- Robert A.M. Stern is the legendary NYC architect behind 220 Central Park South, where hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin shattered the US real-estate record with his $238 million penthouse purchase in early 2019.
- In a January interview with Business Insider, Stern revealed that he never uses a computer.
- In design, drawing by hand has clear advantages, he says.
- "When you draw, first of all it's a physical act," he said. "You are connecting your hand to your eye and, one hopes, to your brain. In the computer, you're always trapped by some program that has been developed by some software engineer."
- Stern even reads printed-out copies of his emails and hand-writes his responses, which his assistant then transcribes.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
One look at Robert A.M. Stern's portfolio of work explains how he's gained a reputation as one of New York City's most legendary architects.
He's designed some of the most prestigious buildings in Manhattan, including Fifteen Central Park West, which has been called "the world's most powerful address," home to Wall Street CEOs and celebrities. Stern is behind 520 Park Avenue, where the duplex penthouse sold for $70 million to Frank Fertitta, who used to own the UFC. He's also designed buildings and private residences in Philadelphia, Chicago, France, and Singapore. He was the dean of the Yale School of Architecture for 18 years.
And at 80 years old, he's still the head of the Robert A.M. Stern Architects, or RAMSA, an award-winning firm of 265 architects and interior designers.
Perhaps Stern's most high-profile accomplishment is 220 Central Park South. The new luxury tower on Manhattan's Billionaires' Row is home to some of the city's priciest real estate. In early 2019, 220 Central Park South made headlines when billionaire hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin spent $238 million on a penthouse in the building.
The purchase is the most expensive residential sale in US history.
Other wealthy buyers in the building include singer Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler; Arel Capital founding partner Richard Leibovitch; and Brazilian construction billionaire Renata de Camargo Nascimento.
For all his success, Stern goes about his day without a tool that modern professionals lean on nearly universally: a computer.
His assistant prints out his emails for him to read, Stern told Business Insider in a January interview.
"If I have to answer one, I handwrite it out and my assistant types it up and shows it to me because I hate to send them out with typos," Stern said. "Most emails are filled with typos because people don't take the trouble to reread. I'm not that kind of person. So I get it printed out, I might edit it, so forth."
It's not just emails that Stern refuses to read digitally.
"I read at lunch: journals, contemporary journals and all the blogs that have to do with the real estate world and the architecture world that we get," Stern said. "They're all printed out. And we distribute them to people in the office. People are inundated by email and they don't look at their email."
All of his employees at the firm use a computer, Stern says, but "I try to get people who are designers in the office to actually use the computer as little as possible, to draw."
For Stern, a clear advantage in hand-drawing versus designing on a computer
New employees who come to work at Stern's firm from high-profile architecture schools often weren't taught to emphasize drawing, Stern told Business Insider.
As the dean of Yale's architecture school from 1998 to 2016, Stern stressed the importance of hand drawing in design. The advantages, he says, are clear.
"When you draw, first of all it's a physical act," Stern said. "It's very boring to draw a grid endlessly. So you want to draw curving shapes of moldings or whatever. You are connecting your hand to your eye and, one hopes, to your brain. In the computer, you're always trapped by some program that has been developed by some software engineer. We do have people in the office who can use the computer brilliantly, even to draw classical architecture, but hand drawings are better."
Using a computer does have certain advantages, Stern admits. He added that his firm sometimes uses virtual reality to analyze projects they're working on.
"It's exciting, and you do see things that you can't see in drawings, even computer drawings," he said. "But the sketch, the hand drawing, and handmade model are the heart of our work."
Stern pointed to traditional classical sculptors, who would make models in clay and then turn them into stone or bronze or other materials.
"Michelangelo didn't work on a computer," he said. "Seemed to get the job done."
Read the full interview with Stern on BI Prime.
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