Last July, Cesar Pelli left us at the age of 92. At a memorial service at Yale’s Battell Chapel, speakers from all phases of his life all came back to the same central truth—that Cesar was a humble gentleman. He had a quiet presence, and he charmed everyone with his warmth, elegance, and sincerity.
He brought that humility to his practice. As the founder of a large firm based in New Haven and Dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1977 to 1988, Cesar was more of a conductor than a composer. He guided and advised and taught us to continually distill and refine. Through example, he showed us that architecture is a lifelong process. I spent my earliest years with him designing the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, which began construction in 1993 and are still today the tallest twin towers in the world. During design reviews, we would present study models and numerous options, and he would frequently interrupt us, coaxing us to strive for clarity, brevity, and a clear narrative. The same rigor applied to our design thinking. It was said that if we learned how to present to Cesar, we were ready to present to any client.
And he insisted we bring that humility to our work. Cesar once told me that arriving in a city that held one of his buildings was like going to a party and seeing a family member in the crowd. To see your building is a special reunion with someone you cared for and nurtured. Now they stand on their own, belonging not to you but to the world. Because, as he wrote in an essay, “Pieces of the City,” “When we design a building, we participate in the never-complete, imperfect, collaborative work of art that is a city, perhaps the most important work of art of any culture.”
This philosophy was evident with the firm’s work on the World Financial Center (now Brookfield Place), which was built between 1982 and 1988 in lower Manhattan. The project called for multiple large towers along the Hudson River. The World Trade Center towers directly behind the project were grossly out of scale with the neighborhood. Cesar made it a goal of his design’s composition to humanize the skyline and, like the foothills of mountains, to blend with the World Trade Center towers, helping them to reach the earth in a more graceful, natural manner.
More importantly—and seminal to the legacy he leaves the profession—is the Winter Garden nestled at the foot of the World Financial Center. A grand public room full of light and palm trees, it serves no specific function other than being an inviting oasis for people to enjoy in a tough urban context. At the time, to commit space and funds for such an endeavor was a bold notion. But it was highly successful and added financial vibrancy to the project. In the end, it became a model for developers to collaborate with city planners to enliven business districts that became deserted on evenings and weekends. This approach to design greatly impacted the breadth of projects we have worked on. More importantly, it has helped to reshape the context in which developers and city planners partner with architects. Cesar tried to prove that large-scale development projects that think beyond their own site boundaries and self-interests could work as responsible partners in converting urban blight, improving public transit, and providing the soil for sustainable growth vital to the ongoing health of the city.
Of course, no account of Cesar is complete without referring to his joyous, contagious laughter. At the close of the service, Rafael Pelli led the room, in unison, in a loving and cathartic imitation of his father’s distinctive laugh. Thank you, Cesar.