The Historic Preservation and Community Planning Program in the College of Charleston School of the Arts will present the Albert Simons Medal of Excellence to Robert A.M. Stern for outstanding work in design, historic preservation, and education.
A conversation with Stern about his career and experiences will take place on Tues., April 5, 2016, at 6:00 p.m., at the Recital Hall in the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 Saint Philip St. Admission is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
Robert A.M. Stern is a practicing architect, teacher, and writer. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and received the AIA New York Chapter’s Medal of Honor in 1984 and the Chapter’s President’s Award in 2001. Stern is the 2011 Driehaus Prize laureate and in 2008 received the tenth Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum. In 2007, he received both the Athena Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Board of Directors’ Honor from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America. As founder and Senior Partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, he personally directs the design of each of the firm’s projects.
Stern is the J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture and Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. He was previously Professor of Architecture and Director of the Historic Preservation Program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He served from 1984 to 1988 as the first director of Columbia’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Stern has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on both historical and contemporary topics in architecture. He is the author of several books, and nineteen books on his work have been published.
Stern’s work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and universities and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Centre Pompidou, the Denver Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1976, 1980, and 1996, he was among the architects selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, and he served as Chair of the International Jury in 2012. In 1986 Stern hosted “Pride of Place: Building the American Dream,” an eight-part, eight-hour documentary television series aired on the Public Broadcasting System. He served on the Board of Directors of The Walt Disney Company from 1992 to 2003.
Stern is a graduate of Columbia University (B.A., 1960) and Yale University (M. Architecture, 1965). Learn more about Stern and his firm at ramsa.com.
The Albert Simons Medal of Excellence was established in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the College’s School of the Arts. Albert Simons pioneered the teaching of art at the College in 1924, with a longstanding course in art history. Years later, a general department of fine arts was established and grew to become the School of the Arts, which is on the cusp of its twenty-fifth anniversary and currently offers studies in seven major areas. The Simons Medal honors individuals who have excelled in one or more of the areas in which Simons excelled, including civic design, architectural design, historic preservation and urban planning. Prior Simons Medal recipients include His Royal Highness Prince Charles – The Prince of Wales, Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Richard Hampton Jenrette, Thomas Gordon Smith, John D. Milner, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater–Zyberk, and Allan Greenberg. Learn more at albertsimonsmedal.com.