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.

In 1969, Bob established the firm known today as RAMSA, infusing his values into its DNA: discerning thought and a high standard of excellence; a responsibility to the communities in which we build; the blending of past, present, and future through design; and a culture that challenges each individual to bring their best each day.

Through the years, Bob’s role in the firm naturally evolved with the addition of new practices, partners, and studios. Even as he stepped back from daily involvement in the firm’s projects, Bob remained delighted to see regular updates on the work being produced by the 250+ designers who carry forth his name and legacy.

In Dhiru Thadani’s book Visions of Seaside (Page 75) is an essay by Stern titled, In Praise of Invented Towns where he writes, “What makes Seaside so compelling? On the one hand, it is a resort -- a good time place, a wonderful beachfront site, where one can escape from all the stresses, rigors, and obsessions of big-city life. On the other hand, it is a town, as urban as any. Perhaps what strikes me most about Seaside is how these two aspects are related: a “resort town” replace with the rich measure of contradiction the phrase implies. Resorts are places of escape, yet they are often idealized versions of what we left behind at home, or what we would like to have at home but don’t. So we have city life and its seeming opposite, escape into nature, in one place.” He goes on to say, “For architects and their clients, resorts are design laboratories where new ideas can be tried without the fear of everyday life. At Seaside the laboratory experiment can be judged a great success. In this town, a cure for many but not all of the diseases of modern urbanism has been identified. This cure, developed by Robert Davis and planned by Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Léon Krier, is not only a resounding success, it also opens fertile fields for further experimentation.”

The impact made by Robert A.M. Stern will be felt for many generations of architects and town planners. We grieve the loss of another brilliant life that taught us so much and we honor his legacy.