Cesar Pelli is a renowned architect. He was born on October 12, 1926 in Tucuman, Argentina. He studied Architecture at the University of Tucuman, earning his Bachelor’s degree of Architecture in 1949. After he graduated he married his fellow student Diana Balmori, who has become an accomplished landscape and urban designer and how founded the firm Balmori Associates. For the next two years Pelli served as director of design at OFEMPE, a government organization sponsoring and building subsidized housing in Tucuman. In 1952 he received a scholarship from the University of Illinois School of Architecture in Champagne-Urbana, where he eared a Maters degree in Architecture in 1954.
Pelli continued to further his career as an architect. He worked as a designer with the firm of Euro Saarinen and associates in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Hamden, Connecticut. He was the project designer for the TWA terminal building at JFK Airport in New York as well as the Morse and Stiles colleges at Yale University. He returned to Argentina to teach architectural design in 1960 and then became a U.S. citizen in 1964. In 1977 Pelli moved to Connecticut to become the Dean of the school of Architecture at Yale University. That same year he founded Cesar Pelli and Associates in New Haven with his wife Diana and Fred W. Clarke. There are over 60 architects and designers who are employed there. In 1984 he resigned at Yale and devoted his full attention to his firm, however he still lectures on architecture occasionally.
There are many famous landmarks that can be attributed to Cesar Pelli, such as the World Financial Center and Winter Garden at Battery Park city in Manhattan. This project begun in 1991 and featured four office towers ranging in height from 34 to 51 stories. He also was the designer of the expansion and renovation of the Museum of Modern art in NYC. Douglas David from Newsweek says, “…despite the vast discrepancy in their sizes, the new skyscraper and the earthbound…hall seem of piece. Over and again, Pelli’s buildings defer-despite their ingenuity-to their stitches and their context. His architecture is unfailingly humane and courtly.” Pelli has received many awards over the course of his career. He was the recipient of awards from such institutions such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Institute of Architects, the National Academy of Design and the International Academy of Architecture. He has been awarded the 1995 AIA Gold Medal and the Charles Bulfich Award; in addition, he is the only architect to have received a Connecticut State Arts Award and is among one of the few American architects to receive first class licensure in Japan. He has also received several honorary degrees including any honorary doctorate from the Pratt Institute in NYC. Pelli has says in an essay in 1988 Architectural Digest, “ …there is nothing quite so pleasurable for me to visit my buildings hen they’re finished and occupied. It is like being part of a miracle taking place. Months and even years of caring and dreaming become a reality.”
Cesar Pelli is incredibly accomplished and his work speaks for itself. He has designed many of our nations landmarks and will always be remembered as a true inspiration to architecture and designers everywhere.
Sources
-Gandelsonas, Mario. Goldenberger. Pastier, John: Cesar Pelli, Buildings and Projects 1965-1990. New York:Rizzoli International Publications Inc. 1990.
-Gale, Thomas. Cesar Pelli from Encyclopedia of World Biography.
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