César Pelli

César Pelli, born on October 12, 1926, in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, and died July 19, 2019, was an architect who held both Argentinian and American citizenship. His portfolio includes several of the world’s tallest structures and major urban landmarks, such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the World Financial Center in New York City, and the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. In 1991, the American Institute of Architects ranked him among the ten most influential living American architects, and four years later awarded him its Gold Medal. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat gave him the Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. While the Petronas Towers project team and client received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004, Pelli's design was instrumental to the project's acclaim.

Pelli’s father, a civil servant who took odd jobs during the Depression, and his mother, a teacher, raised him in Argentina. His grandfather had emigrated from Italy, and his mother’s family was criollo. He studied architecture at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, graduating in 1949, and then designed low-cost housing. In 1952, he moved alone to the United States for advanced study at the University of Illinois School of Architecture, earning a Master of Science in Architecture in 1954. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1964.

After graduate school, Pelli worked for Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for a decade, contributing to the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport and Yale University’s Morse and Stiles colleges. In 1964, he became director of design at Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall in Los Angeles. He later joined Gruen Associates as a partner for design in 1968. His first landmark building, the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood—nicknamed the “Blue Whale”—was completed in 1975. That same year, the United States Embassy in Tokyo, which he designed in 1972, also opened. While in Los Angeles, he taught architecture at UCLA.

In 1977, Pelli was appointed dean of the Yale School of Architecture, a role he held until 1984. Shortly after arriving, he won the commission to expand and renovate the Museum of Modern Art in New York, leading him to establish his own firm, Cesar Pelli & Associates. That project, along with the Museum of Modern Art Residential Tower, finished in 1984. The World Financ