San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Architect César Pelli, designer of Salesforce Tower, dies.
César Pelli, the internationally known architect who, with his firm, designed San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower and the threeblocklong transit center alongside it, died Friday. He was 92.
Though based in New Haven, Conn., Pelli worked off and on in San Francisco for 30 years, starting with a 500foot tower for Market Street that was never built. His first completed building here was 560 Mission St., a 31story highrise that opened in 2002 and remains the finest tower built in San Francisco this century.
Salesforce Tower is more controversial, given its 1,070foot height and rounded silvery silhouette that commands the skyline from all perspectives. But for Pelli, it embodied his desire to do large buildings that both define their setting and seem at home.
“The wonderful thing about those big projects is that they have a large impact on the city,” Pelli told The Chronicle in 2017 while relaxing in his New Haven offices at what since 2005 has been Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects. “That impact, if you plan and design it carefully, can be very much for the good.”
Pelli was 89 at the time of the interview, and a few years earlier had handed off oversight of the 175person firm to Fred Clarke, a former student. But he still was a presence in the office more days than not, and kept an eye on major projects such as the pair that have changed the look and feel of a longnondescript part of San Francisco — one with its height and girth, the other with its undulating form and rooftop park.
“They’re such exciting projects. My babies!” Pelli said that day with a hearty laugh. “Joint babies, but my babies. I don’t want to give them to anybody.”
Salesforce Tower and the transit center alongside it, which now bears the official name Salesforce Transit Center, were conceived by Pelli in 2007 in response to a competition held by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. Pelli’s team, which was organized by the development firm Hines, was the clear favorite of the design jury.
Those two “babies” are part of a family that spans the globe.
Pelli’s Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were the world’s tallest structures for six years. Canary Wharf, a multiacre project in London, was the first cluster of highrises in that city. Tapered shafts by the firm in Hong Kong and Santiago, Chile, were stylistic predecessors to Salesforce Tower.
To be sure, Pelli never defied the styles of the time: “We are all affected by these trends. It is hard to avoid,” he shrugged to The Chronicle in 2002. His 774foot Wells Fargo Center in Minneapolis is a particularly good example of 1980s postmodernism, clad in fiery limestone with Art Deco flair. The recent threesome of Philadelphia highrises dubbed Cira Centre are glass towers angled to reflect sunlight and clouds.
The unifying thread through Pelli’s career was the disciplined attention to detail by a man who was born in Argentina and didn’t come to the United States until 1952, when he pursued graduate architectural studies at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. He then worked at several firms to rising acclaim until 1977, when he was named dean of the Yale School of Architecture and opened his own firm in New Haven.
“He was a master of the skin of a building, going through any number of options. It was a process of constant refinement,” recalled Marc L’Italien, a principal at HGA Architects and Engineers in San Francisco.
L’Italien attended Yale and was an intern at Pelli’s firm in 1989, several years after Pelli stepped down as dean.
“César was incredibly gracious — not a touch of arrogance,” L’Italien said. “He would work his way through the office, offer constructive criticism, never linger too long.”
This view was shared by Dean Macris, San Francisco’s planning director at the time of the Transbay competition. “He was among the few celebrity architects who had their ego under control.” Macris said Saturday in an email. “His approach to architecture seemed to match his personality. Respectful, pleasant and gracious.”
Not all of the firm’s buildings are masterpieces, as a polished but perfunctory UCSF research building at Mission Bay shows. But there was always a craftsmanship that respected how buildings endure as part of the physical landscape of their setting. They aren’t just supposed to look cool in renderings or photographs.
With 560 Mission St., also done for Hines, the simple rectangular form is made memorable by the poised metalwork that sharpens a dusty green glass skin; Pelli credited Willis Polk’s Hallidie Building on Sutter Street as an inspiration. When the wrapping of the transit center was changed from glass to metal during the design process, the choice of an unusual perforated pattern and micaflecked white paint made the cost savings a change for the better.
“I love the complex projects, the ones that so many people are going to use, that are transformative,” Pelli said in 2017, explaining why he was drawn to projects that are large and, in the case of the transit center and skylinetopping tower, politically fraught. “I’m very proud of 560 Mission, but the transit center with the tower is much better — more important.”
Pelli is survived by his sons, Rafael, a principal in the firm, and Denis, both of New York, as well as two granddaughters.