City Living: Apartment Houses by Robert A.M. Stern Architects

Today we build all over the world. We bring what we know, and we learn from our clients and our travels. And the fundamental reason that we succeed is that we are committed to architecture as portraits of places.
—Robert A.M. Stern

In City Living, Paul L. Whalen, Daniel Lobitz, and Michael D. Jones, partners at Robert A.M. Stern Architects, present sixteen completed apartment complexes and a portfolio of sixteen further projects in progress in New York and major cities across the United States and in Europe, Asia, and South America.

Over the past fifteen years, the high-rise residential apartment house has emerged as the focus of contemporary architectural practice, challenging the commercial office building for pride of place on city skylines around the world. Drawing on the rich heritage of apartment house design in New York City from the 1920s and 1930s, the RAMSA partners bring a unique perspective to this building type, creating strong forms with visually intriguing facades that meet the ground and touch the sky with elegance and dignity. These designs extend the classical tradition while inflecting toward the simplicity and abstraction of modernism.

Essential to the planning process is the integration of buildings into the cityscape and the urban neighborhood setting. The base of the apartment houses is articulated to reflect the scale of the surrounding buildings, and a portion of the site can be reserved for townhouses that create a transition between old and new.