2000, Bob Stern

ROBERT AM STERN (M.Arch ’65) Interview with Dima Srouji (M.Arch ’16) & Nicolas Kemper (M.Arch ’16)

When she came to Yale for the first time to teach, she had an assistant, Lucien, who would call and say ‘do you have a car for Zaha, to get her to school?’ I said ‘I don’t think so, it is only 2.5 blocks, you know even the President of the University doesn’t have a car and driver?’ So she walked. So the first time she arrived in the building – she arrives wrapped up in this great big Marabou like a stoll, and her torturing high heel shoes on her tiny feet – she would have cut a figure in New York, but wow! In New Haven the people on the street, you could see them watching her coming down Chapel Street – what is going on? That is when Stern’s regime at Yale really started, the arrival of Zaha.