RLA offers the following tribute to Cesar Pelli, in whose offices our principal worked from 2006 to 2008:
I greeted the news with sadness. Cesar Pelli was warm-hearted, generous and carried no airs. He placed greater importance on being a good person than wearing the ego of an architect.
For myself as a junior employee then, reviews with him were a treat - filled with light-hearted moments and his classic chuckle, like this photo from 2007 where he placed a crushed paper cup on a model as we watched with amusement.
Cesar’s influence on me extends deeper - to the years before I decided to become an architect. I was an impressionable youth when mesmerising images of his Petronas Towers captivated the local imagination. Another architectural image that entranced my young self was Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal - on which Cesar played a major design role when he was working with Saarinen.
Years later on my return to Singapore, fate would have me work on his landmark project in Singapore - the Yale-NUS College Campus - which was personally meaningful on many levels. The demanding project acquainted me with what it took to successfully apply his design ethic in Singapore’s context.
Over the years, I’ve read and re-read his book “Observations for Young Architects” which prompted me to reflect deeply on my own practice goals. I never forgot his wise words made during a seminar class at Yale, that “so long as we offer our clients something that others cannot, architects will continue to have a seat at the table.”
Cesar’s warm spirit pervades the places and spaces he left behind and he touched many lives. The world has lost a kind, generous soul. May we honour his legacy with our work.
Ronald C. T. Lim