Internationally-renowned architect Robert A.M. Stern isn’t content to rest on his laurels.

Stern, who serves as dean of the Yale University School of Architecture, remains a student at heart, eyes open to the natural and built world around him for inspiration.

Stern is a big proponent of sustainable design and has many award-winning green buildings and “firsts” to his credit: the first LEED Platinum business school in the world; the first LEED Platinum speculative and multi-tenant office building; the first LEED-certified museum; the first LEED-certified U.S. General Services Administration courthouse, among many others.

Sustainability is inherent in each project his firm touches. Says Stern: “We don’t wear it on our sleeves, but it’s there.”

At age 70, Stern isn’t slowing down, either. His New York-based firm, with about 220 architects, interior designers, and support staff, remains busy with academic, office, resort, and residential buildings around the world, not to mention creating furnishings for home and office. Here, he shares his vision for the profession and the future with New York House.

Characterize your approach to design.

I see architecture as a whole. We never think of just the building. We like to think of the next bigger thing—what other buildings will come next to it, but also the siting and landscaping…We also are getting intensely involved with the interiors of buildings, and we have done everything from decorating to large institutional planning for offices for academic use or even health facilities.

Since I became the dean at Yale School of Architecture in 1998, I’ve become increasingly aware of and engaged in the issue of making buildings perform far better than they performed in, say, the 1990s or earlier. At Battery Park City, we designed Tribeca Green, a LEED Gold residential building. But we don’t wear our sustainability on our sleeve in terms of our public persona or our buildings. We don’t stick the sustainability on the building like people put bling or tattoos on themselves these days. But it’s there.

How important is LEED to you?

LEED is…like the Academy Awards in movie-making. It sets a certain bar and helps you measure your achievements. I think it’s encouraged clients to invest more in the building in relationship to issues of sustainability—because it becomes a little contest. Everybody wants to win the Academy Award, right? So you try to make your movie a bit better. And I think it is good. I do support LEED.

We’re doing a project now in Paris—the French have a slightly different system called HQE [Haute Qualité Environnementale]; then there is BREEAM [British Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method]...But our client will also pursue LEED certification for the building. I think they’re really trying to be able to say that a building is LEED certified for international corporations that have offices in multiple places and employees being moved around the world who expect a certain level of accommodation. Because everybody is much more conscious of this, they expect a level of performance in their environment. They want clean air and to know that people aren’t standing on the street pointing to the building they’re working in as a guzzler or energy hog. That’s all great.

LEED has been adjusted now for the more residential component, because it started out as basically a function of measuring office buildings…But like all standards, sometimes you scratch your head and say, “This is a little odd.” But on the whole, I think it’s a good idea—more than a good idea.

How important is sustainability? Is it part of the criteria for your buildings going forward?

I don’t think we have any projects on board, nor have we had in a while, that haven’t had sustainability built into the agenda just like structural integrity. It’s a very important part of our practice. Some of the partners and much of our staff have become LEED certified.

Has the recession made you make adjustments?

You bet.

How?

We have projects that we have brought to a certain point in terms of their drawings, and they’ve been put in file drawers, awaiting a change in the economy. Our clients are fairly optimistic, but banks aren’t releasing money, so you get a little discouraged. Even your optimism butts up against that. We’ve had several university projects that have been delayed or canceled. The better-endowed universities are not canceling projects, but slowing down the construction pace. We don’t have so much government work at the moment, so it remains to be seen whether we might be the professional beneficiaries of some of the money coming out of Washington.

We’ve had to let people go in this office—every office of this size I am aware of has had to make significant cuts. You can say, “Well, it toughens everybody up.” But that’s a hell of a way to toughen people up. It’s not a good thing.

How does this recession compare to other economic crises?

It is serious. Architects were very hard hit in the 1930s, and a lot of people left the profession but there were no other jobs...For example, the architect Louis Kahn—whom we all regard with great veneration and who was a person I knew—had no work in the 1930s. His wife, a scientist in a research lab, was the source of support for him and his family.

How do you deal with projects meeting zoning problems and other delays?

You’re always working within the constraints of the body politic. There are always zoning and building code issues. They’ve become more complex, particularly building code issues, as a result of everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters…as well as the increasing responsibility to providing environments in which people with disabilities are not placed in anything like a second-class situation.

NIMBYism is a problem, and there is no way around it. You have to respect people who are apprehensive about change—sometimes they are rightly apprehensive and sometimes not. Of course, each architect thinks his or her project is going to be perfect and everybody will love it. But that’s not always the case. I and my colleagues spend maybe as much time meeting with community groups, responding to requests from governmental agencies for explanations or modifications, as on any other part of the project...Anybody who tells you that’s not part of their practice as an architect, in my view, is either practicing in a bubble or not telling you the exact truth.

We try to introduce our students at Yale to these realities without laying them on with such a heavy hand as to thwart their enthusiasm for the thing they really want to do, which is to design beautiful buildings. But eventually they realize that the realization of beautiful buildings requires all kinds of consultations.

Tell us a little bit about your furniture and home furnishings designs.

I’ve been involved in furniture, decorative objects, and home furnishings for a long time. In the ’80s, Nan Swid and Addie Powell put together the company Swid Powell, approached any number of interesting architects, many of them my age and professional and personal friends, and we designed things: Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, Richard Meier; Frank Gehry was involved, and Stanley Tigerman. We designed tabletop items, plates and candlesticks and things. And suddenly there was a fashion for designer sheets and we did that. So it was all an extension of our interests and experience as architects working on residential projects.

I argued then, and I believe still, that many people can’t afford to hire Bob Stern to do a house, maybe can’t even afford to live in a condominium designed by Bob Stern, but they should be able to afford some things that we’ve designed that can brighten their lives or give them some pleasure.

Now we continue to work on furniture—not for the high end, but for more affordable markets and for institutional clients. We learned in designing libraries and residence halls that sometimes furniture that’s available is so grim in its design to withstand the invasion of 10-ton tanks, but not to give a moment’s pleasure to either body or soul. So we’re trying to address that, especially in trying to reproduce traditionally-inspired desks and chairs, which also meet the ergonomic needs of people working on computers who have different light levels and stress and so forth. We’re also working with Bendheim, the glass company, doing new patterns. We’re doing carpets—all the different things that constitute the constellation of materials and objects that someone designing a building might need. Now, of course, my fantasy would be that they will buy everything from Bob Stern and I will be rich and retire to Majorca or somewhere, but forget it. But it’s fun, and it gives the people in our office another outlet for their talents.

Looking at architecture as a profession, do you have any concerns?

At the moment, the narrow-minded concern is the survival of so many people who are not only just out of school or about to come out of school, but also who have been in the profession 10, 15 years, with layoffs all over the world. Of course, I worry for them putting bread on the table, but I also worry about the loss of this incredible collective talent. In the recession of the late ’80s, which isn’t talked about so much, students came out of school and couldn’t get jobs. There’s a whole generation, therefore, of people from that age group who went and did other things, and now we’re really short of experienced people. I’m worried about that.

I’m worried about the technological means that have come along to reshape aspects of the practice, the computer graphics and so forth—that many architects will think that those replace rather than enhance time-honored ways of thinking about architecture and making architecture. The eye is still best connected to the brain and to the hands through drawing—simple sketches. I’m not talking about making Beaux-Arts renderings. Those are nice, but they’re now being done on computers. I’m talking about a young or old architect looking at something, seeing something in a building or an environment, being able to convey something they see in their mind’s eye to a client or to another architect. I find increasingly that students can’t draw—therefore, they can’t communicate.

An important client of mine pinned me down when we toured some buildings around Europe and he took me for our farewell dinner. He said, “Now, Mr. Stern, what’s the building going to look like?” I had to make him a sketch and, by gum, my sketch was pretty good. It wouldn’t hang in the Museum of Modern Art, but it’s what the building is going to look like. I can convey that to him. He’s putting a lot of faith and money into this enterprise and he wanted to feel comfortable. He didn’t want to wait until he’d gone three months down the road and say, “Oh, that’s what it’s going to look like? That’s not what I had in mind.”

To move forward means everything is more complex. Why? Because you should know all the new things that are possible, and not forget all the old things that have always been possible or that have grown possible over time.

That goes back to your design philosophy.

Exactly. We look backward to go forward.

You recently turned 70. Any idea about slowing down?

No. No. No. In fact, I’m probably doing more now than I’ve ever done before, combining the academic life. I’m trying to work with my partners so they have more responsibility. Constantly I, with pleasure, lean on their talents and intelligences. But no, I don’t really think I want to slow down. I might take a little longer vacation. But when I take a vacation, all I do is go around and do what I call urban hiking, which is walk around cities, some I know, some I haven’t been to in a long time, some new discoveries, and I look at buildings, take notes, take photographs, and I call the office and I say, “Check this out.”

Inspiration, always a student.

Always a student. I would like to think that. Always a student, always a teacher.