Mark Stumer Receives AIA Long Island Lifetime Achievement Award

Mark Stumer, a founding principal of luxury architectural and interior design firm Mojo Stumer Associates, was recently honored with a lifetime achievement award from AIA Long Island, a chapter of the American Institute of Architects, for his decades of contributions to the field.

Mr. Stumer is a modernist architect of both residences and commercial buildings on Long Island, in Manhattan, and farther afield. His firm, which will have its 41st anniversary next month, has completed more than 20 Hamptons homes and six more are rising on the South Fork right now.

Speaking from his office in Greenvale, Mr. Stumer recalled the first home he designed on the East End: It was in Quogue in 1982 or ’83.

“It was a great house,” he said. “It’s been knocked down since, but I have great memories of it — great memories of driving out to the beach as a young guy. It was really fun.”

It was a small house, right on the ocean and really special, he said. “David Jones was the name of the client, and he kept it for a number of years, then he moved out to L.A. and became a horror movie producer. … The house passed hands a few times, and then was eventually taken down and a much bigger house was put up.”

Mojo Stumer doesn’t work with spec builders. “We strictly work for the private clientele,” Mr. Stumer said. The residences that he and his 28-person firm design are all custom built for property owners.

Among their recent Hamptons projects are an East Hampton residence on Georgica Pond with a traditional, shingled exterior and modern interiors, and a North Haven house overlooking Shelter Island Sound with a wall of glass in the double-height living room and a second-floor mezzanine. On Dune Road in East Quogue, the firm recently built a poolside retreat space to complement an existing home.

“Most of the Hamptons homes are summer homes,” Mr. Stumer said. “So there are a lot of different directions and demands based on the fact that it might only be a summer vacation home — but that’s changing. Now a lot of these homes are becoming full-time homes.”

One big change he sees happening is that traditionally, property owners rarely requested formal dining rooms for their Hamptons houses, but now it’s much more common, which may be a sign they are anticipating spending more time there.

“We mostly do modern work,” he said. “Even if you look at the one in East Hampton, you’ll see that even though it’s a traditional outside, the interior has a more modern feeling. We don’t do strictly traditional work. That we stay away from. It will be transitional where there’s a mix of the two, but there has to be a mix.”

Asked why he doesn’t design wholly traditional homes, he said he doesn’t believe in it. “We’re modernists, and we stay true to that design philosophy,” he said. “You can’t be everything to everybody. We’re very good at what we do. We understand the layouts and the importance of how we handle things.”

Mr. Stumer is Brooklyn born and grew up in Massapequa. “I went back to Brooklyn to attend Pratt Institute,” he said. There, he earned his Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1974, and he’s been a member of Pratt’s board of trustees since 2005. Today, he lives in Kings Point, where he chairs the village’s architectural review board and serves as a member of the planning board as well.

Mr. Stumer and partner Thomas Mojo — who retired in 2018 — founded Mojo Stumer in 1980 after working together for influential Long Island architect Michael Spector, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

“I always knew I wanted to be an architect,” Mr. Stumer said. “It goes back to fourth grade. … I always had a love for building and drawing and putting things together, and I just pursued it.”

Mojo Stumer stands apart from other firms in that it also does the interiors for the homes it designs — the kitchens, the bathrooms, the cabinetry and even the furniture.

“One of the things that we believe in is that the architecture and the interior should come from the same vision,” Mr. Stumer said.

His work had won the international Kitchen Design Contest held by the high-end appliance maker Sub-Zero, and now he is one of the jurors in the competition that offers $275,000 in prizes. “It’s a weeklong process to judge it,” he said, adding that the top winner can receive up to $20,000.

He said the secrets to a great kitchen are: “workflow and trying to be creative in the design — getting away from the typical designs that you see in most kitchens, and trying to really break out of the mold and do something interesting.”

On the commercial side, the firm has completed numerous banks, boutiques, offices buildings, doctor’s offices, country clubs and gyms, including the first 10 Equinox fitness clubs, a design that has influenced all of the Equinox locations that came after.

“It was nice to be recognized for the body of work that we’ve done,” Mr. Stumer said of the lifetime achievement award. “… To be honest with you, it’s not my award. It’s the firm’s award. I didn’t do all this by myself. Yes, I built the firm with my partner, but all of this was done through hard work of all the people that worked here.”