Your father,
Edward Durell Stone, was an important American modernist architect. As a result you grew up in a cultural milieu that included such figures as Alexander Calder and Philip Johnson. How did exposure to these individuals shape your decision to become an architect?
Ironically, I resisted Dad's attempts to bring me into his practice. It was only after he died in 1978 that I focused on architecture, but then I did so with great commitment and unwavering determination. The cultural milieu that surrounded me during my childhood left a deep imprint on me. As a young boy, my family made a point of exposing me to the great monuments of Classical Greece and Rome, the Renaissance buildings of Italy, and the Georgian buildings of Great Britain. My father, who was a surprisingly knowledgeable architectural historian, rented one of Palladio's villas outside of Venice (the Villa Malcontenta near Mestri) where my mother and I stayed for a year. I remember looking up at the ceiling and seeing frescoes in my room. It's hard for me to believe that my architectural education didn't begin right at that moment, when I was 5 years old, sitting on that villa's great portico between those grand columns looking at the willows hanging over the Brenta Canal.
My father was a great friend of Frank Lloyd Wright. We would often go to Taliesin and stay. I have only the vaguest memories of Wright, but the exposure to all of this important work established a belief in me that what architects do is fundamental and so important to our existence that I feel what I do viscerally. I approach every project with a spiritual commitment and as an opportunity to create a perfect world, at least within the bounds of the site.
The steady stream of artists and architects, people like Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Larry Rivers, Gordon Bunshaft (of SOM) made me understand that what I do is never just a building but an extension of my persona, my emotions, my world view. It is who I am and how I want to be regarded.
What working methodology do you employ to arrive at a set of vernacular references that are historically resonant yet appropriate within a contemporary architectural context?
I look at traditional architecture and find those elements that strike me as resonant. I remove the discordant or complex notes and organize it in the simplest way possible. Architecture should move people through its boldness, its simplicity, and its seamless detail. The modern world can be alternately troubling and enthralling. I prefer to celebrate those aspects that I find uplifting. I choose to exclude the less pleasing elements like chaos, confusion, or disorder from my architecture. There is enough complexity in modern life without embracing it in our buildings. For me, architecture is a refuge.
Nearly all your clients have commented on your ability to listen well and consider the multiple points of view of those who will make use of the house. How do you manage to incorporate so many diverse needs without compromising your creative vision?
This is the fundamental challenge of a commercial art form. You have to be able to sell your vision. Compromise, for any number of reasons, is inevitable and has to be accepted. Your ideals must be adaptable to a wide variety of expressions. Since I chose to do work that is simple, elegant, and sensitive to its cultural and environmental milieu, I have this flexibility. Fundamentally, I want to please my clients. I couldn't imagine ever being happy with a project that the client was unhappy with.
You spent several years after graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Design working for Philip Johnson at Johnson/Burgee. What was the most important thing you learned during those years?
Philip Johnson was a strong influence on me, though he probably would not have realized it from my tenure there. Both of us sought to produce work that is simple, elegant and informed by historic precedent. We both also appreciated boldness in design. I admired his ability to produce work in whatever vein he felt was appropriate for the time and place. It's what I aspire to. Ultimately, if we seek to "sell" our work, we are subject to the vagaries of the marketplace. We have to be sensitive to shifting tides. I think that Johnson was remarkably gifted, if not exceptional, in this respect.
How have you approached projects like 400 South Ocean Beach that involve revisiting, and even improving upon, the work of your father?
It's a wonderful opportunity to complete areas where I felt Dad's work was wanting. His work was bold and powerful, but his later work was never really effective at the level of detail that you might see in some of the work of his contemporaries--Mies van der Rohe, I. M. Pei or Gordon Bunshaft. Dad was probably too busy and too successful to worry about whether the joints lined up, whether the tile was cut too thin, or whether a light was slightly off center. That level of obsessiveness was not in his personality. Or, if it was, I didn't see it. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to pass that level of minute concern on to the people who worked for him either as successfully as I think Pei and Bunshaft did.
What kind of project have you not yet done that you would like to?
I have been a great admirer of landscape design, particularly the Moorish gardens of Spain, and the modern garden spaces of Luis Barragan so a project that blends luxurious gardens into the architecture interests me. It would be wonderful to have a client who had a vision that sought to create both great architecture and great landscape architecture, who sought to blur the distinction between the two.
Most of your projects have been in resort locations or as second homes for clients. Is there a particular atmosphere or emotional state that you want these places to convey or evoke for their inhabitants? How is this achieved?
When people travel to a particular destination, it is generally because they love the location's natural and built environment. Consequently, I want the houses I design to express the qualities of the region in explicit and heightened terms. Whether it involves embracing elements of a local architectural tradition, like the "Shingle Style", or using a local material, like adobe, I want the architecture to be appropriate to the place in which it is located. For this reason I can use bright, pastel colors on a home in the Bahamas, but would never do so in coastal Maine. Similarly, I feel comfortable proposing a modern glass house on an isolated 20-acre site, but would argue against it in a suburban neighborhood with strong examples of colonial era architecture. I think it's important to use the essential qualities of the place in the architecture that you produce and to do so appropriately.
In what way do these places differ from projects you have undertaken in an urban context, like New York, where you maintain a practice?
Most architectural projects in New York, unless you are doing a high-rise building, consist largely of interior design. While I enjoy interiors work, I am trained to be an architect--to design and build objects with a site, with exterior walls and interior rooms. I prefer to realize entire projects that interact with nature and their surroundings. New York is a wonderful place for an architect to practice, a constant source of ideas and inspiration. However, by design, most of my work continues to be out of the city where I can design complete buildings, not merely interiors. Because I practice in an international city, with unparalleled access to ideas and resources, I believe I offer more to a client building a home in Maine or Florida or California than most local architects could. The lens through which I see architecture has a much larger field of view.
What is the one thing you most wish clients better understood about the process of designing and building a house?
Many inexperienced residential clients come to an architect too late in the process. If a family is buying a home or considering a site to build on, they should come to an architect before they do so, rather than after. I recently had a young couple come to me who had a beautiful ridge top site with spectacular views, but the house was fundamentally flawed and it was painfully obvious to me after just a 30-minute walk through. Given poor advice by a building inspector and a real estate agent, they purchased it thinking they had a home they could live in but, in reality, they had an expensive house that in all likelihood was more suited to be a tear-down than a candidate for renovation.
