Tuesday, December 30, 2025 – Three architects who left permanent marks on NYC buildings
THREE FAMED
ARCHITECTS WE LOST IN 2025:
ROBERT A.M. STERN
FRANK GEHRY
RAFAEL VINOLY
6SQFT
TUESDAY, DEC. 30, 2025
ISSUE #1600
Famed architect Robert A.M. Stern dies at 86
(L) Credit: RAMSA; (R) 15 Central Park West. Image via WikiCommons
Acclaimed architect Robert A.M. Stern, who over his career built one of the world’s most influential architecture firms and left an enduring mark on the New York City skyline, died last Thursday at the age of 86. The Brooklyn-born architect founded Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) in 1969 and went on to build a portfolio that ranged from luxury residential buildings like 15 Central Park West to major institutional projects such as the expansion of the New York Historical. Stern served as dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1998 to 2016. His son Nicholas told the New York Times that the cause of death was a brief pulmonary illness.
15 Central Park West. Image via WikiCommons
“Bob’s impact reverberates not just through RAMSA, but across the entire field of architecture,” Daniel Lobitz, partner and management committee chair at RAMSA, said. “His legacy will live on through the books he wrote, the students he mentored, and the people who inhabit his remarkable buildings.”
He added: “His vision, passion, and notoriously sharp wit became the foundation for a career that will not soon be forgotten, and a firm that is honored to continue the work he began.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1939, Stern began his architectural studies at Yale, graduating in 1965. He spent the next two years working in the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor John Lindsay, and in 1969, he founded Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA). Around the same time, he also began teaching at Columbia University, according to Architectural Digest.
In 1984, Stern was appointed the first director of Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. He later became director of the M.Arch. Advanced Studio in 1990 and, a year after that, director of the university’s Historic Preservation Program.
From 1998 to 2016, Stern served as dean of the Yale School of Architecture, where he shaped and mentored generations of emerging architects. He also maintained a lifelong fascination with NYC’s architecture and urbanism, authoring numerous books between 1983 and 2025: “New York 1880;” “New York 1900;” “New York 1930;” “New York 1960;” “New York 2000;” and the most recent “New York 2020,” according to RAMSA.
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Visionary architect Frank Gehry dies at 96
(L) Frank Gehry, image via WikiCommons; (R) 8 Spruce Street, Image via WikiCommons
Frank Gehry, the visionary architect whose sculptural, undulating designs created some of the world’s most striking buildings, died last Friday at the age of 96. While maybe best remembered for his crowning achievement, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, Gehry also left a lasting mark on New York City, designing the eye-catching 8 Spruce Street in the Financial District, which opened as the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere when it debuted in 2011, and Chelsea’s IAC Building. Gehry reportedly died at his home in Santa Monica, California, following a brief respiratory illness, according to the New York Post.
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Credit: Tony Hisgett on Flickr
Born on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, Canada, Gehry first gravitated toward architecture “on a hunch,” enrolling in introductory courses at Los Angeles City College while driving a delivery truck to support himself. Encouraged by his teachers and inspired by a chance encounter with modernist architect Raphael Soriano, he soon became captivated by the possibilities of the field, according to the Academy of Achievement.
Winning scholarships to the University of Southern California, Gehry graduated in 1954 and began his architecture career at Victor Gruen Associates, where he had been apprenticing part-time while still in school, according to the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Following a year in the military, Gehry was admitted to the Harvard Graduate School of Design to study urban planning, but returned to Los Angeles without completing his graduate degree. After a brief stint with the architectural firm Pereira and Luckman, he returned to Gruen before moving his family to Paris, where he spent a year working with French architect Andre Remondet and studying the works of modernist pioneer Le Corbusier.
Returning to Los Angeles in 1962, Gehry established his own firm, Gehry Associates—now Gehry Partners, LLP. Though he continued to work in the established International Style for several years, he was increasingly drawn to the avant-garde arts scene blossoming in the beach communities of Venice and Santa Monica.
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Rafael Viñoly, renowned NYC architect, dies at 78
Photo © Rafael Viñoly Architects
World-renowned architect Rafael Viñoly, known in New York City for his work on many commercial and landmark buildings, passed away last week in his Manhattan home at the age of 78. The modernist designer, best known to many New Yorkers for his work on the controversial 432 Park Avenue condo tower, succumbed to a brain aneurysm, according to the New York Times.
432 Park Avenue, image via WikiCommons
Born in Uruguay in 1944, Viñoly studied architecture in Argentina at the University of Buenos Aires. Before graduating, he had already started Estudio de Arquitectura Manteola-Petchersky-Sánchez Gómez-Santos-Solsona-Viñoly, a firm that eventually designed buildings throughout South America.
In 1978, Viñoly acquired a teaching position at Harvard University in order to escape persecution at the hands of Argentina’s militant government that had taken power in 1976. Viñoly and his family moved to New York in 1979 and established his design firm, Rafael Viñoly Architects, in 1983.
Over the course of his lengthy career, Viñoly became one of the only architects to have designed a building in all five city boroughs. His first project in NYC was reshaping an old, dilapidated high school into the new John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a design noteworthy for its use of cascading glass. The use of glass became a defining feature of Viñoly’s work.
In New York City, Viñoly may be best known for designing 432 Park Avenue, the 1,400-foot-tall condo tower along Central Park South once ranked as the tallest residential building in the world. Many of the tower’s residents ended up complaining about engineering and construction problems, including leaky plumbing and defective elevators, documented extensively in a 2021 New York Times article.
Some of his other NYC projects include the conversion of an old library into the City College of New York’s Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, a new design for the Queens Museum of Art, and his design of the home for Jazz at Lincoln Center.
The esteemed architect worked on many projects throughout the United States, including a stadium at Princeton University, a new building for Chicago’s Booth School of Business that featured a striking glass atrium, and convention centers in Pittsburgh and Boston.
“On behalf of my family, my co-workers and our many partners throughout the world, I am saddened to report that my father, the founder and namesake of our firm Rafael Viñoly Architects, passed away unexpectedly yesterday, 2nd of March, at the age of 78,” Román Viñoly, the late architect’s son and a director at the family’s firm, said in a statement. “He was a visionary who will be missed by all those whose lives he touched through his work.”
Román Viñoly added: “He leaves a rich legacy of distinctive and timeless designs that manifested in some of the world’s most recognizable and iconic structures, among them the Tokyo International Forum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Carrasco Airport in Montevideo, and 20 Fenchurch Street in London. The firm’s partners and directors, many of whom have collaborated with him for decades, will extend his architectural legacy in the work we will continue to perform every day.”
Viñoly was said to be working on a renovation of the San Rafael Hotel in Punta del Este, Uruguay at the time of his death, according to Archinect. He also designed the recently opened The Ritz-Carlton New York, Nomad and the under-construction tower at 125 Greenwich Street.
Viñoly is survived by his son Roman, his wife Diana, his stepsons Nicolas and Lucas, a granddaughter, and three step-grandchildren.
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