César Pelli

César Pelli (October 12, 1926 – July 19, 2019) was an Argentine-American architect who designed some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. Three of his most notable buildings are the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the World Financial Center in New York City, and the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. The American Institute of Architects named him one of the ten most influential living American architects in 1991 and awarded him the AIA Gold Medal in 1995. In 2008, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat presented him with The Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award.

Pelli was born October 12, 1926, in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina. His grandfather was an immigrant from Italy, while his mother's family was criollo. His father was a civil servant, who had been reduced to doing odd jobs due to the Depression, while his mother worked as a teacher. Pelli studied architecture at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. He graduated in 1949, after which he designed low-cost housing projects. In 1952, he attended the University of Illinois School of Architecture in the United States for advanced study in architecture, and received his Master of Science in Architecture degree in 1954.

He married landscape architect Diana Balmori. They had two children: Denis, a neurobiologist and Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, and Rafael Pelli, an architect. The couple resided in an apartment in The San Remo on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Between 2001 and 2004, he led the design and early construction of the campus of Universidad Siglo 21 in Córdoba, Argentina, in collaboration with Diana Balmori and the local firm GGMPU.

In 1952, Pelli moved to the United States with his wife, Diana Balmori (1932–2016), and became a naturalized citizen in 1964. After his graduation from the University of Illinois School of Architecture, Pelli worked for Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for ten years. While with Eero, he worked on the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport and the Morse and Stiles colleges at Yale University.

In 1964, he became director of design at Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall in Los Angeles. In 1965, Pelli designed the Sunset Mountain Park Urban Nucleus (an unbuilt project). In 1968 Pelli became partner for design at Gruen Associates in Los Angeles. In 1969, Pelli designed the COMSAT research and development laboratories in Clarksburg, Maryland. Pelli designed his first landmark building with the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California, which was completed 1975 and became known by the locals as the "Blue Whale". The United States Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, was designed by Pelli in 1972 and completed in 1975. While practicing in Los Angeles, Pelli taught in the architecture program at UCLA.

In 1977, Pelli was selected to be the dean of the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut, and served in that post until 1984. Shortly after Pelli arrived at Yale, he won the commission to design the expansion and renovation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which resulted in the establishment of his own firm, Cesar Pelli & Associates. The museum's expansion/renovation and the Museum of Modern Art Residential Tower were completed 1984; the World Financial Center in New York, which includes the grand public space of the Winter Garden, was completed in 1988. Among other significant projects during this period are the Crile Clinic Building in Cleveland, Ohio, completed 1984; Herring Hall at Rice University in Houston, Texas (also completed 1984); completion in 1988 of the Green Building at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California; completion of the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1989; and the construction of the Wells Fargo Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1989.

Pelli was named one of the ten most influential living American Architects by the American Institute of Architects in 1991. In 1990, He completed the Carnegie Hall Tower. In 1995, he was awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal. In May 2004, Pelli was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Minnesota Duluth where he designed Weber Music Hall. In 2005, Pelli was honored with the Connecticut Architecture Foundation's Distinguished Leadership Award.