July 27, 1999

Editorial Department
Tampa Tribune
P.O. Box 191
Tampa, FL 33601

Re: Response to Jonathan Yardley’s commentary, July 12, 1999

There are interesting observations to be made about Robert Stern's current tenure as Dean of Yale's School of Architecture, but that he panders to students is not one of them. His apartment in New Haven is most certainly not decorated in order to earn the approval of his students. Anyone who knows Dean Stern’s work is aware that the variety of furnishing reflects his broad connoisseurship of design. Apparently, an open mind has become so rare in the academy that it is difficult to recognize it as anything but a cynical.

Actually students are not the problem. What student of architecture, after all, would object to Dean Stern's reasoned and sophisticated arguments, the efficiency and sheer fun of his design methodology, the good and fitting buildings that it produces, and the success that accrues to those who practice as he does. No, the problem is a faculty that transforms students into alienated and humorless ideologues—as they are. Mind you, the brainwashing that passes for architectural education these days is not particularly pronounced at Yale.

Your editorial takes aim at those students of the 60’s who destroyed the authority of their schools. That is correct, but do not shift the blame to current students. It is those same 60’s students, now the faculty, who continue their "long march through the institutions of western culture," undermining the architecture schools in the process. Stern is one of only a half-dozen deans who does not pander to architecture students and hence all the media attention that he receives.

Andrés Duany is an architect and town planner.