Skyscraper Architect Cesar Pelli Dies
On July 19, 2019 architect Cesar Pelli died in New Haven, Connecticut. He was possibly best-known for designing skyscrapers such as the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia and the Goldman Sachs tower in Jersey City, New Jersey. According to Pelli’s obituary in the New York Times, “His Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004.”
Pelli was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina and came to the United States in the early 1950s to study architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a young architect, Pelli worked under Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, there he was involved with Saarinen’s project for the TWA Flight Center at Kennedy Airport. The terminal building was recently repurposed as a hotel.
In the late 1960s and 1970s Pelli used colored glass as a major design element in buildings such as the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, CA (also known as “The Blue Whale”) and the Cleveland Clinic. Pelli opened his own architecture firm in 1977. One of Pelli’s most prestigious commissions was the 1984 expansion of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. While the completed project did not receive critical acclaim, it did result in more commissions for Pelli.
Pelli’s later buildings include One Canada Square in London; the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan; Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida; and Salesforce Tower in San Francisco.
Read Cesar Pelli’s obituary on the New York Times website.
Cesar Pelli, Pacific Design Center (1975), Los Angeles, California. Image source.
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