Learn how architect and author Robert A. M. Stern bridges the gap between traditionalist and modernist architecture.

Architect Robert A.M. Stern heads a successful New York architectural firm with worldwide commissions. He is also the dean of architecture at Yale and a prolific author whose tomes are measured pounds, not pages. In 2011, Stern received the Richard H. Driehaus Prize, an international award honoring architects who create classical and traditional work. But Stern’s reputation as a classically grounded traditionalist is not the whole story. His firm has built distinctive modernist structures. At Yale, his teaching staff includes hard-core modernists, many of whom Stern calls close personal friends. This program explores how Stern bridges the divide in modern architecture — between the modernists and the traditionalists — and puts Stern’s work in the context of a larger debate among architects who reject the past, those who embrace it and those who pick and choose as the context requires.