Houston architect Stern dies a day after receiving top award

The house that William F. Stern designed for himself was a breakthrough for the architect: clearly contemporary, rather than postmodern. With its Menil-like gray cladding, white interior walls, and Stern's museum-quality art collection, it feels like a serene gallery. less The house that William F. Stern designed for himself was a breakthrough for the architect: clearly contemporary, rather than postmodern. With its Menil-like gray cladding, white interior walls, and Stern's ... more Photo: Hester & Hardaway Photo: Hester & Hardaway Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Houston architect Stern dies a day after receiving top award 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

William F. Stern, FAIA, an architect who spent much of his life thinking about places, died Friday, in precisely the place that he wanted: in the house that he designed for himself; surrounded by a carefully curated collection of art and friends; and in Houston, the city that exhilarated and exasperated him. He was 66.

On Thursday, the American Institute of Architects-Houston voted unanimously to give Stern its Lifetime Achievement award.

"Everyone had assumed that Bill Stern would be named sometime in the future," said executive director Rusty Bienvenue. "But we assumed that it would be many, many years in the future."

Until January, when Stern was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he was a force to be reckoned with in Houston's architecture and art worlds: a member of the Menil Collection's board of trustees; a "Master Mod" in Houston Mod; frequently vocal about the preservation of endangered historic buildings; a frequent advisor to the AIA-Houston; and previously involved with the Contemporary Arts Museum and the Rice Design Alliance.

In his architectural work, says architectural historian Stephen Fox, Stern "was known for rigor, clarity, consistency and economy." He was also known for doing battle in the name of aesthetic principles.

"A willingness to hold fast-that was a hallmark of both Bill's architecture and his civic work," said longtime friend Elizabeth Glassman, president and CEO of the Terra Foundation for American Art.

"He was so wonderful to argue with," said Bruce Webb, a friend and professor in the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, where Stern taught architectural history.

Stern was born in Cincinnati, where his family ran U.S. Shoe Corp. and were major supporters of the city's cultural and civic organizations. Like his father, Stern attended Harvard University, where he graduated cum laude, then received a master's of architecture from Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Extremely ambitious

In 1976, he struck out for oil-boom Houston, where a young architect would have plenty of opportunity to build. He was hired by architecture firm Morris Aubrey.

Art dealer Fredericka Hunter, of Texas Gallery, met him in those years. "He arrived at the gallery and asked about Robert Mangold and Sol LeWitt," artists whose bright-colored, deceptively simple work would become part of Stern's notable art collection. "Bill knew what he was about, right from the beginning," says Hunter. "He understood both the quality of the art and the delight."

Stern became heavily involved in the Rice Design Alliance, and in the early 1980s, hosted a meeting at his home to discuss the creation of an alliance-backed design magazine. Cite: The Architecture & Design Review of Houston recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.

In 1979, Stern went out on his own, founding William F. Stern & Associates, Architects. The firm made its name designing ambitious townhouse complexes, such as Arlington Courts in the Houston Heights. The townhouses' symmetry, gabled roofs and friendly faces led many observers to call them "postmodern," but Stern hated that label. Associates at his firm instead referred to the townhouse era as "The Old Kingdom."

Restorations

Stern & Associates (which in 1999 became Stern & Bucek) acquired a reputation for exacting renovation and restoration. High-profile projects included the 1997 changes to the Contemporary Arts Museum, in which a tiny "hood" helped patrons find the front door to the Gunnar Birkerts' minimal, metal-parallelogram building. Most exquisite was the 2004 restoration of the River Oaks house that Phillip Johnson, not yet famous in 1950, designed for art patrons Dominique and Francois Jean de Menil. Hired by the Menil Foundation, Stern & Bucek oversaw what is likely the most painstaking restoration in Houston history.

Completed in 1992, Bill Stern's own house, at 1202 Milford, marked a break from his past. The design was clearly contemporary. Stern designed the museum-like house around his art collection, including a Sol LeWitt piece painted directly on the front wall of the three-story living room. "That house," says David Bucek, Stern's partner in the firm, "is Bill."

Survivors include his mother, Mary Stern; brother and sister-in-law, Peter and Sandy Stern; sister and brother-in-law, Peggy and James Graeter; and many nieces and nephews.