César Pelli Biography, Buildings and Best Books

César Pelli (1926-2019) was an Argentine-American architect best known for his skyscrapers, including the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, once the tallest buildings in the world, the World Financial Center in New York and One Canada Square at Canary Wharf in London. After a decade in the office of Eero Saarinen he became dean of the Yale School of Architecture and founded the practice now known as Pelli Clarke & Partners.

Tucumán and Illinois

Pelli was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, in 1926 and studied architecture at the National University of Tucumán. In 1952 he moved to the United States on a scholarship and completed a master’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1954.

Eero Saarinen and Gruen Associates

Pelli spent ten years in the office of Eero Saarinen, working on projects such as the TWA Flight Center and the Morse and Stiles Colleges at Yale. He then led design at Daniel, Mann, Johnson and Mendenhall and at Gruen Associates in Los Angeles, where his glass-skinned Pacific Design Center (1975), known as the Blue Whale, made his name.

Yale and MoMA

In 1977 Pelli became dean of the Yale School of Architecture and opened his own office in New Haven, Cesar Pelli & Associates. Its first major commission was the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with the residential Museum Tower above it, completed in 1984.

Towers around the world

The World Financial Center in Battery Park City (1988), One Canada Square in London (1991), the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (1998), Two International Finance Centre in Hong Kong (2003) and the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco (2018) made Pelli one of the most important designers of tall buildings. He received the AIA Gold Medal in 1995, and his firm became Pelli Clarke Pelli in 2005. He died in New Haven in 2019.