11/27/2025
It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of our founding partner, Robert A.M. Stern, at the age of 86.
Bob Stern’s impact as an architect, educator, and historian spanned seven decades of influence and accomplishment. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Bob shaped the built environment, contributed to the education of multiple generations of architects, and raised public awareness of the importance of preservation and the role design plays in communities and in our society at large.
Bob was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2017 received the Topaz Medallion for outstanding service to architectural education. He was the 2011 Driehaus Prize Laureate and a recipient of the Congress for the New Urbanism’s Athena Award and the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize. The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art recognized him with the Board of Directors Honor as well as Arthur Ross Awards for Architecture and Education.
Much will be written about Bob’s legacy, impact, and design philosophy, but perhaps the most fitting summation was penned by the man himself in the closing of his memoir Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture;
“In my belief that architecture is a never-ending obsession, I regret that the buildings could not have been a little better, that the books could not have been a little clearer. But I pride myself in sticking to principles—I have no regrets over staying true to my conviction that architecture cannot flourish so long as architects believe they stand before a tabula rasa, so long as they believe that architecture is just the product of an individual program, individual talent, and individual personality. It is much more—architecture is part of a continuum. […] The dialogue between old and new, between what was and what is and what will be, is the conversation across time that I have continuously sought to advance. Continually mindful of Jay Gatsby’s quest, ‘we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’”
At RAMSA, we grieve the loss of our founder, mentor, and friend, and remain committed to carrying forth his ideals.
Robert A.M. Stern (1939-2025): https://www.ramsa.com/RAMS
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