An Evening with Norman Foster + Robert A.M. Stern

WHO: The Glass House together with Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® and Gaggenau, the elite-luxury brand for built-in home appliances. Champagne by Krug.

WHAT: The Glass House presents Norman Foster + Robert A.M. Stern.

WHEN: October 27th, 5:30 – 8:00 pm

WHERE: The Glass House, 199 Elm Street, New Canaan, Conn.

FORMAT: The Glass House is proud to announce an opportunity to hear from two of the world’s most preeminent architects, Norman Foster and Robert A.M. Stern. Beginning with their youthful relationship studying architecture at Yale in the early 1960s, these men have known each other since the very beginnings of their illustrious careers. Each has exerted a global influence on buildings as well as the urban environment overall. For this fundraising event, they will discuss both their shared history as well as their vision for how architecture can contribute to a more sustainable environment and how the role of the architect is evolving in response to global issues today.

As the Glass House commemorates its 10th year as a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, this intimate conversation and dinner benefits preservation at the site

Ticket includes cocktail reception, conversation with Norman Foster and Robert A.M. Stern, and dinner featuring Krug Champagne.

 

Norman Foster is the founder and executive chairman of Foster + Partners, a global studio for architecture, urbanism and design, rooted in sustainability. He was born in Manchester, and after graduating from Manchester University School of Architecture and City Planning in 1961 he won a Henry Fellowship to Yale University, where he was a fellow of Jonathan Edwards College and gained a Master’s Degree in Architecture. In 1967, he established Foster + Partners in London, and over five decades the practice has been responsible for a strikingly wide range of work, from urban master plans, public infrastructure, airports, civic and cultural buildings, offices and workplaces to private houses and furniture design. Major projects include Beijing Airport, Millau Viaduct in France, 30 St Mary Axe (also known as the Gherkin) and the Great Court at the British Museum in London, the Hearst Headquarters tower in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Current projects include the Apple Park in California, Bloomberg’s European Headquarters in London, and the Norton Museum of Art in Florida. He is president of the Norman Foster Foundation, based in Madrid with a global reach, promoting interdisciplinary thinking and research to help new generations of architects, designers and urbanists anticipate the future. He became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate in 1999 and was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Award for Architecture in Tokyo in 2002. In 2009, he became the 29th laureate of the prestigious Prince of Asturias award for the Arts and was awarded the Knight Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1990, he was granted a Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, appointed by the Queen to the Order of Merit in 1997 and in 1999 was honoured with a Life Peerage in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, as Lord Foster of Thames Bank.

Robert A.M. Stern is an architect, teacher, writer, and the former Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Stern first visited Philip Johnson’s Glass House as a Yale Architecture student in 1961, and soon began a long and enduring professional friendship with Johnson. After graduating with his Master of Architecture degree in 1965, at Johnson’s suggestion (and with his oversight) Stern began his career developing programs for the Architectural League of New York as the League’s first J. Clawson Mills Fellow. In 1985, Stern recorded a series of interviews with Johnson that were edited and published in 2008 as The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews by Robert A.M. Stern. Johnson was a featured guest in Stern’s “Pride of Place: Building the American Dream,” an eight-part, eight-hour documentary television series that first aired on the Public Broadcasting System in 1986. Stern was the 2011 Driehaus Prize laureate and in 2008 received the tenth Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum. In 2007, he received both 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. Before returning to Yale in 1998, Stern was Professor of Architecture and Director of the Historic Preservation Program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He served from 1984 to 1988 as the first director of Columbia’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Stern has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on both historical and contemporary topics in architecture. As founder and Senior Partner of the 260-person New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects.

 

GAGGENAU is a manufacturer of high-quality home appliances and acknowledged as an innovation leader in design and technology “Made in Germany.” The company, with a history dating back to 1683, has revolutionized the domestic kitchen with its internationally acclaimed products. Gaggenau’s success is founded on technological innovation and a clear design language combined with high functionality. Since 1995 Gaggenau has been a subsidiary of BSH Hausgeräte GmbH in Munich, the largest manufacturer of home appliances in Europe and one of the leading companies in the sector worldwide,and is currently represented in more than 50 countries with flagship showrooms in major cities around the world. The difference is Gaggenau. www.gaggenau-usa.com.

Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® is the leading supplier of products specified to close the building envelope. They include: custom–engineered curtain wall and window wall, architectural windows, storefront systems, doors, skylights and architectural glass. With the largest national footprint in the industry, Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® employs over 6,600 employees at 77 manufacturing locations in 22 states and four Canadian provinces. A company committed to architecture and the arts, Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® continues their longstanding partnership with The Glass House with the support of events such as this, which further Philip Johnson’s legacy of convening great minds of architecture, art, and design. Most recently, a generous gift from Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® of a new custom-engineered skylight system enabled the largest and most complex preservation project at The Glass House to date: the skylight restoration of the Sculpture Gallery, one of 14 structures of the Glass House and a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. www.obe.com

The Glass House was built between 1949 and 1995 by architect Philip Johnson, the Glass House is a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation located in New Canaan, CT. The pastoral 49-acre landscape comprises fourteen structures, including the Glass House (1949), and features a permanent collection of 20th century painting and sculpture, along with temporary exhibitions. The tour season runs from May through November and advance reservations are required. For more information, and to purchase tickets, visit www.theglasshouse.org. 

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a privately funded nonprofit organization that works to save America’s historic places to enrich our future. www.savingplaces.org.