Architect 2016-01

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The title wall of the exhibition
Cornell Performing Arts Center by 1984 grad Marion Weiss
Inflatable foam house built on the Yale golf course in 1968
it that the restoration was shotgunned to completion
between 2007 and 2008 so that no YSA student missed
the chance to study in it. Stern’s open-mindedness has
become integral to Yale’s academic culture, evident in
the visiting professors (Peter Eisenman, FAIA, Frank
Gehry, FAIA, and Zaha Hadid, HON. FAIA, to name but a
few) that he has helped hire.
So much, in fact, has Stern become identified with
Yale that it’s almost difficult to imagine one without
the other. Certainly Stern hasn’t exactly been eager
to compose the coda to his Yale years: When it came
time to compose the section of the exhibition dealing
with his tenure, “I told Jimmy to write it,” says Stern;
his co-curator declined, and Stern managed to strike a
suitably objective-yet-positive note.
A detail from the Rappel à l’ordre installation (1984–1992)
Indeed, a couple weeks after the show’s opening,
the architects Elia Zenghelis and Marion Weiss, FAIA,
and the historians Kenneth Frampton, ASSOC. AIA,
and Anthony Vidler, were in Rudolph Hall’s grand
sunken conference room taking a break from an
end-of-semester crit. When Stern appeared at the top
of the stairs, everyone cast their eyes upward, as the
dean greeted the audience from his banistered perch
with a mock-pontifical air. He lingered there, plainly
reluctant to leave.
“Some Breathing Room”
Stern and Yale won’t be separated for long. As per
university policy, the outgoing dean will take a semester
off to give his successor “some breathing room,” as he
clockwise from top left: richard house; courtesy yale school of architecture;
courtesy yale university library manuscripts and archives; richard house