“We didn’t request that style, but it turned out that way,” said Shu Wen, the manager of the design department for Vanke in Xiamen. China’s largest residential developer, Vanke is building Heart of Lake and says it is pleased with the design.

Still, the look and “lifestyle” offered at 15 Central Park West and another luxury high-rise Mr. Stern designed in Toronto, at One St. Thomas Street, clearly were factors in awarding the job to Stern Architects over two other firms, Vanke executives said.

Heart of Lake is selling fast. Already three towers have sold out, and the first phase of the project, which estimates suggest will eventually cost up to 5 billion yuan (about $800 million), is to open at the end of this year, Mr. Shu said. Residences range from $464 a square foot, for tower apartments, to $1,636 a square foot for town houses. Each tower will have two penthouses with terraces; one penthouse of about 4,000 square feet recently sold for $3.5 million.

The neighborhood will be the highest-end development in Xiamen, with prices about double what residences typically cost there, Mr. Shu said. Heart of Lake’s streets will be pedestrian-only — all parking will be underground — and a stately clubhouse for the 3,000 people expected to live there will house the kind of recreational facilities found at 15 Central Park West.

Mr. Stern’s work on the Midtown tower is paying dividends in other ways. The Win Sing Development Company from Taiwan toured 15 Central Park West and soon afterward hired Stern Architects to design a smaller building in Taipei, Mr. Stern said.

Even as sales continue on the Manhattan condo makeover at 18 Gramercy Park — which has brought Mr. Stern together again with the developers of 15 Central Park West — Stern Architects is working in a handful of countries it had never worked in before, including India and Singapore. In 2011, about 25 percent of Stern Architects’ work was overseas, up from 15 percent in 2007, the company said.

And aside from Xiamen, Stern Architects has been working on eight projects in China, including a residential complex in Shanghai and a mixed-use development in Dalian.