greenwich Street, and together these buildings will help Lower Manhattan realize its potential as a great place to live and work. I am proud to be a part of this effort," said Robert A.M. Stern, founder and senior partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects and dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Silverstein Properties is simultaneously developing four office towers at the World Trade Center: the Freedom Tower and three office buildings on Greenwich Street.

Yabu Pushelberg is the interior designer for the hotel guest rooms. SLCE Architects is architect-of-record.

(Rendering by dbox)

Aviva France announced today that Robert A.M. Stern Architects has been selected to design a new office tower at La Défense. Tour Carpe Diem will be an important step forward in the evolution of La Défense toward pedestrian-friendly urbanism and environmentally responsible architecture. The 35-story, 45,000 m2 building connects the raised esplanade—the "dalle" that continues the axis of the Champs-Elysées through the district—and the urban fabric of the city of Courbevoie to the north.

"This is a fantastic opportunity to place greater emphasis on the human dimension at La Défense," said Robert A.M. Stern. "We are very impressed with the efforts of EPAD [The Public Authority for Development of La Défense] and the city of Courbevoie to expand and revitalize this important business center. Aviva has seized the moment to set a new course with this ambitious civic-minded project."

Tour Carpe Diem will significantly exceed French regulations for environmentally responsible development. The building's triple-glazed curtain wall incorporates sunshades that respond to the solar orientation of each facade and innovative grilles that provide natural ventilation to reduce dependence on air conditioning. Additional sustainable design strategies include solar water heating, a heat recovery system, and high-performance lighting.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects was selected to design the project in a three-way design competition; the other competitors were Jacques Ferrier Architecte (Paris) and Foster + Partners (London).

Aviva is the leading provider of life insurance and pensions savings in Europe with substantial positions in other markets around the world, making it the world's fifth-largest insurance group. Aviva's principal business activities are long-term savings, asset management, and general insurance, with worldwide total revenue of €61.9 billion and assets under management of €543 billion at 31 December 2006

SRA Architects of Châtillon, France, will serve as associate architect for the project.

(Rendering by studio amd)

The Kaufman Center reopened today, marking the completion of the first phase of improvements at Goodman House at 129 West 67th Street in New York City. The renovation is conceived as an update in harmony with the spirit of the building as designed by Ashok Bhavnani of Johansen & Bhavnani and completed in 1978.

Changes include a new marquee and signage to give the building greater visibility from both Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue; a unified entrance for the Kaufman Center's three divisions (Merkin Hall, the Lucy Moses School, and the Special Music School); and new reception spaces at both the orchestra and balcony levels. Metal paneling on the building's exterior has been replaced with translucent channel glass, which admits filtered sunlight by day and allows the building to glow from within by night while maintaining the compositional integrity of the facade. Technical improvements in refurbished Merkin Hall preserve its excellent acoustics and reduce intrusive noise.

"By preserving the basic language of the building, and avoiding the temptation to reinvent an already exquisite concert hall chamber, Mr. Stern has developed design solutions that are innovative, sparkling, and very much a reflection of our future," said Lydia Kontos, Executive Director of the Kaufman Center.

Jaffe Holden Acoustics is the acoustical consultant and Auerbach Pollock Friedlander the theater consultant for the work in Merkin Hall.

(Photo by Albert Večerka)

The partners of Robert A.M. Stern Architects are pleased to announce that Don Lee, Lenore Passavanti, Jennifer Stone, and Michael Weber have been promoted from Associate to Senior Associate, and that Timothy Deal, Roland Sharpe Flores, Hyung Kee Lee, Christopher McIntire, and Sue Jin Sung are now Associates of the firm. RAMSA extends congratulations to each of them.

Yale University President Richard C. Levin today announced that Robert A.M. Stern has agreed to serve a third five-year term as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, effective July 1, 2008. In making the announcement, President Levin cited Mr. Stern's "unprecedented level of energy, leadership, and organization…. he has raised the profile of the School and strengthened its national and international reputation." Mr. Stern, a 1965 graduate of the School and J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture since 2000, was first appointed dean in 1998.

Florida Southern College held groundbreaking ceremonies today for the Dr. Marcene H. and Robert E. Christoverson Humanities Building. The first new classroom building in twenty years on the campus planned by Frank Lloyd Wright will be dedicated to the study of literature and language, providing classrooms, seminar rooms, a writing center, a modern language learning center, a computer lab, a film studies center, faculty offices, and a gallery lobby.

Dr. Christoverson, the lead donor, is chairman of St. John Associates, Inc., a company she built into one of the largest woman-owned direct mail companies in the world. "The entire campus community is elated by Dr. Christoverson's generosity to make this much-needed facility a reality," said Dr. Anne B. Kerr, the president of Florida Southern College. "The Christoverson Humanities Building gives FSC the opportunity to provide a state-of-the-art learning facility for our talented students and faculty, and it will ensure that our students have an excellent academic experience."

Robert A.M. Stern Architects is also the architect of FSC's Residential Life Center, which is currently under construction.

(Rendering by Thomas Schaller)

Centerplan Development, a real estate development company based in Hartford, Connecticut, today announced the selection of Robert A.M. Stern Architects to design a mixed-use project in New Haven, Connecticut, to be known as College Square. The 19-story building will offer shops, hotel and meeting facilities, and condominium residences on College Street, where New Haven's central business district meets Yale University.

"This is a tremendous opportunity to work with one of the greatest architects of our generation to create a landmark-quality building in downtown New Haven," said Robert Landino, President of Centerplan. "New Haven is eager for a first-class hotel and luxury residences. We are all looking forward to bringing our collective vision a giant step closer to reality."

"I know first-hand that downtown New Haven is coming into its own as a great place to live," said Robert A.M. Stern, who is Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. "I am thrilled that Centerplan has asked me to help fortify the revitalization currently under way where downtown meets Yale. College Square will enliven College Street with shops and provide much-needed sophisticated hotel rooms and apartments in a sophisticated setting."

The project is expected to break ground in late 2008 and completion is scheduled for 2011.

Silverstein Properties announced today that Robert A.M. Stern Architects has been selected to design a new residential and hotel tower at 99 Church Street in Lower Manhattan. The new building, on Church Street between Barclay Street and Park Place, will include a five-star hotel, a restaurant, and luxury condominiums.

"99 Church will be a valuable and architecturally significant addition to the Downtown Manhattan community. This area has quickly become one of the nation's most dynamic live/work neighborhoods," said Larry A. Silverstein, President and CEO of Silverstein Properties. "I'm delighted to welcome Robert A.M. Stern Architects to the roster of world-class architects—David Childs, Lord Norman Foster, Fumihiko Maki, and Lord Richard Rogers—who are working with us to transform the landscape downtown while at the same time honoring its rich architectural heritage."

"Lower Manhattan is one of the world's great places, and I am thrilled by the invitation of Larry Silverstein and his organization to be part of its rebirth with the design of a first-rate hotel and residences on a key site," said Robert A.M. Stern. "For me, this is a dream project, a chance to help Lower Manhattan realize its potential as a great place to live."

SLCE Architects is architect-of-record for the building. Construction will start in 2008 and completion is scheduled for early 2011.

Residential developer Ceebraid-Signal broke ground today for Highgrove, a residential building on Forest Street in Stamford, Connecticut. The 17-story condominium building will satisfy the burgeoning high-end market created by Stamford's renewed economic vigor.

The building meets the street with three-story maisonettes; a formal Belgium block-paved motor court leads to a lobby entrance marked with a glass marquee and to indoor parking. The building rises from a four-story base to a traditional brick shaft articulated by stacked bay windows and balconies with painted metal railings, culminating in a distinctive crown that will contribute an iconic form to the Stamford skyline. Each of the building's 92 apartments is served by an elevator that opens directly into the apartment foyer—there are no long, anonymous corridors. Almost all of the residences are either corner units or floor-through units, endowed with ample natural light and the variety of views more typically found in freestanding houses. Upper-level residences offer views to Long Island Sound. Amenities include a health club; a pool and sundeck under a retractable roof; a wine cellar and a wine-tasting room; a great room for entertaining; and a private screening room.

SLCE Architects is architect-of-record for the building. Sales representatives can be contacted at www.highgrovestamford.com

(Rendering by Thomas Schaller)

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Robert A.M. Stern was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this afternoon at a ceremony at the Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, welcoming the Academy's 227th class of Fellows. Founded in 1780, the Academy honors excellence by electing to membership the finest minds and most influential leaders of our time, celebrating superior scholarship, artistic triumphs, and exemplary service to society. "The Academy takes great pride in honoring the accomplishments of these outstanding individuals," said Academy President Emilio Bizzi. "Throughout our history, the Academy has been dedicated to advancing intellectual thought and constructive action in America and the world. We are confident that our newest Fellows will help us fulfill that mission in significant ways."

Today the new Student and Academic Services Buildings at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were dedicated by Chancellor James Moeser and other members of the university family in conjunction with Family Weekend. The new facilities, which opened this summer, are home to more that fifteen university departments formerly dispersed around the campus to accommodate one-stop student services in a coordinated setting.

The 88,000-square-foot project consists of two buildings disposed along a major campus pedestrian path at a key intersection in the south part of the campus. The larger north building contains student services offices on the upper floors and joint meeting and conference spaces on the ground floor. The south building contains 24-hour functions such as a university computer lab and help center. The three-story structures are sheathed in red brick, with oversized wood windows and a metal roof, recalling the architecture of the campus's historic core.

(Photo by RAMSA)

The Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia broke ground today on a new home, Bavaro Hall, to be located on Emmet Street in Charlottesville, adjacent to the school's facilities in Ruffner Hall (1973). The four-story building will nearly double the space currently available to the school's academic, research, and clinical programs. The building will be named for Anthony D. "Wally" Bavaro, who as a history teacher and football coach in Malden and Chelsea, Massachusetts, became a mentor to the donor, Dan Meyers, chair of the Curry School Foundation.

Located on a steeply sloped site at the western perimeter of the University's historic Central Grounds, Bavaro Hall will feature simple massing and traditional detailing – red brick and limestone facades with painted wood trim, six-over-six double-hung windows, and metal standing-seam roof – screening Ruffner Hall behind a fresh face that is in keeping with the architectural traditions first established at the Lawn by Thomas Jefferson. The new building will work together with the old to define a landscaped courtyard framed between two open-air arcades linking the two buildings, creating a campus within a campus for the Curry School.

The ground floor, partially tucked into the slope, will house the clinics that distinguish the School, with a public entrance at grade off Emmet Street. Primary access for students and faculty will be one level above via an existing pedestrian bridge that crosses Emmet Street and new cascading steps that lead from the street up to the courtyard at either end of the building. The first floor will accommodate heavily-trafficked uses, such as student services, the dean's suite, conference and meeting spaces, a coffee bar, and the Commons, the School's primary indoor social space, which opens directly to the courtyard for indoor/outdoor events. Two generously proportioned naturally lit stairs will lead up to departmental suites, faculty offices, and meeting rooms on the upper two floors. The 65,000-square-foot Bavaro Hall is scheduled for completion in early 2010.

(Rendering by Michael McCann)

The George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation announced today that Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP, has been selected to design the Presidential Library and Museum for America’s 43rd President, following a decision by President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush.

"I am honored to be asked to take on the challenge of shaping this important living institution – a museum, a library, and an institute – at the edge of a major historic university campus," said Robert A.M. Stern.

"As we remain in exclusive discussions with Southern Methodist University and hope to announce a final decision on the location of the library later this year, we believe it is important to take this step of naming the architect to allow for the design process to begin moving forward," said Donald L. Evans, who is leading the library effort. "Robert A.M. Stern brings deep resources and broad experience to this important project."

Hines, the international real estate firm, and DLF, India’s largest publicly traded property developer and land owner, announced today the selection of the internationally renowned firm Robert A.M. Stern Architects to master plan a site of approximately 14 acres located on Golf Course Road in Gurgaon, India, a fast-growing suburb of Delhi.

The commission will include a master plan for the entire site as well as the design of the first phase of the complex, a major office tower of approximately 80,000 square meters together with ground-floor retail space and a large parking garage. In addition to the office tower, the master plan is likely to include high-end retail shops, restaurant and entertainment venues, a hotel, and landscaped exterior and interior public spaces. It may also include serviced apartments and a second office tower. The total mixed-use complex is envisioned to include approximately 235,000 square meters (2.5 million square feet) of construction.

"We are extremely enthusiastic to have the opportunity to enter the Indian market with the commission for such a major urban complex," said Robert Stern. "We are also honored to have the chance to come to India with Hines and DLF."

This is the first project in India for both Hines and Stern. Previously, the firms have collaborated on several projects in the United States, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil.

Crossville introduced Building Blox, a new collection of Porcelain Stone tile created in collaboration with internationally renowned Robert A.M. Stern Design, today at NeoCon in Chicago. "Crossville is honored to be able to work with Robert A.M. Stern Design, a firm that is known and admired throughout the world," said Frank Douglas, Crossville's Vice President of Business Development. Building Blox comprises three patterns and a coordinating solid, all of which are available in nine colors. Urban Fabric and Greek Key are inspired by architectural decorative details and mosaic floor patterns typical of the classical tradition, and City Garden starts with a traditional floral motif reminiscent of 19th-century wallcovering, yet all three are crisp, clean, and contemporary.

"Our collaboration with Crossville provides an opportunity to reinvent one of architecture's most time-honored components—decorative tiling," said Robert A.M. Stern. His firm has been involved in product design for more than twenty years and currently collaborates with respected manufacturers in the architectural and interior furnishings industry to create a comprehensive design collection of complementary products: Building Blox joins carpeting by Bentley Prince Street, furniture by David Edward, and wallcoverings by Innovations.

Now celebrating its 21st year, Crossville, Inc. is a manufacturer of award-winning Porcelain Stone, Design Solutions, and Accent Innovations for both residential and contract applications. For more information, go to www.crossvilleinc.com or www.ramscollection.com.

Robert A.M. Stern Architects has been selected to design the new 200,000-square-foot College of Law Building at the University of Kentucky's Lexington campus. The building, to be located on a prominent 3.3-acre site on Scott Street near the historic center of the campus, will be roughly twice the size of the law school's existing 1965 building, and will provide a new home for the school's classrooms, faculty offices, and student spaces, as well as the 470,000-volume Law Library, the largest in Kentucky. The new building will support student activities and informal collegial interaction and will integrate modern teaching technology. "This new building is a chance for the law school to make a quantum advance," said Dean Allan Vestal. "It is an exciting prospect for the College."

Robert A.M. Stern received the Congress for the New Urbanism's Athena Award tonight in Philadelphia at CNU XV: New Urbanism in the Old City. The award recognized Mr. Stern's influence "as author of distinguished histories, as dean of the architecture school at Yale, and as the leader of a prospering architectural practice that has helped reintroduce essential architectural traditions into a design culture that had lost its sense of history."

"He is a model in many ways. He combines impeccable academic credentials with brilliant administration and first-rate design," said Andrés Duany, who presented the award. "At Yale, he navigates the treacherous waters, making it possibly the only truly open-minded architecture school in the world. He's also fostered a practice of excellence and groomed the next generation. These achievements and qualities are all too rare."

The Preservation League of New York State selected the Excellence Charter School of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn for its prestigious Excellence in Historic Preservation Award, which recognizes individuals and organizations for demonstrating an outstanding commitment to the preservation of New York State’s irreplaceable architectural heritage.

James W. Naughton’s 1880 gauged red brick and brownstone school building was abandoned in the late 1970s after a major fire. Uncommon Schools, a non-for-profit organization known for developing urban college preparatory charter schools in the northeast chose the building as the site for its new academy in Brooklyn – the Excellence Charter School – after an exhaustive search. “The formerly abandoned Public School 70 is an important part of the urban fabric of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and for too long, it stood as a dangerous symbol of neglect in the neighborhood it once served,” said Jay DiLorenzo, President of the Preservation League. “The quality of the restoration of this once-derelict building and the sensitive new addition, along with the return of this historic building to academic use, is truly exemplary.”

“The lowest-risk strategy would have been to demolish the charred shell of the building,” said David Saltzman, Executive Director of the Robin Hood Foundation and a trustee of the Excellence Charter School. “It required the extraordinary vision of Robert A.M. Stern Architects to reincarnate this lost treasure as a new charter school.” Contributing to the success of restoration effort were structural engineer Robert Silman Associates, P.C. of New York; mechanical engineer MGJ Associates, Inc. of New York; civil engineer Leonard Strandberg Associates of Staten Island; and builder S. DiGiacomo & Son, Inc. of New York.

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(Photo by Albert Večerka)

The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America announced the winners of the 2007 Arthur Ross Awards for Excellence in the Classical Tradition at a dinner held this evening at the University Club in New York City. For the first time, as recommended by the 2007 Ross jury, the Board of Directors presented an award that transcends the established Arthur Ross Award categories to Robert A.M. Stern to recognize his contributions in architecture, education, and publishing. The recent publication of New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium as the final volume in his important five-volume series on architecture and urbanism in New York prompted this unprecedented recognition.

Jury chair Bunny Williams said, "I am thrilled that the board of directors has elected to make the first-ever award to an individual whose extraordinary contribution cuts across categories. Robert A.M.Stern fits the bill ideally as architect, scholar, educator and civic steward." ICA&CA president Paul Gunther added, "We are pleased that the generous leadership, and civic example of our co-founder and honorary chairman, Arthur Ross, is celebrated each year with these interdisciplinary awards."

The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism announced today that Robert A.M. Stern will receive the Governor's Award for Excellence in Culture and Tourism in the field of history on May 2 in New Haven. The award recognizes "individuals who work tirelessly to improve the arts, history, film, and tourism in Connecticut." Recipients are selected based on magnitude of achievement and sustained contribution to the field and to the State of Connecticut. Mr. Stern, founder and senior partner of New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects, is Dean of the Yale School of Architecture at Yale University in New Haven. The award will be presented by Mr. Stern's colleague and mentor Vincent Scully, Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale.

Brown University announced that Robert A.M. Stern Architects has been selected to design the new Jonathan Nelson Fitness Center, which will be located within the Wendell R. Erickson '19 Athletic Complex on the Brown campus in Providence, Rhode Island. The 65,000-square-foot center will provide a three-court gymnasium, five fitness and dance studios, and space for free weights and cardiovascular equipment, increasing options for club sports, intramurals, and open recreation. The new building will create a new quadrangle and will feature a lobby atrium suitable for social gatherings. The center is scheduled to be completed in 2010.

The Kaufman Center today announced plans for an extensive renovation of the Goodman House at 129 West 67th Street in New York City, to include a major reconceptualization and updating of the building exterior and public spaces, as well as technical upgrades of the performance and backstage areas of the much-beloved Merkin Concert Hall. The renovation has been conceived as an update in harmony with the spirit of the building as originally designed by Ashok Bhavnani of Johansen & Bhavnani and completed in 1978.

Improvements will include a new canopy and signage intended to give the building greater visibility from both Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue; a unified entrance for the Kaufman Center's three divisions (Merkin Hall, the Lucy Moses School, and the Special Music School); enlarged lobby and reception spaces at both the orchestra and balcony levels; and the replacement of metal panels on the 67th Street facade with translucent structural channel glass to admit filtered sunlight by day and to allow the building to glow from within by night. Technical improvements in refurbished Merkin Hall will preserve its excellent acoustics. Groundbreaking will be in May 2007, and the project will be completed in early January 2008.

Jaffe Holden Acoustics is the acoustical consultant and Auerbach Pollock Friedlander the theater consultant for the work in Merkin Hall.

(Rendering by Augustus Wendell)

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Rafael Díaz-Balart Hall, the first home for the FIU College of Law, was dedicated today at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

The building terminates a major new axis of the University, the Avenue of the Professions, with a three-story-high entry portico that acts as a new symbol for the College. Public and student areas in the 156,000-square-foot building include courtrooms, classrooms and seminar rooms, lounges, student lockers, a 500-seat registrar's classroom, faculty and staff offices, and a 50,000-square-foot, three-story Law Library. Three programmatic divisions surround two courtyards, carefully proportioned to create an inviting place for movement and contemplation: the southern courtyard is more formal, organized around a central fountain, and the northern courtyard is more relaxed and free flowing. The courtyards keep the building's floor plates narrow, allowing more natural light to enter, lowering internal lighting costs, and providing exterior windows for the many offices and open administrative areas within the building.

The teaching courtrooms, classrooms, and seminar rooms are equipped with state of the art computer and audiovisual systems that offer great flexibility to instructors. Both wireless and wired computer connections are available throughout the library and in the classrooms. While technologically advanced, the building also provides an environment that will help the school make the long and great traditions of the law and legal education relevant to a new and forward-looking generation of scholars and students.

Harper Aiken Donahue & Partners of Coral Gables was architect-of-record.

(Photo by Peter Aaron/ESTO)

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New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today announced plans to build the first permanent home for the Museum for African Art, the only independent museum in the United States dedicated solely to African Art. The first new museum building on New York's Museum Mile since the completion of the Guggenheim in 1959, the Museum for African Art will be a place for art and also a gathering place for the vast African diaspora and for the vibrant cultural community that is New York City. The museum will stand at the corner of 110th Street and Fifth Avenue where it will create a cultural gateway to Harlem.

The museum, designed in close conjunction with the 19-story residential tower that houses it, will provide the museum with 90,000 square feet on three floors above grade and two below. Its L-shaped plan will cradle a plaza on the circle that faces west toward Central Park. The strong character of the trapezoidal windows with bronze-painted aluminum mullions set into stone panels on the museum's north and west facades suggests – in an abstract way – woven patterns inspired by traditional African art. While the rhythm of the museum facade is carried upward to the residences above, the museum will maintain its own distinct identity within the larger structure.

Visitors will enter the museum through a glass entry vestibule off Fifth Avenue into a 44-foot-high lobby with one wall and ceiling composed of a continuous curving expanse of etimoe wood, a sustainable wood from West Africa. The lobby will lead to the gift shop, ticketing and information, an auditorium, a café, coat rooms, and toilets, as well as to an interactive room for orientation and an arts workshop.

The grand stair will be embraced in a circular perforated-metal drum with diamond-shaped apertures in a spiral pattern, which will glow like a lantern. The second floor will provide 16,000 square feet of flexible gallery space, typically to be organized as three temporary exhibition galleries and two galleries for the permanent collection that can be experienced individually or in a loop. The public spaces of the museum will culminate on the third floor with a gracious event space that will include a roof terrace offering dramatic views west over Central Park.

Administrative offices will also be housed on the third floor, along with the library, the boardroom, the auction room, and catering kitchens. The two levels below grade will accommodate conservation, documentation, and collection storage.

SLCE Architects is the associate architect for this project.

(Rendering by Neoscape)

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The partners at Robert A.M. Stern Architects are pleased to announce that Kurt Glauber, Jonas Goldberg, Joel Mendelson, Julie Nymann, and Charles Toothill have been promoted from Associate to Senior Associate, and that John Boyland, Joshua Bull, Johnny Cruz, Christopher LaSala, Thomas Lewis, Shannon Ratcliff, Marc Rehman, Mike Soriano, David Winterton, and Siew Lee Yap are now Associates of the firm. RAMSA extends congratulations to each of them.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas will break ground today for Greenspun Hall, the five-story building that will be the new home of the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs. The 120,000-square-foot building will provide classrooms, labs, departmental suites, faculty offices, and radio and television broadcasting facilities for the College, and bring its programs – Communications Studies, Criminal Justice, Environmental Studies, Public Administration, Journalism and Media Studies, and Social Work – under one roof.

Greenspun Hall will occupy a prominent corner of the campus where the southern boundary of the UNLV campus meets Maryland Parkway. As the first project for the University’s “Midtown UNLV” initiative, the new building will re-engage the campus with the city that has grown up around it. A tower and an urban gateway will define the University's edge, while at the southeast and northwest corners of the site two expansive landscaped stairs will ascend to a broad courtyard shaded by a louvered canopy that will tame the harsh desert sun, yet allow it to play across the trees, columns, and open space below. This louvered canopy, the most visible of the building's many environmentally sensitive design features, will reduce solar gain on the building's facades and roofs and support a large photovoltaic array that will produce a significant portion of the power required to run the building.

The design for the new complex complements the Modernist vocabulary of UNLV's existing buildings, all built since the 1950s. Its palette of tawny brick and red sandstone will evoke the desert, and landscape elements designed to thrive in the arid climate will provide respite along the shaded walks and outdoor spaces between the buildings.

HKS is the architect-of-record.

(rendering by RAMSA)

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Three upcoming panel discussions will celebrate the November 2006 publication of New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium, written by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove and published by The Monacelli Press.

On Thursday, January 25, at 6:30 pm at the Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, Columbia University, the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture will present a round-table discussion "New York 2000: The Book" with opening remarks by Robert A.M. Stern. Joan Ockman, Director of the Buell Center, will moderate a panel that includes Robert Beauregard, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University, and author of The Urban Moment: Cosmopolitan Essays on the Late Twentieth Century City; Kenneth Jackson, Jacques Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University, and author of The Encyclopedia of New York City; Suzanne Stephens, architecture critic and Deputy Editor, Architectural Record; and Mike Wallace, Distinguished Professor of History, City University of New York, and author of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. The event is free and open to the public. For more information please call 212-854-8165 or go to the Buell Center Web site.

The Architectural League of New York has organized two programs to take place at Caspary Hall at Rockefeller University in New York that will both be introduced by Robert A.M. Stern. On Tuesday, February 6, at 6:30, "The City as Stage" will feature panelists Dan Biederman, President, Bryant Park Corporation; Anita Contini, founder and former director, Creative Time; Alanna Heiss, Director, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; Michael Sorkin, Director, Graduate Urban Design Program, City College of New York; and Tupper Thomas, President, Prospect Park Alliance.

On Tuesday, February 13, at 6:30, "The Good, the Bad, and the Appropriate" will feature panelists Kent Barwick, President, Municipal Art Society; Laurie Beckelman, former Chair, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; Andrew Berman, Executive Director, Greenwich Village Historic Preservation Society; and Paul Byard, Director of the Historic Preservation Program at Columbia University GSAPP. The discussion will be moderated by Paul Goldberger. Admission is free for League members, $10 for non-members and guests. League members may make reservations for themselves and one guest by calling 212-980-3767 or emailing info@ArchLeague.org. For more information please visit www.archleague.org.

The City of Calabasas, California, broke ground today for the new Calabasas Civic Center, a 56,000 square-foot facility that will create a permanent home for the city hall and library. Calabasas, located in the northwest corner of Los Angeles County, was incorporated in 1992. For the past decade its city offices and library have been located in rented space. The new Civic Center will give the City of Calabasas its first opportunity to express in architectural terms its civic ideals of community and environmental stewardship.

The Center will be situated on a gently sloping 7.7 acre site near arid hills that are a gateway to the Santa Monica Mountains. The arcaded library and city hall will be contemporary interpretations of the Mediterranean style architecture prevalent in Southern California, and will be sited informally to create a variety of outdoor spaces, including a grove of olive trees, a civic plaza, and an amphitheater, that together will form the public heart of Calabasas.

The city hall will contain a two-story Council Chamber, seating 125, which will be the focal point for city activities. It will combine traditional wood paneling, beams, and decorative lighting with up-to-date audiovisual and communications systems. The building will provide a public counter for day-to-day interaction with local government and offices for elected officials, the city manager, and department heads. These, along with the workplaces for city staff, will be infused with natural light and have a close connection to the outdoors.

The library will have a tall central hall illuminated by clerestory windows. Together with traditional library functions, the library will contain an acoustically refined 200-seat multipurpose meeting room, which will serve as a venue for spoken word and small-scale musical events.

The City of Calabasas is committed in the city charter to a high level of stewardship of its attractive natural environment, and the Civic Center is designed to achieve Gold LEED^™ certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Environmentally sound design strategies include the use of local and recycled materials, drought-tolerant landscaping, natural daylighting, and low energy lighting and environmental control systems.

The project is designed in association with Harley Ellis Devereaux of Los Angeles, California.

(Rendering by Tom Schaller)

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The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents today unanimously approved our design for the new North Quad Residential and Academic Complex on the Ann Arbor campus. The design reinforces the campus's unique architectural and planning traditions, with massing and forms based on the very special blend of Collegiate Gothic and the Arts & Crafts which uniquely identify the campus. Working in the first half of the twentieth century, architects Emil Lorch, Pond & Pond, and Albert Kahn designed such buildings as the Union, the League, and Lorch Hall, creating a rich tapestry of deep red brick, stone, and slate to shape arcades of flattened arches, grand engaged colonnades, and landmark towers. Just as we did in designing Weill Hall (2006), which now constitutes the southern gateway to the main campus, we looked to this tradition as we approached the design of the North Quad in order to shape a new university environment where living, learning, and academic support will coexist on a full block anchoring the northwest corner of the main campus.

The North Quad accommodates 360,000 square feet of offices and meeting rooms for various academic departments, classrooms, laboratories, residential suites for students, dining, and social spaces on a tight urban site where the University meets the surrounding town. To mitigate the project's density, the buildings are arranged around interconnected courtyards. Welcoming plazas at the northwest and southeast corners of the block open up the quad to its surroundings. To the west, a café and gallery spaces pick up the vibrant retail rhythm of State Street. Along Huron Street, the preserved facade of the Carnegie Library is incorporated into the residential building, which will be the first residential building to be built at the University of Michigan since 1968. At the corner of State and Huron Streets, a broad plaza dramatically welcomes the community to the campus from downtown Ann Arbor.

The massing of the North Quad's buildings rises in a counterclockwise spiral from the dining hall, with its large bay windows overlooking Rackham Green, to the boldly shaped tower at the southeast plaza, balancing the mass of Rackham Hall. The tower, visible from as far away as the Diag, terminates the axis of South Thayer Street, thereby constituting a new icon on the Michigan skyline.

The project is being designed in association with EYP/Einhorn Yaffee Prescott.

(Rendering by Michael McCann)

The Richard T. Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, broke ground today for its new home, the 210,000-square-foot Farmer Hall. The red-brick building is inspired by the traditional Georgian vocabulary of the Miami University campus. The building is designed to take advantage of its park-like setting, with its bulk broken into multiple masses forming three sides of a quadrangle, which is sited around a stand of large trees, including a 200-year-old sweet gum. A hierarchy of entrances punctuates the facades facing the quad, including the entrance to the auditorium, which is designed to have prominence in the complex and visibility from Uptown Oxford's High Street. A grand colonnaded porch signals the main entrance and leads to the double-height commons, with ancillary study and dining spaces, at the heart of the complex. The commons stands at a major crossroads of the building's interior circulation, as does the top-lit atrium, which opens to all floors of the building and includes a grand staircase connecting the ground floor and the lower level, which are the two main classroom levels. Instructional spaces - cluster classrooms, breakout rooms, a trading room - reflect the school's pedagogical style, which emphasizes small group work, seminar instruction, and experiential learning; work spaces, meeting rooms, lounges, and a café encourage collegial interaction.

Richard and Joyce Farmer and the Farmer Family Foundation provided the leadership gift of $25 million for the new building. Construction of the project is under way. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2008. Moody▪Nolan of Columbus, Ohio, is architect-of-record.

(Rendering by Michael McCann)

Today the new home for the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Joan and Sanford Weill Hall, was dedicated on the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus. The new building provides classrooms, offices, and social spaces, all under one roof in support of the collegial interaction that is essential for success in education and in public service. The building's site at the corner of South State Street and Hill Street makes it the first University of Michigan academic building encountered on the approach to the campus from the south.

The building is a welcoming landmark that, turning a friendly face to the town of Ann Arbor, greets the visitor in the spirit of the Michigan campus. The architectural character that distinguishes the University of Michigan from its peers is the work of Emil Lorch, Albert Kahn, and Pond & Pond, architects who created buildings unlike those at any other campus: the Michigan Union, the League, Hill Auditorium, Rackham, and the Hatcher Graduate Library. Weill Hall carries forward this inventive legacy with variegated decorative red brickwork highlighted by bright stone, its stacked and nested massing, and its proud tower.

The five floors of Weill Hall are organized to encourage the Ford School's collegial culture. The change in grade across the site allowed us to create what are effectively two ground floors along the path of travel through the building, with a lower gateway entrance at the base of the south tower, and with a more intimate entry one level above on a courtyard facing the campus to the north. A generously proportioned, naturally lit stair provides the building with a dramatic vertical spine connecting all levels. In our experience, no single architectural element does more to foster collegial interaction than such a stair. The two ground floors house the facilities that will generate the highest traffic: auditoriums and classrooms on the lower, at the south entry; and student services on the courtyard level at the north entry. The library, faculty offices, and seminar rooms fill the quieter upper floors. Throughout, alcoves of various shapes and sizes at every intersection of the corridors, together with the stair, provide the informal meeting spaces that are crucial to the interaction of faculty and students.

We are grateful for the enthusiastic collaboration of the faculty, staff, and students of the Ford School; for the leadership of the dean, Rebecca Blank; for the professional guidance of the University Architect's office; for the support of the Board of Regents; and for the generosity of the many donors, especially Joan and Sanford Weill.

The building was designed in association with Albert Kahn Associates.

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