- Born
- Died
- Birth nameCésar Pelli
- Pelli was born in San Miguel de Tucumán in Argentina in 1926. He went to the US to study in 1952, becoming a citizen in 1964. Before establishing his own practice he worked for the Finnish modernist Eero Saarinen on projects including the famous TWA terminal at JFK airport in New York.
In the 1980s, he expanded the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in Manhattan. Among other US projects were the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford, the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, a chapel at Xavier University in New Orleans and the BOK Center arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Among projects abroad, he designed One Canada Square at Canary Wharf in London's Docklands, which opened in 1991. The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur were completed in 1997.
Pelli's works included the cluster of towers making up the World Financial Center (now called Brookfield Place) at Battery Park City in New York, famous for the glass-roofed Winter Garden at its center, designed the United States Embassy in Tokyo, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar.
Known as the Blue Whale, an immense exhibition hall, the Crystal Palace of the west coast, Pacific Design Center, a huge, glass-clad 1976 project which assimilated into the local folklore of Los Angeles quicker than any building in recent memory, because it is so violently at odds with its flat suburban context. semi-translucent blue glass, which glitters and disappears and re-forms against the dusty blue sky.
One of Pelli's best-known projects is the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, twin 1,483ft skyscrapers that were once the tallest buildings in the world. He also designed the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco and the World Financial Center, now known as Brookfield Place, in downtown Manhattan.
Pelli was a former dean of the Yale University School of Architecture and a lecturer at the school, where he received an honorary degree. He won hundreds of architecture awards, including the 1995 gold medal of the American Institute of Architects, its highest honor.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous
- SpousesDiana Balmori(? - 2001) (divorced, 2 children)Balmori, Diana(? - November 14, 2016) (her death, 2 children)
- Argentinian-born American architect.
- He designed the Petronas Towers in Malaysia; the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan; and the World Financial Center in New York, among many others.
- In 1976, he was appointed dean of Yale's school of architecture.
- He decided to study architecture because it involved two of his favorite subjects, history and art. He graduated from Tucuman University in Argentina. In 1952, he moved to the US for a fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. One of his professors recommended him to Eero Saarinen, the prominent Finnish-American architect. Pelli spent almost 10 years at the Saarinen firm, where the projects included the iconic TWA Flight Center at Kennedy Airport in New York.
- Glass is fragile as the wings of a butterfly. It's alternatively opaque and transparent, ephemeral and light-sensitive, reflecting the changes of the sky color and tone.
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