12/01/2025
Today I learned that Architect Robert A. M. Stern has passed.
I first knew him as a critic at Columbia—brilliant, exacting, unapologetically committed to his own architectural language. He had a formidable presence in the room. His critiques were sharp, his point of view unmistakable, and his confidence in his own brand absolute. As students, we felt that gravity.
Years later—about a decade after graduating—I happened to be on a business trip in Tokyo, working for a large corporation, staying at a hotel with one of those sprawling breakfast buffets. By pure chance, I ran into Stern there.
And in that moment, far from New York, far from studios and reviews and reputations, we met simply as equals—two architects in neutral territory, without titles, without hierarchy. Not “the famous architect,” not “the critic,” not “the brand,” just two people sharing a brief human moment.
That encounter has stayed with me all these years. Not because of status or legacy, but because it quietly reset the meaning of those early power dynamics. It reminded me that beneath the architecture of reputation, beneath decades of carefully built identity, there is something simpler and more durable: shared humanity.
Today, I honor him for the immense imprint he left on architecture and education—but also for that unexpected reminder, halfway around the world, that in the end we meet each other as humans first.
