Summary: The National Building Museum announced in July that architect, author, and educator Robert A.M. Stern, FAIA, will receive the tenth Vincent J. Scully Prize, established in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. The award will be presented to Stern at the museum on November 12. Stern was named Scully Prize laureate "for his years of teaching at Columbia and Yale Universities, his leadership as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and his seminal publications reflecting on the history of architecture in New York. As an educator and author, he helped create the revival of the Shingle Style and successfully promoted traditional town planning," according to the Vincent Scully Prize Jury Chair David Schwarz, FAIA.

Architect, teacher, scholar
Founder and senior partner of the 250-person Robert A.M. Stern Architects, Stern led the design team for two important and influential planning projects: the new town of Celebration, Fla., and the revitalization of the theater block of New York's 42nd Street, which won a 1999 AIA Honor Award. The firm’s recent projects include the Comcast Center, a 57-story office building in Center City Philadelphia, and Fifteen Central Park West, a residential building in New York City. Stern’s current commissions include the Museum for African Art in New York; the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge, Pa.; and the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas.

Stern also serves as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, a position he has held since 1998. Prior to that, he was professor of architecture and director of the historic preservation program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where he also served as the first director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture from 1984 to 1988.

Stern, who has lectured extensively on both historical and contemporary topics in architecture, is co-author of an acclaimed five-volume series documenting the development of New York City's architecture and urbanism from the Civil War to the millennium. More than a dozen books about his work have been published. In 1986, he hosted "Pride of Place: Building the American Dream," an eight-part, eight-hour documentary television series.

Among his numerous accolades, Stern has received the AIA New York Chapter's Medal of Honor in 1984 and the Chapter's President's Award in 2001. He received the Athena Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Board of Directors' Honor from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America in 2007.

Stern has served as a member of the National Building Museum's Board of trustees since 1999.

In distinguished company
The Scully Prize was instituted in honor of Vincent J. Scully, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of the history of art at Yale University and a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Miami. It now carries an award of $45,000.

The nine past recipients of the Scully Prize are:

• Vincent J. Scully
• Jane Jacobs
• Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
• Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
• His Highness The Aga Khan
• His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales
• Phyllis Lambert
• Witold Rybczynski
• Richard Moe.