César Pelli

César Pelli 1926-, American architect, b. Tucumán, Argentina. Pelli graduated (1949) from the Univ. of Tucumán, immigrated (1952) to the United States, and subsequently attended (1952-54) the Univ. of Illinois. He worked with Eero Saarinen from 1954 to 1964, the year he became a U.S. citizen. In 1977 he established his own firm in New Haven, Conn., and from that year until 1984 he was also the dean of Yale's School of Architecture. Pelli does not have a readily identifiable style; working within a modernist idiom, he strives to adapt each project appropriately to its culture, function, and site. This approach is evident in a wide variety of major public projects, including the glass-clad Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles (1977); Museum of Modern Art extension and residential tower, New York City (1984); NTT Headquarters, Tokyo (1990); World Financial Center complex, New York City (1987); and the lofty Canary Wharf Tower, London (1991), Petronas Towers , Kuala Lumpur (1997), and Goldman Sachs building, Jersey City, N.J. (2004).

Bibliography: See studies by J. Pastier (1980), P. Goldberger et al. (1991), D. Anger (1996), and P. Barreneche, ed. (2003).