Stern pick incites debate Nora Wessel Yale Daily News September 5, 2008
“Could the choice of a traditional architect to build Yale’s two new residential colleges actually betray the University’s tradition?
“That’s what some critics are arguing one day after University President Richard Levin announced that he had tapped Robert A.M. Stern, the staid architect and dean of the School of Architecture, to design colleges 13 and 14.
“In choosing Stern, Levin picked tradition and — he argues — comfort over experimentation and pizazz. But some critics counter that the selection betrays Yale’s legacy of pushing the architectural envelope.
“‘I’m skeptical that these buildings will be applauded in 30 years,’ said Brent Ryan ’91, a professor of architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.”
Posted by: Tanya
~Yale Arts Library Blog~ 
What is likely to be a pastiche of the past (see Stern’s Darden School of Business building at UVA) will not unveil the future of a sustainable world architecture where the building responds equally to the environment, its program, and tectonics. Like Oscar Wilde’s comment on a second marriage, this would be the triumph of hope over experience.