Transcript

#91 World Famous Architect Robert A.M. Stern: What Makes His Buildings Special?

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· 30 min · 4,416 words · 27 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "#91 World Famous Architect Robert A.M. Stern: What Makes His Buildings Special?", an episode of 3 Takeaways published July 31, 2024 (30 min, about 4,416 words). It mentions 6 people, works and ideas, including Robert A.M. Stern, Second Glance Architecture, Lynn Tomman, Yale School of Architecture, Walt Disney Company.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Lynn Tomman, Walt Disney Company, Yale School of Architecture
  2. – 10:00: East New York, Brooklyn
  3. – 20:00: Second Glance Architecture
  4. – 25:00: Second Glance Architecture

Notable quotes from "#91 World Famous Architect Robert A.M. Stern: What Makes His Buildings Special?"

  • Careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be…
    about Lynn Tomman · at
  • Neighborhoods in China he leads Robert amster Architects known as ramza and is a former dean of the Yale School of Architecture Bob it's really nice to see you it's been a long…
    about Yale School of Architecture · at
  • The cameras of the world would be watching Time Square for the Millennium key to that was of course the Walt Disney company's decision to come to 42nd Street and renovate the…
    about Walt Disney Company · at
  • Buildings and in one case we have done an affordable truly affordable building out in East New York Brooklyn but I'd like to do much more involved with that it's tough to meet…
    about East New York, Brooklyn · at
  • You think about foreground and background buildings and what you call Second Glance architecture well the issue of foreground and background buildings is very important for architecture especially Urban architecture modernist architecture.
    about Second Glance Architecture · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

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Full transcript with timestamps

welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with with architect Robert am Stern who's known as one of the most influential architects of our time he's famous for his designs which have changed architecture and skylines from New York to China I'm excited to find out how he sees architecture and design and what makes his building so special that they regularly set records for the highest price per square foot even when they're not in the best neighborhoods Bob designs buildings in a wide range of

architectural Styles and has designed all types of buildings including private houses tall apartment buildings office Towers libraries universities performing art centers and even entire mixed use neighborhoods in China he leads Robert amster Architects known as ramza and is a former dean of the Yale School of Architecture Bob it's really nice to see you it's been a long time welcome and thanks so much for our conversation today nice to be back with you again Lynn it is a pleasure Bob let's start with a revitalization of 42 Street in Manhattan you did this early in your career the street was Infamous with its boarded up buildings derc theaters and pornographic movie houses the city of New York hired you to fix it how did you transform it actually the state of New York was really our client not the city but the city was very important to the process 42nd Street had gone to such a deric condition that it was a place that

notably German tourists would come to see the degradation of the American city as was represented by 42nd Street what I did working with my partner Paul whan and with Rebecca Robertson who was the representative of the state we determined that a 402 Stree should be a mixed use place that I combined The Honky Tonk aspects of Midtown Entertainment District with hotels and restaurants and we did a 15-year interim plan but our plan was accelerated by the realization that we were coming up upon the Millennium and corporations were suddenly wanting to be near Time Square or on Time Square because they realize the cameras of the world would be watching Time Square for the Millennium key to that was of course the Walt Disney company's decision to come to 42nd Street and renovate the New Amsterdam theater which is one of the most glorious theaters in the world certainly one of the few AR newvo style

theaters in the world and that's how it happened I could go on and on we studied with our Consultants how can we bring the vitality back in a natural way well we measured the level of light that had been at 42nd street and its more glorious days we looked at how storekeepers put their signs on the windows and so forth and we underl typical renewal projects where everything is toilet trained to be very discreet lettering dim lights and so forth we went the opposite route we said this is how bright it is now now this is the minimum brightness it can be you can do anything you want Above This brightness or the signs can be as big as you want from here on out and the other thing is we forbid big box stores and I think that was the first time that a systematic effort was made to not renew an area of the city with the easy crutch of the big box drugstores or whatever and we fought some bitter battles to win

that day and we had wonderful they had the greatest concentration of theaters in the world literally on 42nd Street and they were all derelict and used for pornography films and so forth and we studied them and restored them and suddenly when Disney came everybody else wanted to be there Simple Story took 10 years but it was a simple story not so simple you did something that was absolutely brilliant when you talk about the lighting and the signage what you actually allowed was enormous neon signs which transformed the look of 42nd street and made it so attractive for all the theaters we encouraged it actually not only allowed it we encouraged that kind of Vitality and we had a concept working with the Tor Colman was the late Tor Colman was part of our team called unplaned the trouble with many urban renewal areas is they're planned to death and we said no no free enterprise just make it

bright make it exciting and appeal to as many people as possible from women in mink coats and Men In Black Tie to kids in sneakers and jeans coming for a hamburger and maybe just a stroll just to experience the place and it worked continues to work it does it's really it works both for New Yorkers and for tourists exactly I would say it's one of my most successful projects one of my most satisfying moments as an architect what are others well I love what we've been able to achieve I my clients and my partners in Reviving The idea of the New York City skyscraping apartment house whether it's 15 Central Park West or 220 Central Park south or others downtown 30 Park Place and by looking at the great skyscrapers of the 1920s and early 30s before the depression my love affair with them has been continuous since my high school days I would say looking at how they were put together how they Rose to

wonderful crowns at the top whether it's the chrysal building of the Empire State or number one wall or whatever thought we could bring them back and we studied with the zondor brothers in particular as our clients at that moment we studied buildings All Around Town how they contributed to the skyline how they met the ground and the other thing I realized from my studies of New York history was that the great apartment houses many of them of the late 19th century like the Dakota which is world famous I think or others on Fifth Avenue in particular had restaurants in them had guest Apartments all kinds of shared amenities so they were in a way like clubs as well as just apartments and we revived that idea in 15 and 220 and 520 Park Avenue and on and on so that it's not just how these buildings look but how they function and so people are buying Apartments not just to put their heads down on a pillow but to private dining

and all kinds of things swimming pools places to show films places for their grandchildren or children as it were to socialize after school and whatever so these are really contributing to a rich lifestyle I would love to be able to adapt that concept to more affordable buildings and in one case we have done an affordable truly affordable building out in East New York Brooklyn but I'd like to do much more involved with that it's tough to meet those budgets and whether you're building 15 Central Park West or someplace in the wilds and Brooklyn it still costs money to build those buildings both so we have to work on that but anyhow I'm very proud of Reviving that and and then taking these ideas particularly to Mainland China where the Chinese have been building rigid idealized buildings but with no social programming very poor sense of landscaping and with projects that we've started there again

you always find some developer or some government agency who takes a risk in your ideas and everybody should we started to look and see that an apartment house could be something more than just a warehouse for people your buildings have repeatedly set records for the highest price per square foot is that what makes your building so special no I like to think it's the architecture and the social mix that are included in the residential buildings that leads to these incredible prices after all our buildings are in mostly in very good areas quite a few facing views of Central Park a couple of others on the Upper East Side where they take advantage of the lowrise historic district and so on but it's the buildings of what they bring to table what we are able with our clients to bring to the table that makes them very attractive and then of course people like the way they look they don't want

to live in buildings many people not all that look like Office Buildings right now we're in a period nobody wants to be in an office building at all it would appear but they're very happy to live in a romantic if you will New York apartment house I was in your new building that you mentioned at 220 Central Park South it was beautiful can you tell us about the elements of design of that building ones that someone like me who's not an architect might sense but not be able to actually articulate things that you might like FR it's two buildings in reality one a lower building that fits into the street wall as it were of Central Park South and contains a very elegant pedestrian entrance and then the tower which Rises behind a courtyard back toward 58th Street and has a motor Court entrance and the wonderful traditional materials Stone the Limestone and sometimes brick and also that allows us to have details

window surrounds ornamental details one of the problems with contemporary modernist architecture is the death or the absence of ornament I think ornament is the race note of architecture and we've reintroduced it into our buildings and I think that enriches the buildings and most people observe it and we lavish the ornament maybe more intensely at the ground level and also incredibly elaborate carefully considered Skyline features where there are penthouses now real estate advertisers say oh there are pen houses in their buildings but in fact they're just more apartments up at the top our pen houses are like the penthouses of the Romantic Period of the 1920s and early 30s you look at them once before I like to climb as an architect on the shoulders of the predecessors I admire when asked what do you look at when you design a building I don't look at the magazines of today I look at the magazines of 50 years ago

man of the buildings from 50 75 really years ago in my view you go backwards to go forward can you talk about how you think about the past and incorporate the past I always try to fit the building into the setting so wherever we are building we look around I often wonder when I see buildings by some of my contemporaries if the Architects designing those buildings ever went to the site ever saw what was built before them or maybe they did and said we're not going to do that I always go there and say well maybe we will do that why not to always be Breaking Traditions is a teenage childish temper tantrum in a way to constantly break with the past I think it's harder and more rewarding and the public is often more appreciative to adhere to the past and extend it it's nicer that I can talk to you in a shared language which we're talking now you've said you situate your buildings in the future can you

elaborate whenever you're an architect you're always working with the present and the future people are always saying well Mr Stern how will will this endure not only artistically but functionally but the reality is the functions change and evolve right now we're in a period of dramatic functional upheaval people are not wanting to go back to their offices in the same way they did before the mayor of New York says people should get out of their pajamas get on a Subway and get to the office I don't know how effective he's going to be with that but in any case the buildings ought to be beautiful so they can be repurposed to something else but so that they can be part of a longer trajectory I want my buildings to be measured not just on the last five minutes of architecture but the long trajectory of architectural history and I want them to be able to be converted the great Office Buildings for

example the towers from the T 20s of the last century are now being repurposed as apartment houses and lost and that's great I don't know what kind of repurposing the glass boxes are going to have where you can barely open a window and the distance between the window and the elevator core is so great that you have to dial up a weatherman to know what what's going on outside your window so I'm very interested in the continuity of architectural form I'm not a disruptor many of my colleagues in the profession want to disrupt I don't want to disrupt I want to connect remember that phrase of Ian forer the novel is only connect only connect so that your buildings are never dated into one particular style or time period right a building is not a fashion item you can have a dress or street wear or whatever and it looks really hip today a year from now my God you want to throw it away or give it away or whatever but

then of course you put it in your closet and maybe 20 years from now it'll be looking sort of interesting but buildings can't be put in the closet for 20 years so I'm more interested in the continuity when you're designing a building how do you start to think about it well the site of course the budget I would be a liar if not say that I have some idea of the budget or some of my clients say I have no idea of budget but that's not true I like to push the envelope when I can and of course the the sighting the cultural context what's appropriate the building we would design for UVA we are designing and have designed the University of Virginia totally different from what I've done done at Yale and other places site is very important context is very important and clients are very important Believe It or Not clients have ideas and when I went to architect school we were basically taught that clients always had

bad ideas and especially developer clients actually we've never even told about developers in architecture schools so when I became the dean at Yale with the help of Ed bass we were able to establish a visiting endowed professorship to bring developers to work side by side with top level design teachers in the studio with young students and so they begin to realize that there is more than one point of view that influences a particular project that's what it should be about I think your work at the Kennedy School to me is extraordinary you took three buildings nice buildings at least from my perspective not particularly noticeable buildings but you did a couple of things with them which were extraordinary first you connected them with sort of glass walkways between the building so you kept the connection between the campus and Harvard Square open open walkways below and then I'd never really noticed that the space

between these buildings was uneven but you added a fourth building and you leveled out the space between the building so it became a lovely Plaza connecting all the buildings it was extraordinary it transformed the school thank you for saying that um working with Michael Van valkenberg the landscape architect who we work with often we had the idea of raising that Plaza up creating a plaza it had been the service entrance it still is underneath there the loading dock and some other rather utilitarian places they were inadequate in my mind they didn't so we connected them and with the new addition maybe gave them a focus which they lacked before how do you think about foreground and background buildings and what you call Second Glance architecture well the issue of foreground and background buildings is very important for architecture especially Urban architecture modernist architecture which flourished in the 20th century

tended to regard the oneoff Standalone iconic building and the word iconic became a kind of buzzword as the be all and end all whether it was the museum and Bill ba by Frank Gary or the collection of buildings that comprise Hudson yards or whatever I think that we lost in the 20th century the incapacity to make background buildings buildings that Define streets and plazas that go one next to the other to the next to the other in agreeable ways the postmodernist Devolution as it's been called of the 1970s and 80s which had its greatest moment in the first architecture Bali in Venice in 1980 was all about making a street that was an amazing thing Paulo Pugi the Roman architect put together this idea of a street we asked 20 Architects to design facades for buildings for those streets as though they were tow houses so you have a wonderful variety but you have the orchestration of the public realm if

you go to Venice and you go to San Marco and it's one of the great public squares in the world you stand there and you look around no two buildings to speak of is alike but they all work together because they share of vocabulary that is to say the scale of Base Capital pediment what have you they share a reverence for and the use of decoration to enrich the facades and to break down the scale of the facades to human proportions and so on so but we lost that in the modernist period where we have all these object buildings what I've tried to do in my work is to make buildings that fit in I mean I like people to say oh that's a nice building who designed it and someone says as you said before as Bob Stern and they say oh yeah that figures but I'm not interested in making a monument to myself I'm interested in the public Realm of the street and maybe the institutional identity of my client in the sense that

if the building is a library on a campus or even on a public Street our Museum in Philadelphia for the American Revolution is in a way an object building and a street defining building at once and it uses the language of the late 18th century early 19th century Philadelphia Georgian represented by Independence Hall and other buildings carer Hall but it makes its own statement so you can have a statement you can have an identity but still be part of a larger group each of us as people is in a way that way we all want think we are special and we all are special but we're not trying to look completely different from everybody else unless you're a teenager there is a teenage problem in architecture and then there was a problem in art and painting and sculpture where painters it was considered the Durer to paint things not what the painter saw but how he expressed his inner turmoil my view that's what Jackson

poock has contributed to the ongoing story of history of art I'm interested in poock turmoil for about 10 minutes but I'm much more interested in the stories that a great artists have told from time in Memorial see what they saw in the landscape how they interpreted heroic stories from the Bible or from political history and so forth much more than the inner struggle of Jackson poock to come to terms with a 10 by 12 piece of canvas Bob what do you call Second Glance architecture Second Glance is an architecture that doesn't scream at you when you see it but it catches your eye in a nice way and you turn around you look back at it again say yeah I get what he was doing or she was doing the architect and I see how these the proportions of these Windows connect to the ones next door the molding might maybe picks up on a line in the building next door and so forth It's the connections as I said before I'm sort of

beating the connectivity horse maybe to its death but that's second glass architecture we have a lot of crappy if I may use that word in this interview buildings by not very good architects who want to make things that scream at you and so you look at them first oh my God standing on their legs of a new building by a very good architect but I'm surprised for JP Morgan on Park Avenue my God that's not Second Glance architecture to me that's going to be a screamer on Park Avenue and be the final death of that once Noble and coherent Boulevard I don't know if you've seen what it's going to look like but it's coming out of the ground right now and take a look for yourself I'm disappointed in it I will do that how has technology changed what's possible in architecture a lot technology has made all kinds of things possible one argument in the 20th century was that you didn't have to construct

architecture you more or less assembled architecture like a car on an assembly line in Detroit or wherever but I think technology has liberated us from that self-imposed constraint of the modernist to realize that you can make things that have a traditional character with technology many of our buildings are stone or preast concrete and they are designed with respect to traditional tropes of form moldings and so forth that give them a certain historical Authority but they're made by machines and they're assembled by machines I'm not against machines I don't go out and get in my horer buggy to get around town I have a car I even have a driver's license but a building can use those techniques but it shouldn't necessarily have to be prisoner of those techniques and for a long time Architects were self- imprisoned in prefabricated technology techniques but before I get to the very last question on the three takeaways is

there anything else you'd like to mention what should I have asked you that I did not oh my God I don't know I like to be interviewed and I usually give you longer answers than the interviewer ever expects or perhaps even wants but far away at questions but your part of the job is to ask the questions I'll do my best to answer them okay then last question what are the three key takeaways that you would like to leave the audience with today one answer to question is said architecture is this a successful and appropriate expression of place where it is is what makes the building important not the abstract whim of the designer the discovery he made or she made carving a grapefruit at breakfast as the Aeros sarin did come up with the Dome structure for the kresy auditorium at MIT that way but no the discovery of what is appropriate at that place so that's one takeaway Innovation is important but Innovation

is not the be all and end all to be the first person to do something may not be the most important but also in architecture in art in general one Innovation Innovation turns out not to be as Innovative as the innovator thinks which art historians are constantly pointing out where things come from art begets art art is not science maybe in science you can innovate although I've read just enough of what scientists have written to learn that they also climb on the shoulders of what went before you don't have an aha moment at your desk or lab table the way romantic comic books would have you think so that's the second one and the third thing is you're asking me all these questions as an individual architect but I am the head of an office ever since I've opened my practice I've had other people working with me I try to be Associated by people with people as architects in my office who are not only as talented as I am if

you will grant me some talent but more talented why hire somebody who's not as talented as you are or as smart as I am I am pretty smart but I'd like to be around smarter people collaboration is incredibly important in the discipline of architecture and not only uh The Architects collaborating and the engineers and so forth but the collaboration of clients government officials and so forth It's a complicated it's a symphony making a building is a symphony I'm the conductor I'll take that rap I am the conductor but doesn't mean I can play all the instruments at once or any of them at all for that matter architecture isy bu that is wonderful and your buildings are extraordinary thank you so much and thank you for our conversation today it's just been terrific thank you and pleasure to be with you on this interview if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure

to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaway.com or follow us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook note that three takeaway.com is with the number three three is not spelled out see you soon at three takeaways decom

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "#91 World Famous Architect Robert A.M. Stern: What Makes His Buildings Special?"?

In order: 0:00 Lynn Tomman, Walt Disney Company, Yale School of Architecture; 5:00 East New York, Brooklyn; 15:00 Second Glance Architecture; 20:00 Second Glance Architecture.

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Robert A.M. Stern, Second Glance Architecture, Lynn Tomman, Yale School of Architecture, Walt Disney Company, East New York, Brooklyn. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#91 World Famous Architect Robert A.M. Stern: What Makes His Buildings Special?"?

The episode runs 30 min; the transcript is about 4,416 words in 27 timestamped sections.

More from 3 Takeaways

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 7, 2026.